■ Each screen has a thumbnail picture of the speaker next to the title of their talk. Click on a photo for a talk you think might be interesting.
■ You will find brief information about the talk and the speaker accompanying the video. ■ To find out more before you listen, try entering the speaker’s name and some key words from the title into a search engine. Reading before attending lectures is key to successful understanding.
■ TED Talks also provides transcripts of the talks, which you can keep open on-screen together with the video, plus translations and subtitles in various languages. However, for your first listening we recommend that you initially just listen to the introduction and perhaps pause to check the transcript, then open the transcripts or subtitles later.
■ Listen to the rest of the lecture and make notes. If anything is unclear, listen again. If it is still unclear, look at that part of the transcript and listen again. Why did you not understand? Were there unknown words? Perhaps you did not recognize the pronunciation of a word you know in written form – remember, in connected speech, pronunciation can also be affected by the sounds in words before or after. Perhaps it was hard to recognize word boundaries (see Unit 5) – e.g., you might not hear the unstressed first syllable in attempt and hear ‘tempt’ instead. Perhaps you heard a word you knew but that seemed to have a different meaning, e.g., you might hear fair and recognize it as meaning ‘light-coloured’ (as in fair hair), but not know it can also mean ‘just’ (as in justice). Or, was the idea not clearly expressed or hard to understand even though you knew all the words? Understanding why you have had problems can help you listen more effectively next time.
■ Finally, you may want to listen to the talk again, or part of it, with the transcript open, paying attention to the way words are pronounced in connected speech.
8
English for Academic Study
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