TED Talk English Club 2022: Vol 6 on 11 & 18 April

Welcome to TED Talk English Club active each Monday from 31 Jan through 16 May:)

Please click on the black box below to download the SUMMARY of 18 April

Please click on the black box below to download the SUMMARY of 11 April

CLUB Meeting on 18 April 2022 = Meeting 2 of Vol 6

TOPIC of 18 April 2022: A Conversation in English-what makes it 'good'?

VIDEO (3.12 min, 2021) on 18 April: click 'The keys to a great conversation'

VIDEO (12 min, 2015) on 18 April: click 'Ten ways to have a better conversation'

WORDS for 18 April: click here 

SCRIPT for 18 April: please scroll down to read the SCRIPT keri allapoole, et lugeda siin lehel or to download the pdf või laadida alla pdf-fail

• 18 April Question 1 for discussion: What do you feel more comfortable with: When presenting a monologue? Having a dialogue? Talking together in a small group? What does it take to feel comfortable while speaking? 
• 18 April Question 2 for discussion: Does 'talking together' matter? (= Do  conversation skills matter?) How?
• 18 April Question 3 for discussion: Conversation in Estonian vs conversation in English: Do they differ and how?  
• 18 April Question 4 for discussion: Do you agree with 00:49? How come? 
• 18 April Question 5 for discussion: From 'Rule 1-10' pick a few 'favourite' ones. Can you explain?

Time: 3 p.m. through 6 p.m. on 11 & 18 April NB! Please pick from: Gertrud 11 April 3-3.30/Toomas 18 April 3.30-4/ Heli 11 & 18 April 4-4.30/4.30-5/ 5-5.30/ 5.30-6 p.m./ and submit by the form above.

Format: one-on-one for 30 minutes

Access 1: open to all of them who at some point--since 2012--have taken a course with Terje Keldoja😊

Fee: 8 eur for a 30-minute Meeting, incl Quizlet & Script & the SUMMARY (= follow-up based on the ideas of the participants--about the video/topic)

NB! Access 2: Everybody else is indeed welcome, too. However, the fee is a little less generous (12 eur per 30 minutes one-on-one ) for the 'newcomers'.

Participation: Choose between 18 April and 11 April or attend both.

Register: with terje.keldoja@gmail.com or submit the form above või täida ülal olev vorm

CLUB Meeting on 11 April 2022 = Meeting 1 of Vol 6

TOPIC of 11 April 2022: What is end-of-history illusion?

VIDEO (4 min, 2018) for 11 April: click The 'end of history' illusion

WORDS for 11 April: click here (find automatic 'join quizlet' link here)

SCRIPT for 11 April: Please scroll down to read the SCRIPT keri allapoole, et lugeda siin lehel or to download the pdf või laadida alla pdf-fail

• 11 April Question 1 for discussion: Had you heard about Fukuyama and his 'end-of-history' theory before ?
• 11 April Question 2 for discussion: How does the 'end-of-history illusion' apply to our personal lives? + See the very last sentence.
• 11 April Question 3 for discussion: They say the 'end-of-history illusion' remotely underpins the war in Ukraine. How?
• 11 April Question 4 for discussion: How do you make sense of 03:20? What are the best ways to invest in one's future?  

Please click on the brownish box above to download the script 'Ten ways to have a better conversation' for 18 April

SCRIPT for 18 April of 'Ten ways to have a better conversation'

00:00 All right. I want to see a show of hands: how many of you have unfriended someone on Facebook because they said something offensive about politics or religion, childcare, food? [Laugh]

And how many of you know at least one person that you avoid because you just don't want to talk to them?

00:35 You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we just had to follow the advice of Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady":

• Stick to the weather and your health.
• But these days, with climate change and anti-vaxxing, those subjects are not safe either. [Laugh]

00:49 So this world that we live in, this world in which

• every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument,

where our politicians can't speak to one another and where even the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against it, it's not normal.

