Category: TED Talk Lessons

Taliban Take over Afghanistan: Dare to Educate Afghan Women(UPDATED)

If you don’t live in a cave you know what’s happening in Afghanistan right now. If you don’t know, you can find out here.

No matter what your political preferences are, or what do you believe in, I’m sure you agree that education is important. What is happening in Afghanistan right now will have tremendous negative consequences on the education of Afghan girls. Watch the Ted Talk. Discuss it with your students. You can also help here, or here.

This Ted Talk education ESL video lesson is based on a  talk by Shabana Basij-Rasikh. She is an educator from Afghanistan, humanitarian, and women’s rights champion. She grew up under the rule of the Taliban, which banned education for women so she had to dress as a boy to attend a secret school.

This is her story.

Level: Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate

Time: 45min.(video 10min.)

Skills: speaking, listening, reading

Topic: education, human rights

Taliban Take over Afghanistan | Ted Talk Education Lesson Plan | Dare to Educate Afghan Girls | Shabana Basij-Rasikh

WARM-UP

Discuss the questions

1. Do you think education should be free? Why? Use arguments to justify your opinion. 

2. What was your parents position on your education? How do you think it has influenced your life? What is your position on your education? 

3. Can you imagine being denied higher education based on your gender or religion? How would it influence your life?

Write three reasons why education is important.

1.__________________________________________________________________

2.__________________________________________________________________

3.__________________________________________________________________

VOCABULARY

1 Read the sentences and try to work out the meaning of the underlined words/phrases.

1. I dressed as a boy to escort my older sister, who was no longer allowed to be outside alone, to a secret school.

2. A total maverick from a remote province of Afghanistan, he insisted that…

3. …had my family not been so committed to my education…

4. …the one exiled from his home for daring to educate his daughters,

5. And I see their parents and their fathers who, like my own, advocate for them despite and even in the face of daunting opposition.

6. …this is something that is often dismissed in the West…

7. …they’re often the initial and convincing negotiators of a bright future for their daughters…

8. I fear that these changes will not last much beyond the U.S. troops’ withdrawal.

2 Match the words/phrases (a-p) to their explanations(1-16).

a)escort(v.)              1)demand something forcefully, not accepting refusal.       

b)allow                     2)without being influenced or prevented by

c)maverick               3)a person who helps other people to come to agreement

d)remote                  4)difficult to deal with

e)insist                     5)accompany (someone or something) somewhere

f)commit                  6)the process or action of a military force moving out of an area

g)exile(v.)                 7)let (someone) have or do something.

h)dare                      8)of or at the beginning

i)advocate(v.)           9)able to make you believe that something is true or right

j)despite                 10)to think or say that something is not important

k)daunting              11)to send someone away from their own country, village, etc

l)dismiss                12)far away, distant

m)initial                  13)to promise or give your loyalty, time, or money to something

n)convincing          14)an unorthodox or independent-minded person

o)negotiator           15)have the courage to do something

p)withdrawal          16)publicly recommend or support

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Watch the video and answer the questions.

1. Why do you think the Taliban made it illegal for girls to go to school?

2. Why was Shabana’s grandfather special?

3. What would have happened if the Taliban had found out that Shabana and her sister were going to school?

4. How many women in Shabana’s age have made it past high school?

5. What were Shabana’s parents prepared to do in order to pay for her school fees?

6. How many girls went to school in Afganistan under the Taliban, and how many are in school now? 

7. What is SOLA?

Discuss the questions

1. What would you change about your school if you could?

2. Some people say that schools are useless for life. Do you agree?

3. What do you think are the most important life skills?

4. Do you need education if you want to be successful?

5. What are the most useful things that you learned at school?

6. What are the most useless things that you learned at school?

7. Besides school, where and how can you learn something new?

8. What talent or skill would you like to improve?

Download Ted Talk Education Lesson Plan:
Ted Talk Lesson Plan: Dare to Educate Afghan Girls SWDownload
Ted Talk Lesson Plan: Dare to Educate Afghan Girls TNDownload

Other resources:

ESL Exam Speaking Picture Description and Questions

Online ESL Video Lesson : Can Sci-fi Predict the Future?

Food and Travel ESL Lesson: Interactive Online Lesson

Improvisation Cards: ESL Speaking Activity

TEDtalk Video ESL Lesson Plan: What Makes Something Go Viral

This TedTalk ESL video lesson is based on a talk by Dao Nguyen. In this video she is talking about how media spreads online and the technology and data that publishers can use to understand why.

Level: Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate

Time: 45min (video 10min)

Skills: speaking, listening, reading

Topic: Internet, social media, technology

Download: 
Ted Talk Lesson What Makes Something Go Viral SW
Ted Talk Lesson What Makes Something Go Viral TN

Dao Nguyen: WHAT MAKES SOMETHING GO VIRAL?

STUDENTS’ WORKSHEET

WARM-UP QUESTIONS

  1. What do you mostly use the Internet for?

  2. What are your favourite websites or apps you use?

  3. What do you think about social media?

  4. Which social media do you use and what for?

  5. How do you decide if you should share something that you see online?

  6. How do you protect your privacy on the Internet?

VOCABULARY

Read the sentences and try to work out the meaning of the underlined words/phrases.

