S Club sign up to teach children

The English language may boast some of the best writers the world has known but the BBC has turned to a group not commonly associated with literary excellence to teach thousands of children around the world.

Pop group S Club are to star in a new commercial BBC educational project called Pop Goes English, which will be distributed across the non-English speaking world though TV, CD-rom and books.

The idea is already in final development in Taiwan, where local star e-Vonne will be used as an interpreter and translator alongside the S Club songs. The language project has come thanks to a deal between BBC Worldwide and pop impresario Simon Fuller, whose company 19 Entertainment also represents Will Young and Gareth Gates.

If the S Club Pop Goes English project is a success, other 19 Entertainment clients may follow. S Club's lyrics may be somewhat obtuse, but the BBC Worldwide spokesman insisted pop music will provide an effective tool for learning English.

"There is a long history of people learning English from pop songs, and this is an extension of that," she said.

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