V. The Solutions Available.

 
This section represents a major change in the direction of this book.  In Parts III and IV we discussed what life offers you, and how you might respond to it.  It is therefore a “reactive” approach to problem solving.  This section talks about learning English on your terms.  This makes it a “pro-active” approach to problem solving. 
       Every effective classroom teacher knows about reactive and proactive classroom management.  In the reactive scheme of things, the teacher waits for some problem or naughty student to rise up, do something, and cause trouble before taking action—usually a form of punishment.  Perhaps, under these circumstances, it is the classroom that is managing the teacher.  In the proactive scheme of things, the teacher is always anticipating all possible future problems, as well as taking note of the beginnings of any emerging problems, and dealing with them.  In a typical middle-school classroom, such actions might include seating a restless student in the front row directly in front of you, seating a student with visual difficulties right in front of the blackboard, or separating two students who habitually quarrel and fight from the moment they enter the classroom and sit down.  Under these circumstances, the effective teacher can (hopefully) manage the classroom. 
       Please remember: although this country is awash with “get-rich-quick”-like English materials, and millions of people profess to want to learn English, the reality “in the trenches”, in the actual battlefield of learning English is very different.  In many, if not all parts of the country, there remains an inertia and a hostility towards taking the authentic learning of English to its ultimate conclusion: English for English’s sake, English used in all aspects of life, a bilingual mentality (theory and praxis) in all areas of life, English as a daily part of your life and not as a stepping-stone to “the better life”, English as the room or world we live in and not a toy or tool for another better room or better world—English (along with Chinese, of course) as the very bedrock, air and horizon of our linguistic intercourse in the world we inhabit!  (I am here referring to a bilingual state of affairs, but certainly not anything “bicultural”!)  In short, what I am suggesting here is a form of revolution, with regards to the current motives and methods with which we study English.
       Most revolutions are propagated through “cells” (xiao zu).  Therefore, the model used in this book is an adapted version of the “cells” which were used by the communists in China and in other places.  I hope to borrow some of the methodology, but not the content.  (This is, after all, a book about how to “learn English on the go, on your own, without a foreign helper”…not something else.  It is therefore a form of quiet, “slow-burning” revolution.) 
       This section will discuss the following topics: the inspiration for learning English from communist “cells”, the organizational structure of the cell, the characteristics of the cell, the core values of the cell, the people who are served, and helping yourself.