Beijing, Jul 10 (IANS): An English teacher in the Chinese capital has written to US President Barack Obama to ask for permission to use his speeches in his English lessons.

Qu Gang, founder of a private English training institute in Beijing, intends to buy the copyright of Obama's speeches and is asking the president to name his price, the Shanghai Daily reported Tuesday.

People have praised the teacher's innovative teaching methods, but there has also been criticism of the move as a shameless promotion of his institute.

The teacher said he posted the letter to Obama last week.

"We sincerely hope to be authorised by you (Obama) to use the content of your speech in our commercial English teaching activities. If there is any expense for the speech, we'd like to buy it according to the situation," the letter says.

Qu told the Shanghai Daily he expected Obama would charge little for the authorisation considering it would be used to support English education.

He said a sum of less than 200,000 yuan ($31,400) would be acceptable to him.

Qu introduced his so-called "presidential-style" English in his institute two years ago.

Students are taught to read presidential speeches out loud and imitate Obama's modulation.

Qu said Chinese were usually very shy to speak out and the president's eloquent speeches helped students build confidence quickly.