All discussion of English education in Taiwan must eventually come back to one essential, but so far intractable question: Why, with all the time, effort and resources invested in English learning in Taiwan, are listening comprehension and speaking skills still generally so weak among Taiwan learners? How do learners in areas like the Netherlands and Scandinavia succeed in learning English to such a high level of proficiency, while elsewhere students struggle with even the most basic communication? Have we maybe been looking for the answer in all the wrong places? The solution may in fact be much simpler than we imagined. But it will require us to clarify what exactly it is that we hope to achieve. We must also learn how to leverage the particular quirks of our brains to help us learn more efficiently and effectively. Do we want improvement badly enough to try something dramatically different from what we've become fiercely attached to through habit? And is our education system ready and willing to make a radical change for the better? In this talk, we will explore these and other related questions in an interactive way, and propose some practical first steps to get us moving in the right direction.