Pew Research did a study of 10,000 American adults, and they found that at this moment,

• we are more polarized, we are more divided, than we ever have been in history.

01:15 We're less likely to compromise, which means we're not listening to each other. And we make decisions about where to live, who to marry and even who our friends are going to be, based on what we already believe. Again, that means we're not listening to each other.

• A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, and somewhere along the way, we lost that balance.
• Now, part of that is due to technology.

01:38 The smartphones that you all either have in your hands or close enough that you could grab them really quickly. According to Pew Research, about a third of American teenagers send more than a hundred texts a day.

• And many of them, almost most of them, are more likely to text their friends than they are to talk to them face to face.

02:00 There's this great piece in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/world/). [Laugh]

It was written by a high school teacher named Paul Barnwell. And he gave his kids a communication project. He wanted to teach them how to speak on a specific subject without usingnotes. And he said this: [Laugh] I came to realize...I came to realize that

• conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach.

Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills. It might sound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves:

• Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation?"

02:39 (00:00) Now, I make my living talking to people: Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten teachers, heads of state, plumbers. I talk to people that I like. I talk to people that I don't like. I talk to some people that I disagree with deeply on a personal level. But I still have a great conversation with them.

So I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes or so teaching you how to talk and how to listen.

03:04 Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like

• look the person in the eye
• think of interesting topics to discuss in advance
• look, nod and smile to show that you're paying attention
• repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap.

03:27 There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are--in fact--paying attention.

Now, I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So, I'm going to teach you how to interview people, and that's actually going to help you learn how to be better conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and, please God, without offending anybody.

04:00 We've all had really great conversations. We've had them before. We know what it's like. The kind of conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or where you feel like you've made a real connection or you've been perfectly understood. There is no reason why most of your interactions can't be like that.

04:19 (00:20) So I have 10 basic rules. I'm going to walk you through all of them, but honestly, if you just choose one of them and master it, you'll already enjoy better conversations.

04:29 Number one: Don't multitask. And I don't mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car keys or whatever is in your hand.

• I mean, be present. Be in that moment.

Don't be thinking about your argument you had with your boss. Don't be thinking about what you're going to have for dinner.

• If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don't be half in it and half out of it.

04:50 (00:40) Number two: Don't pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog. [Laugh]

Now, there's a really good reason why I don't allow pundits on my show: Because they're really boring. If they're conservative, they're going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If they're liberal, they're going to hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick Cheney. Totally predictable. And you don't want to be like that. You need to enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn.

05:27 The famed therapist M. Scott Peck said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. Again, assume that you have something to learn.

Bill Nye: "Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don't." I put it this way: Everybody is an expert in something.

06:05 (00:53) Number three: Use open-ended questions. In this case, take a cue from journalists.

• Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how.

If you put in a complicated question, you're going to get a simple answer out. If I ask you, "Were you terrified?" you're going to respond to the most powerful word in that sentence, which is "terrified," and the answer is "Yes, I was" or "No, I wasn't." "Were you angry?" "Yes, I was very angry." Let them describe it. They're the ones that know.

• Try asking them things like, "What was that like?" "How did that feel?" Because then they might have to stop for a moment and think about it, and you're going to get a much more interesting response.

06:40 (01:18) Number four: Go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind and you need to let them go out of your mind. We've heard interviews often in which a guest is talking for several minutes and then the host comes back in and asks a question which seems like it comes out of nowhere, or it's already been answered.

• That means the host probably stopped listening two minutes ago because he thought of this really clever question, and he was just bound and determined to say that. And we do the exact same thing.

We're sitting there having a conversation with someone, and then we remember that time that we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop. And we stop listening. Stories and ideas are going to come to you. You need to let them come and let them go.

07:29 (01:29) Number five: If you don't know, say that you don't know. Now, people on the radio, especially on NPR, are much more aware that they're going on the record, and so they're more careful about what they claim to be an expert in and what they claim to know for sure. Do that.

