[TED.COM] by Patricia Kuhl "The linguistic genius of babies"

 summary

The babies and children are geniuses until they turn seven, and then there's a systematic decline. After puberty, we fall off the map. No scientists dispute this curve, but laboratories all over the world are trying to figure out why it works this way. Patricia Kuhl works in her lab that focused on the first critical period in development, and that is the period in which babies try to master which sounds are used in their language. When babies are  listening, what they're doing is taking statistics on the language that they hear, and those distributions grow. And what we've learned is that babies are sensitive to the statistics, and the statistics of Japanese and English are very, very different. The babies absorb the statistics of the language and it changes their brains; it changes them from the citizens of the world to the culture-bound listeners that we are, but we as adults are no longer absorbing those statistics. We are governed by the representations in memory that were formed early in development. When monolinguals were tested in Taipei and Seattle on the Mandarin sounds, they showed the same pattern. As the baby hears a word in her language, the auditory areas light up, and then subsequently areas surrounding it that we think are related to coherence, getting the brain coordinated with its different areas, and causality, one brain area causing another to activate. In investigating the child's brain, we're going to uncover deep truths about what it means to be human, and in the process, we may be able to help keep our own minds open to learning for our entire lives.

[Ted.com] by Patricia Ryan "Don’t insist on English "

summary

Patricia Ryan as the speaker who are living and teaching in Gulf for over 30 years  talks about language loss and globalization of English. She tells about her friend who was teaching English to adults in Abu Dhabi. Her friend decided to make them into the garden to teach them some nature vocabulary, but it was her friend who ended up learning all the Arabic words for the local plants, as well as their uses — medicinal uses, cosmetics, cooking, herbal. Today, languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. A language dies every 14 days. Now, at the same time, English is the undisputed global language. The speaker along with her friend  were brought to teach English because the government wanted to modernize the country and to empower the citizens through education, and  the U.K. benefited from some of that lovely oil wealth.

Patricia tells a story about two English scientists. They were doing an experiment to do with genetics and the forelimbs and the hind limbs of animals. But they couldn't get the results they wanted. They really didn't know what to do, until along came a German scientist who realized that they were using two words for forelimb and hind limb, whereas genetics does not differentiate and neither does German. So bingo, problem solved. If you can't think a thought, you are stuck. But if another language can think that thought, then, by cooperating, we can achieve and learn so much more.

In short, she talks that people who have no light, whether it's physical or metaphorical, cannot pass our exams, and we can never know what they know. Let us not keep them and ourselves in the dark. Let us celebrate diversity.Mind your language. Use it to spread great ideas.

[TED.COM] by John McWhorter "Texting is killing language".

 summary ted talk

John McWhorter talks about texting is killing language. The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability. Language has existed for perhaps 150,000 years, at least 80,000 years, and what it arose as is speech. Writing is something that came along much later. Writing has certain advantages when you write, because it's a conscious process, and you can look backwards. Casual speech is something quite different. Speech is much looser, more telegraphic, and much less reflective. It is very different from writing.

The speaker tells that texting involves the brute mechanics of something that we call writing is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk. And it's a very interesting thing, but nevertheless easy to think that still it represents some sort of decline. We see this general bagginess of the structure, the lack of concern with rules and the way that we're used to learning on the blackboard, and so we think that something has gone wrong. It's a very natural sense. For  example, there is in texting a convention, which is LOL. Now LOL, we generally think of as meaning "laughing out loud."  theoretically, it does, and if you look at older texts, then people used it to actually indicate laughing out loud. But if you text now, or if you are someone who is aware of the substrate of texting the way it's become, you'll notice that LOL does not mean laughing out loud anymore. It's evolved into something that is much subtler. Another example is "slash." Now, we can use slash in the way that we're used to, along the lines of, "We're going to have a party-slash-networking session." That's kind of like what we're at. Slash is used in a very different way in texting among young people today. It's used to change the scene.

John concludes that texting these days is that what we're seeing is a whole new way of writingthat young people are developing, which they're using alongside their ordinary writing skills, and that means that they're able to do two things. Increasing evidence is that being bilingual is cognitively beneficial. That's also true of being bidialectal. That's certainly true of being bidialectal in terms of your writing. And so texting actually is evidence of a balancing act that young people are using today, not consciously, of course, but it's an expansion of their linguistic repertoire.

