Improving the Practical Use of English by Using Ted

Abstract

Introduction * Purpose: Interesting listening materials that encourage students to speak and write in their own way will be effective for them to improve learning motivation. Based on the listening comprehension, students can do reading and writing activities as they read others’ reviews on the subject. Then, after reading various views on the same topic, students can develop their own opinions and learn more about the content. Finally, pairing students up when they write their own views on the given topic can reduce their fear of writing. Writing in pairs will be effective for students to exchange thoughts, and also be a good opportunity for them to express their ideas and opinions. * Rationale: Korean English class of secondary school students is changing. The Korean English class is being taught based on mutual communication activities from teacher-centered to student-centered. Various activities of meaningful contents are necessary to draw students’ active participation. TED talk has a variety of presentations which shows opinions and ideas of people around the world. People from all over the world are freely presenting their thoughts and fun ideas. Not everyone is a native speaker, but their presentation is not interrupted by pronunciation and intonation. It will be a positive effect for Korean secondary students to have confidence in speaking English. They will focus on the meaning of the presentations rather than verbal pronunciations and intonation. There are many kinds of lectures, so I will choose interesting topics for teenagers and try to make a listening comprehension textbook using integrated language skills. * Target learners: 12 middle school students, mixed gender * Proficiency: Intermediate according to the ACTFL * Learning context: after-school program Method * TBLT Expected Outcomes The listening comprehension will be excerpted from TED, and the Reading comprehension will be excerpted from internet. After listening, students will review contents by doing practice tests such as “true or false” and “fill in the blanks”. Some students may not understand some parts of the presentation, so reviewing the presentation by solving practice tests will be a good chance for them to understand details. Speaking practice will be included at the beginning of each unit. In this part, students will work in pairs and talk about the first picture that appears with the title. They will answer a few questions related to main topic. Pair work with their given questions can release their stress in speaking. They are not alone to present their ideas in speaking English, so they can express their thoughts more freely when they are together than alone. Reading skill can be practiced by reading others’ comments on a TED presentation. This section will encourage students to think more about the issues and help them learn literacy through others’ comments. And it will be helpful for those who prefer written text to spoken text to get more involved in the lesson. Also, this part can be a basis for students to write their own comments. Students can be inspired by others’views, and they can imitate or apply others’ thoughts to their comments. The Writing activity can be demanding to intermediate level students, but students will not be afraid of writing in this book. They should be fully aware of the main ideas and contents in other sections, and comments on TED talks can be used as a form of free writing.