Learning English through Popular Culture Once I was having a conversation with my friend who is about to take the Hong Kong Secondary Education Diploma exam and I spoke difficulties in learning English. He said that English is becoming boring, he can't find a suitable way to learn English; so he's losing the enthusiasm for it. Then I try to think about how I can help him out of this situation, and I found that if you want to learn better English, you have to have passion for it. And I think one of the ways to enlighten someone's heart is to use popular culture. According to Storey, J (2006), there are six definitions of popular culture. First, the culture that many people like. Second, a “lower” culture but not a “high” culture. Third, mass production and commercial culture. Next, the culture of the people like dragon boat racing. Fifth, People's culture that resists mass-produced culture like the V for Vendetta mask. And finally, there is postmodern culture. Therefore, we can see that there are many different things related to popular culture, such as art, music, clothing, etc. So, how do these things help us learn more about English? People's culture is a motivation to learn English First of all, we need to find out the reason why a people can't learn English efficiently . According to Gardner and Symthe (1981), because of interest in something, they hope to be successful in learning English. This intrinsic motivation or emotion is called English learning motivation. And according to Cheung Chun Hing (1996), motivation makes a student initiate and maintain learning activities. And for learning a second language, motivation is also a really important strength… half of the paper… brilliant, but despite everything I still had to carry on with my studies and practice my English. By the end of secondary school I was very confident in my English skills. All my hard work paid off even more in university, because classes at the Hong Kong Institute of Education are discussion-based, so there's a lot of talking. If I remember correctly, the pronunciation I was taught in secondary school is mostly incorrect. This is a common case because English pronunciation is not simple at all. There's nothing like the difficulty of trying to pronounce some of the most difficult words in English. Storey, J. (2006). Cultural theory and popular culture: an introduction. London: Pearson.張春興 (1996), 教育心裡學—三化取向的理論與實踐,台北：東華書局。 Gardner, RC, & Smythe, PC (1981). On the development of the attitude/motivation test battery. Canadian Modern Language Review, 37(3), 510-25.