[TED.COM] by Diana Laufenberg "How to learn from the mistake"

 summary ted.com

Diana Laufenberg tells the audiences about her experience in teaching in some schools. Right about the time that the Internet gets going as an educational tool, she took off from Wisconsin and move to Kansas. She teaches a subject about American Government. In the first year, kids in the 12th grade not exactly all that enthusiastic about the American government system. The second year, she changes her tactic. She puts in front of them an authentic experience that allowed them to learn for themselves. She didn't tell them what to do or how to do it. she posed a problem in front of them, which was to put on an election forum for their own community.

From Kansas, she moved on to Arizona. She taught in Flagstaff about geography. She asked the students to identify someone in their own life and produce a short movie about it, and nobody really knew how to make these short movies on the computer. Next, teaching Science Leadership Academy in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The students have to bring in  laptops with them everyday and take  them home to access the information to produce these info-graphics as a result of a unit that they decided to do at the end of the year responding to the oil spill. They were a little uncomfortable with it, because they had never done this before, and they didn't know exactly how to do it. But she gave them the room to just do the thing, go create, go figure it out to see what they can do. And the student that persistently turns out the best visual product did not disappoint. This was done in like two or three days. And this is the work of the student that consistently did it.

The main point is that, if we continue to look at education as if it's about coming to school to get the information and not about experiential learning, empowering student voice and embracing failure, we're missing the mark. And everything that everybody is talking about today isn't possible if we keep having an educational system that does not value these qualities, because we won't get there with a standardized test, and we won't get there with a culture of one right answer. We know how to do this better, and it's time to do better.

Ted.com by Jamila Lyiscoot

summary

Jamila lyiscottis is an articulate woman. In her talk, she tells about how she deliver a message in three ways to speak English when talking at home with her family, at school with her teacher/ lecturer, and with her friends as she is an articulate woman. For example, when her professor asks a question, her answer is tainted with a connotation of urbanized suggestion,there’s no misdirected intention pay attention, it cause she is “articulate”. When her father asks, “Wha’ kinda ting is dis?”, her articulate answer never goes amiss, she says “father, this is the impending problem at hand”. But who controls articulation? Because the English language is a multifaceted oration subject to indefinite transformation. Jamila tells  to the audiences that even “articulate” Americans sound foolish to the British. She is a tri-lingual orator. Sometimes she is consistent with her language, then switch it up so I don’t bore later. Sometimes she fight back two tongues, while she use the other one in the classroom. In short, her explanation means that we can speak English in the way that we want.

[Ted.com] by Shaolan Hsueh

Summary

Shaolan Hsueh is one of the speakers  of ted talks, she said about …

She has learnt about how to draw every single stroke for each character in the correct sequence of Chinese characters since her age of five. In her speaking, she told to the audiences about eight characters that are the basic ideas, which called characters radicals.

Below the following picture of the characters:

First character means that it is fire. Next symbol means that tree. Next, the sun, the moon, a person, mouth, the door and mountain.

They are the building blocks for you to create lots more characters. From the each characters,  Shaolan explain more detail to audiences about how to make these characters to have a large meaning.

Summary ted by christine Sun Kim "The Enchanting Music of Sign Language"

The Enchanting Music of Sign Language

The speaker says about the enchanting music of sign language. The speaker was born deaf, and she was taught to believe that sound was not a part of her life, but now she realize that sound was very much a part of her life. She learns about American sign language (ASL). She found out the similarities between music and ASL. For example, a musical not cannot be fully captured and expressed on paper. It has same holds true for a concept in ASL. They're both highly spatial and highly inflected — meaning that subtle changes can affect the entire meaning of both signs and sounds.

She shared about a piano metaphor, to have the audiences a better understanding of how ASL works. So, envision a piano. ASL is broken down into many different grammatical parameters. If you assign a different parameter to each finger as you play the piano — such as facial expression, body movement,speed, hand shape and so on, as you play the piano — English is a linear language, as if one key is being pressed at a time. However, ASL is more like a chord — all 10 fingers need to come down simultaneouslyto express a clear concept or idea in ASL. If just one of those keys were to change the chord, it would create a completely different meaning. The same applies to music in regards to pitch, tone and volume.In ASL, by playing around with these different grammatical parameters, you can express different ideas.

She also told about how ASL is alive and thriving in her speaking, just like music is. However, in this day and age, we live in a very audio-centric world. And just because ASL has no sound to it, it automatically holds no social currency. We need to start thinking harder about what defines social currency and allow ASL to develop its own form of currency — without sound. And this could possibly be a step to lead to a more inclusive society. And maybe people will understand that you don't need to be deaf to learn ASL, nor do you have to be hearing to learn music.

