As English learners, you might find it familiar watching video TED Talks on YouTube. TED Talks have always been great resources to help us improve English. In this article, I’d like to share with you one of the most convenient, yet effective ways to learn English with TED Talks videos on your mobile phone. Let’s dive right in, shall we?
Benefits of TED Talks in English learning
TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech, and creativity. Learning English through TED will definitely help you:
- Improve your English communication skills: The more you watch TED Talks videos, the better your English listening will get. Watching TED Talks conducted by speakers from all over the world will allow you to get exposed to various English accents, which is the key to English communication success.
- Build up your English vocabulary: Needless to say, watching TED Talks will help you learn a wide range of vocabulary of varied topics – Informal vocabulary for daily conversations, semi-formal vocabulary for writing, presentations, academic exams, you name it.
- Broaden your general knowledge of the world: TED Talks cover a wide variety of topics, which will provide you a lot of insights into different fields and bring you a new perspective on the world. At the same time, you will have the chance to come up with a lot of new ideas and find inspiration to create and share.
- Acquire public speaking skills: Last but not least, TED Talks provide you an opportunity to unlock great public speaking skills from the world’s most renowned people.
A step-by-step guide to learning English through TED Talks with eJOY app
1. Choose the right TED Talks
Why: This step will help you pick the talks that suit you. The best videos for you should be of your favorite topics and your learning purpose.
How:
- Open eJOY app on your phone
- Search for a video: There are a few options for you to choose from:
- On eJOY’s search box, search for a video by entering keywords and filtering your topics, levels (for example, TED Education)
- You can also access the eJOY Courses “TED Talks” to find a video of your choice
- Use YouTube Connect to convert a TED Talks video on YouTube to eJOY.
2. Watch the video with English subtitles
Why: Watching the whole video once or twice will help you have a general idea of what the talk is about.
How:
- Watch the video with English subtitles or subtitles in your mother tongue (We recommend you watch with dual subtitles on at the same time).
- Pause to look up and save any new words.
3. Split the video into small pieces and watch the most preferred one
Why: According to many language experts, working with short clips is more effective than working with long ones. In addition, you’ll be able to focus entirely on your favorite parts instead of the whole long video.
How:
- Re-watch your favorite parts and remember their subline number.
- Use the Cut A Clip feature, choose the start time and end time of the split part of the video.
- When practicing your English with videos or movies, we always suggest working with a short video clip of no more than three minutes. A one minute piece is even better.
- Watch the newly-split clip a few times and don’t forget to look up new words.
4. Play 5 games with the clip
Why: This step will help you practice your listening and speaking skills in depth.
How:
Choose any game to begin with. Below is our suggestion:
Step 1: Active Listening
Active listening is a combination of comprehension listening and bottom-up listening (listening for details or focused listening). This method of listening will focus on language forms at the word and sentence levels.
- Listen to each dialogue carefully (you can listen to it as many times as you want)
- Repeat the dialogue when the video is paused
- Check your results when the subtitles are displayed
Step 2: Listening Quizes
Quizes will allow you to practice your active listening through word recognition and sentence completion
- Listen to each dialogue line
- Use the correct words/ phrases to complete the sentences
Step 3: Do Shadowing
Based on the shadowing technique, we design the Shadow game to help you practice your speaking skills.
- Listen to each dialogue line
- Click on the record icon (the micro icon) to start recording your voice.
- Click again to stop recording
- Our latest speech recognition technology will analyze your speech and show you all of your pronunciation errors
Step 4: Write
Dictation is one of the best methods to improve your listening fluency. By transferring what you hear into text, your brain will have to work hard and fast to process new information, which means that you’ll need to work on both your listening and writing skills simultaneously.
- Listen to each dialogue line and type what you hear
- eJOY will show you your mistakes
Step 5: Roleplay
The roleplay activity will help you speak English more fluently and naturally
- Listen to a group of dialogue lines
- Click on the record icon (the micro icon) to start recording your voice within time limits (You can record your speech as many times as you want)
- View your dubbed video to check your speaking
5. Review your vocabulary
Why: eJOY uses the spaced repetition technology to help you remember your added vocabulary forever.
How:
- Play any games of your choice right in the video or in the Game Center
- Track your vocabulary progress to see how masterful you are
- Besides, don’t forget to access your audiobook to re-listen to your recordings. By re-listening to your voice, you’ll be able to identify your speaking problems and how to improve them
- You can also practice passive listening with the clip while carrying out other talks.
If you don’t know yet which video to start with, then try out our eJOY Courses below
Course 1: TED Talks
Course 2: TED Talks in brief
So that’s our recommended guide to learning English with TED Talks on eJOY app. Don’t hesitate to share with us the problems you’ve encountered when learning English. Thank you for reading and have a nice day!
