Ted (www.ted.com) is a website with hundreds of video speeches by today’s leading scientists and business people, including Bill Gates, Tony Robbins, and Al Gore.
It is also an excellent resource for studying English:
- If you are a medium or advanced English speaker interested in topics like science, business, medicine, psychology, or history, this could help you.
- This is also great for people who are preparing for a speech. Some of these videos feature world-famous speechmakers – the very best. You can study their style and technique.
- Finally, this is excellent listening practice for IELTS and TOEFL students. Many of the topics are similar to the listening questions or integrated speaking quations.
Ted has many great tools to assist your learning, including translations and an interactive transcript. Here’s a quick guide to using the videos.
2. Choose “Languages (view)”
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 Select your language. For Taiwan, choose “Chinese (Traditional).” Currently, there are about 466 videos available. |
3. Setting up the Video
You will see a big selection of videos. Choose a topic that is interesting to you i.e. new cell phone technology. When the video loads, you will have several options. You can select different subtitles (ie English) under the video. You should also click “Open Interactive Transcript” in the top right corner of the screen.
 4. Using the Interactive Script
The Interactive transcript allows you to cut and paste text. Or you click on text to listen to that part of the video. You can also change the language of the interactive text to English.
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5. Our Advice to youEveryone’s learning style is different. You should experiment and find the best way for you.
I recommend you try this:
- Change the subtitles to Chinese Traditional
- Change the Interactive Transcript to English
- Read the transcript in English. If you are confused by a section, click to listen to that section and see the Chinese subtitles. Then copy and paste the confusing section into a new file. Later, you can add the Chinese translation to the same file.
- After you have read the transcript in English and checked any confusing words, change the subtitles to English and watch the video again. Now you will have a 100% English experience.
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