It comes from Boston newspapers in the 1840s when it was fashionable to spell things incorrectly for humorous effect.

With a vocabulary of just 1,500 words and no idioms, abbreviations or humour, it focuses on the essentials and leaves out everything that makes cross-cultural communication difficult.

Mr Shen categorized the methods of memorizing words into 10 items and elaborated them in every particular with vivid examples which conduced to students' divergent thinking.