TED

What is it about?

This website provides different kinds of videos with English subtitles. These videos are about the speech of successful people sharing their ideas. The themes of these videos are various, including economics, business, global issues, technology, science, and entertainment.

Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

Why is the content good for language learning?

1. The ideas of each speech are encouraging and motivating.

2. Visual and audio aids both help to express what the speaker would like to infer.

3.  The subtitles help students to understand the meaning of the speech clearly.
4.  Students can learn the skill of presentation in English.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

1. Let students watch the video and ask them to take notes and guess the main idea of the speech.


2. Ask students to share what they guess in group, and talk about the main idea the speaker might talk about.


3. Teachers provide some questions according to the speech’s content and let students think about these questions. 

4. Compare the main ideas with each other and have students to work out in groups to answer the questions.

5. Once students answer the questions, let them listen to the answer in the speech. 

6. Teacher choose some difficult or good sentences and ask students to work in group to figure out the meaning together.

7. Provide the link and encourage students to watch the video again at home. 

Limitations
1. The videos are not suitable for low-level students. 

2. It may take teachers a lot of time to search for a speech which is related to the topic of the school's curriculum.