The duty of a teacher is to pass knowledge to their students and make them learn new concepts. But, as teachers, our most important duty is to awaken our students to the innovation, to develop their imagination and to raise their curiosity in order to make them citizen of the world. As second language English teachers, we truly have the opportunity to do so throughout our teaching by choosing the topic we want to work on. We must maximise the exposure to L2 our students receive by using significant authentic content like videos. I think that TED talks are the best way to do it.
TED is a non-profit organisation that wants people around the world to share great, positive, and inspirational ideas for the welfare of everybody, thus their slogan “TED idea worth spreading. It’s like a virus. But with inspiration instead of sneezing.”. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, but TED talks cover almost any topics you can think of. TED talks are powerful short presentations (18 minutes or less) about great ideas. So TED talks can be used in class to heighten our students’ awareness about existing problems or solutions about topics that can move them.
Teaching material can easily be created from TED talks and the teacher can search for videos that will reach the students because he knows their interests. Another easier way for teachers to introduce TED in their classrooms is to use TED ed. This resource gathers already-made lessons from students and teachers all around the world. Every lesson is composed of a TED presentation followed by a short comprehension questionnaire. So, teacher who get to know this wonderful tool can take activities from it and when they are used to TED ed they can start to make and share their lessons.
This is how teachers can achieve their true duty.
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