SUMMARY TED BY KELLY MC GONIGAL

The speaker in this ted is kelly, she talks about strees. She said that she is a health psycologist, and her mission is to help people be happier and healthier. For years she has been telling people, stress makes you sick. It increases the risk of everything from the common cold to cardiovascular disease. Basically, she has turned stress into the enemy, but  she has changed her mind about stress, and   she wants to change yours.

The speaker talks about the study that made her rethink her whole approach to stress. She tells the audiences about some bad news first. People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying, but that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress. Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you.

From the researches that the speaker explain in the ted, a belief about stress can make so much difference to someone's life expectancy. How would that extend to advice, like, if someone is making a lifestyle choice between, say, a stressful job and a non-stressful job, does it matter which way they go.  It's equally wise to go for the stressful job so long as you believe that you can handle it, in some sense, and one thing we know for certain is that chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. And the speaker says that's really the best way to make decisions, is go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.

Summary ted by Terry Moore

The speaker talks about why is it that the letter X represents the unknown?

He tells about his experience when he learned language about six year ago. He would learn Arabic, which turns out to be a supremely logical language. To write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. That's one of the reasons so much of what we've come to think of as Western science and mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries of the Common Era by the Persians and the Arabs and the Turks. This includes the little system in Arabic called al-jebra. And al-jebr roughly translates to "the system for reconciling disparate parts." Al-jebr finally came into English as algebra. 

            The Arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to Europe — which is to say Spain — in the 11th and 12th centuries. And when they arrived there was tremendous interest in translating this wisdom into a European language. But there were problems. One problem is there are some sounds in Arabic that just don't make it through a European voice box without lots of practice.  Also, those very sounds tend not to be represented by the characters that are available in European languages. Here's one of the culprits. This is the letter Sheen (ﺵ), and it makes the sound we think of as SH — "sh." It's also the very first letter of the word shalan, which means "something" just like the the English word "something" — some undefined, unknown thing. The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material is that the letter SHeen and the word shalan can't be rendered into Spanish because Spanish doesn't have that SH,that "sh" sound. So by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed the CK sound, "ck" sound,from the classical Greek in the form of the letter Kai. Later when this material was translated into a common European language, which is to say Latin, they simply replaced the Greek Kai with the Latin X. And once that happened, once this material was in Latin,it formed the basis for mathematics textbooks for almost 600 years. But now we have the answer to our question. Why is it that X is the unknown? X is the unknown because you can't say "sh" in Spanish.

summary TED by Jay Walker

         I would like to make a summary about Ted that I have listened, it is about “Manias”. The speaker starts talking about mania with Beatle mania. Beatle mania is close with the word historical teenagers, crying, screaming, pandemonium. Sports mania: deafening crowds, all for one idea, get the ball in the net. Religious mania: there’s rapture, there’s weeping, there’s visions.  Manias can be good, manias can be alarming or manias can be deadly. The speaker said that the world has a new mania, a mania for learning English. The people from Latin America, India, Southeast Asia, and most all in China are trying to learn English worldwide. The Chinese students practice their English by screaming it, they start leaning in the third grade by law. So that’s why this year Chine will become the world largest English speaking country. They believe that with English they can get an opportunity for a better life, a job, to be able to pay for school, or put better food on the table.

          Jay Walker in his public speaking said that English is the world’s second language. Your native language is your life. But with English you can become part of a wider conversation: a global conversation about global problem, like climate change or poverty, or hunger or disease. The world has other universal languages. Mathematics is the language of science. Music is the language of emotions. And now English is becoming the language of problem-solving. Not because American is pushing it, but because the world pulling it. So English mania is a turning point. Like the harnessing of electricity in our cities, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, English represents hope for better future. A future where the world has a common language to solve its common problems.

The Visit school report Instructional Media by Rika Wahyuni

The observation about instructional media

at SMP N 8 Darussalam

 I did an observation at SMP N 8 Darussalam, On April, 29 2017 to students at second year, especially class of VIII₂, about an instructional media that the teacher used in the class.

Based on the observation at SMP N 8 Darussalam , teacher used  a course book as the media in the class, the book that used in the class is “when English rings a bell”.

The textbook “when english rings a bell” is designed by the goverment  appropriate with the curriculum 2013. The teacher chooses this book as the main material in teaching learning process in the class.

