TV dramas, AI and more: How China's English learners chase fluency

English-language learning has taken on a new form for many Chinese online users who have found unique techniques to ace the skill.

On busy city streets, a young girl spots a foreign visitor and begins asking questions in English. The exchange is sweet and unexpectedly fluent, and has her interviewees intrigued. In videos posted on an Instagram account called English with Darcy, and run by her parents, 4-year-old Darcy Phong from central China's Henan Province chats with travelers about daily life, culture and sightseeing, turning public spaces into impromptu classrooms.

With her dad in sight and a camera in hand, Darcy bravely approaches strangers with her signature line, "Hi! I want to talk with you, can you speak English?" and practices her language skills through conversations with them. 

More than impressive, her approach is also super cute. Darcy's Instagram page has amassed a following of over 500,000, with commenters impressed by her command of the English language – even more so because of her age. For her, it all started on her computer, where she'd learn on different programs, as well as from watching scenes from English television shows.

That same do-it-yourself spirit runs through Douyin user known as Miss Zhang, from central China's Hunan Province. In her mid-40s, she creates online clips that have drawn attention for her polished British accent. Miss Zhang spent years teaching herself English, imitating lines from popular shows like Downton Abbey and delighting viewers with her London-style rhythm and intonation. 

She is more than happy to share her learning method too, which she says is pretty straight forward: Through watching British dramas on screen, placing highlighted vocabulary notes around the house and rehearsing the words, and doing poetry recitations. In fact, many have been so impressed by her skills, accent and way of speech that she's been overwhelmed with messages and interview requests – she's even had to take a break from posting. 

"I could have risen to great fame and fortune instantly, yet I'm a simple, stubborn person, living a free, quiet and solitary life. And those worldly trivialities and social niceties just suffocate me, so I cut off all contact with the outside world and stopped posting," she posted to her Douyin page in July. "Now the buzz has finally faded, so I'm back to making my laid-back clips." She assures her followers that she's going to continue doing what she loves, one British drama at a time.

For Lindsay, from south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the classroom incorporates modern technology in the form of an AI chatbot. Her Douyin profile frames her as an ordinary learner sharing English study, vlogs and life updates. 

In one post, she explains that without a foreign teacher or practice partner, she uses AI to rehearse spoken English, asking it to slow down, keep the conversation going and correct her mistakes. Her prompts are practical and specific, covering daily topics, questions in the style of the International English Language Testing System, beginner-friendly exchanges and even conversations around the foods she enjoys eating.

Anna, 33, from southeast China's Fujian Province, takes a more old-school approach with a modern media twist. She studies and teaches through dictation, memorization and English news reading, using none other than CGTN reports as her material of choice. 

Her approach is based on dictation exercises as a way to improve listening, spelling, grammar and vocabulary, formal register and varied sentence structures. She even closes her eyes in some instances in an attempt to memorize news scripts. Beyond just learning, Anna offers services to online users to help them learn English too, using some of her methods as well as comprehension-style teaching where she reads scenarios and offers questions based on these.

Together, these learners show how English study in China is becoming more visible and social. Instead of presenting fluency as an achievement, these creators use modern entertainment and pop culture to make their learning process watchable, trendy and easy to consume. They prove that language can be practiced, learnt and taught in the middle of ordinary life.