Fun on Friday.
Get your general knowledge titbits from TED.com and kill two birds with one stone – improve your listening skills at the same time.
www.ted.com is a fantastic source for video presentations on any topic imaginable. If you haven’t already visited the website and watched a presentation now is the time to put it right.
I’ve already done a number of blog posts on various TED talks. Given that I wanted to talk about English today, the best talk to start with would be “Five techniques to speak any language.” because I also have a free PDF https://teatimetitbits.de/free-pdfs/ of the same name with some useful vocab to help you to listen to the video.
The good thing about TED is that you can watch and read the transcript. TED talks are also limited to approximately 20 minutes, so are very good for watching in one sitting. However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably end up binge watching three or four presentations at a time.
Have you heard about TED Ed? If you scroll down the main screen, you will find the section TED-ed animations: Feed your curiosity. These videos are usually a lot shorter and are designed to teach cool stuff. In preparation for this newsletter I typed into the search bar TED Ed English. One of the videos that jumped out at me was called “A brief history of plural s words “ by John McWhorter.
https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_a_brief_history_of_plural_word_s
In the feed at the right, you may also see a number of other cool English (language) videos, like
“Why there is ‘b’ in doubt?”
https://www.ted.com/talks/gina_cooke_why_is_there_a_b_in_doubt#t-3810
“Where did English come from?”
“How did English evolve?”
So happy TED-ed binge watching in the name of ENGLISH.
general knowledge (allgemeines Wissen), to kill two birds with one stone (zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen), to put sth right (etw ausrichten), given (angesichts), sitting (Sitzung), binge watching (Koma Glotzen), curiosity (Neugier), doubt (Zweifel), to evolve (sich entwickeln