During the class, the teacher only used this book as the media. For the first, the teacher reviewed the previous material about tenses, especially about present tense and past tense. It did for ten minutes. Next, the teacher  continued the material at that day about collecting information. The teacher explained the material in that book in front of the class, and asked them some questions related to the material to make sure that the students understand the material well.

After explaining the material, the teacher asked the students to do the exercise in the book in pairs, and then wrote it in the book, after that they had to submit it to the teacher.

During the class, students did the exercise  cooperatively. They submitted the task  in the end of the class and they clearly understand the materials that the teacher explains in the class.

Instructional Media (PART II)

1.      Maket

The teacher will teach the student about a material “descriptive text” by using this media. The material that the teacher provides in the class depend on the KD 3.10Memahami tujuan, struktur teks, dan unsur kebahasaan dari teks deskriptif lisan dan tulis tentang orang, binatang, dan benda, sangat pendek dan sederhana.

The teacher provides a miniature of a big house that the teacher made by herself. Next,  the teacher explains to the students about the teacher purpose by providing the miniature in their class, and then the student need to explain or describe the miniature after listening the teacher istructions, like mentioned all parts of the house and the other explanation or description.

2.      Audio Visual

 

In this section, the teacher will teach the second grade student of junior high school with the material of narrative text, based on the KD 3.6 Memahami tujuan, struktur, dan unsur kebahasaan dari jenis teks naratif, lisan dan tulis, berbentuk fabel, pendek dan sederhana. The material will be prepared by using audio visual as the media in the class.

The rules of using this media are: firstly, the teacher will explain the material. After understanding the material, the teacher will play a video of narrative story about “ Lion and mouse”. Before playing the video, the teacher gives a worksheet to the students and then explain them what should they do. The video will be played twice. First, when the students have to complete the worksheet, and the second when the teacher discuss the students’ answering. 

3.     Audio

 

The teacher uses audio media to teach the student about animals. This material is for the first grade student of junior high school. The material is depend on the KD 3.5 Memahami tujuan, struktur teks, dan unsur kebahasaan dari teks lisan dan tulis untuk menyebut nama dan jumlah binatang, benda, dan bangunan publik yang dekat dengan kehidupan siswa sehari-hari.

The audio that the teacher provided in the class is taken from 123listening.com. 

Thus, the teacher will give the student a worksheet that needed to complete by the student by listening the audio. The students will follow the teacher’s instruction to complete the worksheet.

4.      Board games

The teacher provides this board games to make the students more understand the material of past tense. The teacher will divide the students into several groups depend on the number of the students in the class. The rules of this game, first the students have to search some words related to the verb of present tense in the board. Next, after the students find the words, they have to construct some words that the teacher has provided in some cards into a sentence of past tense. The group that is faster will be the winner.

5.      tecnhology based internet

  https://www.proprofs.com/games/ . This is the link of the website that the teacher used.

The teacher can use this web to provide some games to help a  teaching learning process based on the material that the teacher provide in the class. The teacher can create their own game depend on the material. 

Instructional Media (PART I)

1.      Printed media (magazine)

The teacher uses a magazine as an instructional media in the class. The teacher will teach the first grade student of junior high school about the material “ introduction”, based on KD 3.2 Memahami tujuan, struktur teks, dan unsur kebahasaan dari teks lisan dan tulis untuk perkenalan diri, dengan sangat pendek dan sederhana.

The teacher will use this media as the student exercise. After the teacher teaches or explains the student about introduction material, such as how to mention their name, how to ask someone’s name, and how to make a conversation about introduction in the class. After understanding the material, the teacher will ask the student to analyze the introduction of someone that teacher gives in a magazine. The students just need to mention the name, the age and address of the person’s introduction. The student will do the exercise in pairs.

2.      pictures

        

The teacher will teach the first grade student of junior high school about a material “descriptive text” by using this media. The material that the teacher provides in the class depend on the KD 3.10Memahami tujuan, struktur teks, dan unsur kebahasaan dari teks deskriptif lisan dan tulis tentang orang, binatang, dan benda, sangat pendek dan sederhana.

The teacher will use the first picture for the example in the class when the teacher explains the material about descriptive text. The teacher will guide the student to describe the picture in the class by mentioning or giving some vocabularies related to the picture. Afterward, the teacher will give an example how to describe the picture. For the exercise of the student, the teacher will give the second picture, after that the student must make a descriptive text related to the picture by their own work.