  1. Last year, some BuzzFeed employees were scheming to prank their boss, Ze Frank, on his birthday. They decided to put a family of baby goats in his office. 

  2. Ze kept on getting delayed: he went to get a drink, he was called to a meeting, the meeting ran long, he went to the bathroom

  1. But it performed so much better than we had expected. What was it about the goats in the office that we didn’t anticipate?

  2. The following week, armed with the additional knowledge that food videos are very popular, we dressed two people in hazmat suits and wrapped rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded.

  3.  It wasn’t the biggest live video that we had done to date. The biggest one that we had done involved a fountain of cheese.

  4. This is who I am. This is my upbringing, this is my culture, this is my fandom, this is my guilty pleasure, and this is how I laugh about myself.

  5. This is the group of jobs that makes me feel something — makes me curious or sad or restore my faith in humanity. 

  6. Turns out that this quiz went extremely viral among a group of 55-and-up women who were surprised and delighted that BuzzFeed determined that they were 28 and 5’9″.

 

  1. This quiz was successful not because it was accurate, but because it allowed these ladies to do a very important job — the humblebrag. 

  2. One brainstorming session involved the job of bonding. So, could we make a recipe that brought people together?

Match the words/phrases (1-14) to their explanations (a-n).

  1. to prank

  2. to delay

  3. to anticipate

  4. hazmat suit

  5. rubber band

  6. to involve

  7. upbringing

  8. to restore

  9. to turn out

  10. delighted

  11. determined

  12. humblebrag

  13. session

  14. to bond

  1. to pretend to be complaining but in reality to be proud of something

  2. to bring back

  3. the way a child is raised

  4. to expect or predict

  5. a meeting

  6. to form a close relationship

  7. to happen in a particular way

  8. to play a practical joke on someone

  9. to have a firm decision or a strong desire to do something

  10. a circle of elastic rubber

  11. to have or include as a part of something

  12. a suit that protects against hazardous materials

  13. to make someone late, not on time

  14. very pleased

TED TALK VIDEO

Watch the video and answer the questions.

  1. What animal did the BuzzFeed employees put in their boss’s office as a prank?

  2. Why was their boss (Ze Frank) delayed?

  3. Why was their Facebook Live experiment video so successful?

  4. What are some of the “jobs” that the content is doing for the reader or the viewer?

  5. Which “job” did the video about baking involve?

  6. According to the speaker, which questions are important to answer if we want to create better content?

Have a look at our communicative activities. Click on the picture below.

 

 

TED Talk ESL Video Lesson Plan: How To Grow New Brain Cells.

This TedTalk ESL video lesson is based on a  talk by Sandrine Thuret. In her talk she is asking two questions:

  1. How can we help our healthy brains create new nerve cells throughout our lives, through diet and behavior changes?
  2. How can we study the effects of diseases such as depression and Alzheimer’s on our brains’ ability to grow?

Level: Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate

Time: 45min.(video 11min.)

Skills: speaking, listening, reading

Topic: science, the human body

Download:
Ted Talk Lesson Brain Cells SW Ted Talk Lesson Brain Cells TN

Ted Talk Lesson Brain Cells SW

Sandrine Thuret: YOU CAN GROW NEW BRAIN CELLS. HERE’S HOW.

STUDENT’S WORKSHEET

WARM-UP QUESTIONS

  1. What part of your body would you like to improve?

  2. If it was possible, would you rather enhance your body or mind?

  3. How can we improve our mental and physical abilities?

VOCABULARY

Read the sentences and try to work out the meaning of the underlined words/phrases.

  1. And this is especially new and true for spatial recognition –so like, how you navigate your way in the city.

  2. And they will have been helpful to add time to our memory and they will help differentiate very similar memories.

  3. But moreover, if you just block neurogenesis, then you block the efficacy of the antidepressant.

  4. “Sandrine, this is puzzling. Some of my patients that have been told they are cured of their cancer still develop symptoms of depression.”

  5. ………………..too much sex leading to sleep deprivation.

  6. Intermittent fasting — spacing the time between your meals –will increase neurogenesis.

  7. So Japanese groups are fascinated with food textures, and they have shown that actually, soft diet impairs neurogenesis, as opposed to food that requires mastication.

  8. Calorie restriction will improve memory capacity, whereas a high-fat diet will exacerbate symptoms of depression –as opposed to omega-3 fatty acids, which increase neurogenesis, and also help to decrease the symptoms of depression.

Match the words/phrases (1-8) to their explanations.

  1. spatial recognition

  2. differentiate

  3. efficacy

  4. puzzling

  5. deprivation

  6. intermittent fasting

  7. mastication

  8. exacerbate

  1. difficult to explain or understand

  2. chewing

  3. period of eating and not eating over a defined period

  4. to show or find the difference between things that are compared

  5. the lack or denial of something considered to be a necessity

  6. make something that is bad even worse

  7. understanding where things are in relation to other things

  8. the ability to produce the desired result

TED TALK VIDEO

Watch the video and answer the questions.

  1. How do we call the phenomenon when adults grow new nerve cells?

  2. How many neurons does an average person produce per day?

  3. Why did patients who were cured of their cancer still develop symptoms of depression?

  4. Does learning increase or decrease the growth of new neurons?

  5. What type of food and drinks should we consume if we want to increase the growth of our neurons?

Click on the picture below to buy our communicative activities.

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