Editing Crazy English (section)

== History ==
By 2008, for over a decade China had been gripped by the “English Fever” phenomenon as the country increasingly associated English language skills with success in the business world.<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/28/crazy-english|title=Crazy English|last=Osnos|first=Evan|magazine=[[The New Yorker]] }}</ref>  Though China states that it has the largest number, 300 million, of English speakers in the world, the number of people who translate their  reading and writing skills to spoken word decreases substantially.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8757375/What-is-Crazy-English-and-who-is-Li-Yang.html|title=What is Crazy English and who is Li Yang?|last=Moore|date=2011-09-12}}</ref> This issue with students not being comfortable or confident in speaking English opened the door for Li Yang's Crazy English method of teaching.

Yang, like many others, struggled with speaking in English. In preparation for his TEM 4 English exam, Yang found that while practicing English he would often time find himself shouting English passages and class exercises aloud; this made him more confident. After only four months of using his new method of studying Yang placed second in his class on the exam.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Woodward|first=Amber|date=April 2008|title=A Survey of Li Yang Crazy English|url=http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp180_crazy_english.pdf|journal=Sino-Platonic Papers}}</ref>

After graduating Yang started to work as an electrical engineer but also taught English in his spare time using his method of teaching English as a “shouted language”. He later quit his job in 1994 to start his own English teaching company “Li Yang English Promotion Studio" to promote his technique" which he named “Crazy English”.<ref name=":1" /> In the following years, Yang's method would gain popularity beginning after Ouyang Weijian, the leader of an elementary school asked Yang to teach for a crowd of about five thousand people, Weijian would later go on to join Yang's company as his business manager.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|url=https://spotlightenglish.com/listen/crazy-english|title=Crazy English|date=26 April 2024 }}</ref>

One major contribution to Crazy English's rise to fame was director Zhang Yuan's 1999 documentary Fengkuang Yingyu (“Crazy English”) which gained Crazy English attention, especially in the Western world.<ref name=":1" /> Crazy English popularity continued to grow causing more than 20 million people to sign up for a course.<ref name=":0" /> Eventually the Chinese government recognized Crazy English as a legitimate teaching method by allowing Yang to teach in Beijing, to teach soldiers on top of the Great Wall of China, as well as conduct Intensive Training Camps to prepare for the 2008 Olympics.<ref name=":2" /> Today “Li Yang English Promotion Studio" is a multimillion-dollar business that employs over 150 people with Yang still at the helm as director and principal speaker.<ref name=":0" />