• Err on the side of caution. Talk should not be cheap.

07:47 (01:35) Number six: Don't equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family member, don't start talking about the time that you lost a family member. If they're talking about the trouble they're having at work, don't tell them about how much you hate your job.

• It's not the same. It is never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more importantly, it is not about you.

You don't need to take that moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you've suffered.

Somebody asked Stephen Hawking once what his IQ was, and he said, "I have no idea. People who brag about their IQs are losers."[Laugh]

• Conversations are not a promotional opportunity. [Laugh]

08:32 (01:54) Number seven: Try not to repeat yourself.

• It's condescending, and it's really boring, and we tend to do it a lot.

Especially in work conversations or in conversations with our kids,

• we have a point to make, so we just keep rephrasing it over and over. Don't do that.

08:55 (02:00) Number eight: Stay out of the weeds. Frankly, people don't care about the years, the names, the dates, all those details that you're struggling to come up with in your mind. They don't care.

• What they care about is you. They care about what you're like, what you have in common. So forget the details. Leave them out.

09:14 (02:15) Number nine: [This is not the last one, but it is the most important one] Listen. I cannot tell you how many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most, the number one most important skill that you could develop. Buddha said, and I'm paraphrasing, "If your mouth is open, you're not learning." And Calvin Coolidge said, "No man ever listened his way out of a job."

• Why do we not listen to each other? Number one, we'd rather talk. When I'm talking, I'm in control. I don't have to hear anything I'm not interested in. I'm the center of attention. I can bolster my own identity.
• But there's another reason: We get distracted. The average person talks at about 225 words per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. So our minds are filling in those other 275 words. And look, I know, it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation. You're just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place. You have to listen to one another.
• Stephen Covey said it very beautifully. He said, "Most of us don't listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply."

10:33 (02:40) One more rule, number 10, and it's this one: Be brief.

• A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject. - My Sister

All of this boils down to the same basic concept, and it is this one: Be interested in other people. You know, I grew up with a very famous grandfather, and there was kind of a ritual in my home. People would come over to talk to my grandparents, and after they would leave, my mother would come over to us, and she'd say, "Do you know who that was? She was the runner-up to Miss America. He was the mayor of Sacramento. She won a Pulitzer Prize. He's a Russian ballet dancer." And I kind of grew up assuming everyone has some hidden, amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it's what makes me a better host.'

11:19 (02:50)

• I keep my mouth shut as often as I possibly can,
• I keep my mind open, and I'm always prepared to be amazed, and I'm never disappointed.

You do the same thing. Go out, talk to people, listen to people, and,

• most importantly, be prepared to be amazed.

Thanks.

Please click on the brownish box above to download the script The 'end-of-history' illusion for 11 April

SCRIPT for 11 April of 'The 'end-of-history' illusion'

00:00

When trains began to shuttle people across the countryside rongidega hakati edasi-tagasi sõitma, many insisted kinnitasid they would never replace horses. Less than a century later, people repeated that same prediction about cars, telephones, radio, television, and computers. Each had their own host of detractors (uue tehnika) halvustajaid, "maha tegijaid" jätkus alati. Even some experts insisted kinnitasid they wouldn't catch on neid ei võeta laiemalt kasutusele.

00:29

Of course, we can't predict exactly what the future will look like or what new inventions will populate it mida uut tulevikus leiutatakse.

• But time and time again ikka ja jälle, we've also failed to predict that the technologies of the present will change the future.

And recent research has revealed teadus on hiljaaegu avastanud a similar pattern in our individual lives: we're unable to predict change in ourselves meis endis toimuvaid muutusi. Three psychologists documented our inability to predict personal change in a 2013 paper called, "The End of History Illusion." "Purunenud illusioon: (Aja)lugu pole tegelikult lõppenud"

Named after political scientist Francis Fukuyama's prediction that liberal democracy was the final form of government, or as he called it, "the end of history," "ajaloo lõpp" their work highlights 2013. a. artikli autorid näitavad the way we see ourselves as finished products at any given moment kuidas me arvame alati, et ega me enam ei muutu at any given moment.

01:16

The researchers recruited eksperimenti kaasati over 7,000 participants ages 18 to 68.

• They asked half of these participants to report paluti kirjeldada their current personality traits, values, and preferences, along with what each of those metrics mõõdikuid had been ten years before.
• The other half described those features külgi, aspekte in their present selves nagu neil momendil/praegu on, and predicted what they would be ten years in the future kümne aasta pärast. Based on these answers, the researchers then calculated the degree of change each participant reported or predicted.

01:48

For every age group in the sample valim, they compared the predicted changes to the reported changes võrdlesid uurimuses seda, kuidas inimesed ennustasid enda muutumist (järgneva 10 a. jooksul) ja seda, kuidas teised (neist 10 a. vanemad) inimesed tagantjärele kirjeldasid, kuidas nad eelneva 10 aastaga muutunud olid. So they compared the degree to which 18-year-olds thought they would change to the degree to which võrdlesid toimunud muutusi sellega, kuidas 28-year-olds reported they had changed 28aastased olid enda kirjelduste kohaselt, st tegelikult muutunud. Overwhelmingly ülekaalukalt, at all ages kõigis vanuserühmades, people's future estimates of change hinnangud muutuste kohta came up short ei osutunud täpseteks (alahinnati muutusite suurust) compared to the changes their older counterparts katses osalenud (vastavalt neist 10 a.) vanemad inimesed recalled tagantjärele meenutasid.

• 20-year-olds expected to still like the same foods at 30, but 30-year-olds no longer had the same tastes.
• 30-year-olds predicted they'd still have the same best friend at 40, but 40-year-olds had lost touch with theirs.
• And 40-year-olds predicted they'd maintain the same core values 10 a. hiljem on neil ikka samad väärtushinnangud that 50-year-olds had reconsidered mis 50aastased katsealused end 10 a. taguse ajaga võrreldes leidsid, et olid selle aja jooksul enda jaoks ümber hinnanud.

While kuigi older people changed less than younger people on the whole kokku võttes, üldistades, they underestimated their capacity võime for change just as much samavõrra. Wherever we are in life mistahes eluhetkel, the end of history illusion persists meil on ikka seesama väär ettekujutus, et "enam me ei muutu": we tend to kipume think that the bulk of lõviosa our personal change is behind us muutumistest (meie elus) on juba seljataga/toimunud.

02:52 One consequence of this thinking is that we're inclined to me kipume/kaldume overinvest in future choices based on present preferences. On average, people are willing to hea meelega, meeleldi pay about 60% more to see their current favorite musician ten years in the future 10 aasta pärast than they'd currently pay to see their favorite musician from ten years ago 10 aasta tagune lemmikartist. While the stakes involved in concert-going are low Kui kontserdikülastus pole üldjuhul väga suure kaaluga sündmus elus, we're susceptible to similar miscalculations siis samalaadseid valearvestusi kipume me tegema in more serious commitments ka olulisemate ettevõtmiste puhul, like homes kodu (valik), partners, and jobs.

03:20 At the same time,

• there's no real way to predict what our preferences will be in the future.
• Without the end of history Illusion, it would be difficult to make any long-term plans.

03:33

So the end of history illusion applies to kehtib our individual lives, but what about the wider world?

• Could we be assuming kas me äkki eeldame that how things are now is how they will continue to be?

If so, fortunately, there are countless records loendamatu hulk juhtumeid to remind us that mis peaksid meile meelde tuletama, et

• the world does change ikka muutub (tõepoolest), sometimes for the better.

Our own historical moment isn't the end of history millised iganes me ka praegusel ajahetkel pole, täpselt samasugusteks me ei jää (aja kulgedes), and that can be just as much a source of comfort as a cause for concern ja see võib niisama hästi lohutav olla kui ka muretsema panna.