TED Talks Research Articles

Enhancing EFL learners’ engagement in situational language skills through clustered digital materials

The tertiary education environment requires students learning English to acquire and develop oral and speaking competencies since they are expected to use communication skills in diverse contexts that serve various purposes. This study investigates the efficacy of clustered digital materials, including TED Talks, digital posters, short films, and newspaper cartoons, in enhancing the English-speaking proficiency of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in an Omani higher learning institution. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study analyzes data from 37 undergraduate EFL students in digital material-aided situational English classes using statistical tests and qualitative descriptions. Data were collected from participants’ questionnaire responses, semi-structured interviews, and teacher notes. The study reveals that participants preferred incorporating digital materials that required high metacognitive skills and enhanced critical thinking as confirmed by a paired-sample t-test (p < 0.05). Results also demonstrate that participants rated posters as the most desirable digital material, improving speaking and motivating interaction. The findings of the study have important implications for teachers to adopt unconventional pedagogic strategies for coaching, scaffolding, and supporting students while implementing digital materials in conversation classes. This result implies that clustering digital materials in planning pedagogic situational English activities provides language learners with diverse opportunities to collaboratively practice speaking and improve oral and communication competencies.

AI-Enhanced Qualitative Research: Insights from Adele Clarke’s Situational Analysis of TED Talks

This study explores the integration of ChatGPT-4 into the qualitative research process, focusing on the methodology of Situational Analysis by Adele Clarke and analysing TED Talks transcripts. Findings show ChatGPT's ability to process data quickly in initial coding, formulating broader categories reflecting Clarke's complexity of “situation,” recognising human and non-human elements, discourses, debates, and issues, temporal and spatial. In analysing data for different map types (situational, social worlds and arenas, positional), ChatGPT-4 “understands” their different analytical purposes, recognising different levels of abstraction and theoretical structuring. The research highlighted the challenges for generative AI in translating complex theoretical frameworks into situational maps and visual representations and underlined the importance of effective prompting strategies. Also, the study identified several roles for generative AI in qualitative research, including co-analyst, consultant and trainer, highlighting the central role of human researchers in decision making and interpretation.

Using TED talks to improve engineering students’ oral skills

This paper deals with the training of undergraduate engineering students and is interdisciplinary in nature. It brings together three distinct aspects of scientific dissemination: the content of an engineering degree; the oral transmission of this content following the effective TED talks model; and the use English as a medium of scientific transmission. The paper highlights the need for trainee Spanish engineers to be able to communicate their work to the public through oral presentations that are brief and entertaining, yet scientifically rigorous. The core of the study consists of an analysis of a particular TED talk that is relevant for a variety of engineering degrees. We conclude that while it is necessary for Spanish engineers to receive specific training at a professional level in oral communication skills, there is a close relationship between the mode of transmission and the subject specific content to be transmitted that needs to be considered carefully. Developing a mastery of English is important, but essential communication skills are the most crucial aspect, regardless of the language of communication.

Intonation cues to English public discourse perception

The study considers the discourse functions of intonation and identifies a few problems and contradictions in the current theories of intonation functioning. Particular attention is paid to such issues as the multiple functions of nuclear tones, pitch declination in utterances and perceptual identification of spoken paragraphs. An attempt has been made to handle these problems in the context of English public speeches delivered in the format of TED talks. The purpose of the auditory analysis of discourse intonation in these talks is to check the perceptual reliability of intonation cues in processing spoken discourse and the possibility of using intonation as an on-line perception strategy. The methods applied in the research are descriptive, auditory and comparative, supported by a certain amount of quantitative data. The results obtained in the auditory analysis show that intonation cues work most effectively at the level of intonation groups and utterances but are not self-sufficient in paragraph identification. The leading function of nuclear tones in public discourse organization turns out to be the information structuring of utterances, which is occasionally interrupted by the attitudinal function. Pitch declination has been found to be one of the most important cues to the integrity and cohesion of utterances, with an average length of three-four intonation groups. Multiple declinations in spoken utterances are infrequent and are triggered by particular types of syntactic relations in elongated sentences. The study contributes to the linguistic description of discourse intonation, and its results can be beneficial for language teaching practice and automated speech synthesis.

Students’ Perception on The Use of TED Talks to Improve Listening Skills

Enhancing listening skills is crucial for junior high school students learning English. Innovative teaching tools such as TED Talks offer an interactive platform that might aid this educational goal. This research aims to evaluate the effect of TED Talks on developing listening skills among junior high school learners. The study employed a mixed-methods design involving 34 junior high school students. Participants underwent pre-and post-test assessments to measure their listening skills. Additionally, interviews were conducted to delve deeper into the students' experiences and perspectives regarding using TED Talks in their learning process. The findings revealed that TED Talks significantly enhanced students' English listening skills. After engaging with TED Talks videos, students showed notable improvements in vocabulary acquisition, pronunciation accuracy, and listening comprehension. The high-quality audio and diverse content of TED Talks were credited for these improvements. Furthermore, interviews provided insights into the positive impact of TED Talks on student motivation and engagement, with students expressing increased satisfaction and perceived efficacy in the classroom. TED Talks also contributed to the acquisition of advanced vocabulary and sharpened students' critical thinking skills through exposure to various topics.

USING TED TALKS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

The results of a quantitative investigation on how incorporating TED Talks media into language training affects students' speaking abilities are presented in this article. The purpose of the study was to evaluate how well students' verbal expression and communication skills may be improved by using TED Talks videos as a resource. After incorporating TED Talks, students' speaking abilities significantly improved, according to an examination of pre- and post-test results. The integration of genuine and captivating information from TED Talks introduced students to a diverse range of subjects, accomplished presenters, and everyday language usage, resulting in improved pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency. These findings highlight the TED Talks' potential as a useful educational resource for enhancing students' speaking abilities during language training. It is highly recommended that language instructors use TED Talks into their instructional strategies to establish engaging and interactive learning environments that promote language proficiency and proficient communication. The study adds to the body of knowledge already available on the use of multimedia materials in language instruction and provides teachers looking for creative ways to improve their students' speaking skills with useful advice.

Corpus Analysis: Global Leaders’ Speech

The importance of communication strategies for global CEOs has been recognized. It is believed that their effective messaging to stakeholders and society not only inspires employees but also impacts stock prices and business performance. However, previous research has primarily focused on qualitative studies, such as case studies and interviews. There have been few studies that collected large amounts of speech data from business leaders and analyzed it using reliable methods. This study employs corpus data analysis to examine the issues by analyzing a large amount of linguistic data from speeches of global business executives at the Oxford Union and TED Talks. Using the concordance software AntConc, a keyword analysis was conducted against representative large-scale English corpora to extract keywords frequently used by the global business leaders (p< 0.05). Similarly, a cluster analysis was performed on these characteristic words to investigate specifically how the communication strategies are constructed, how the audience is guided, and how persuasion is achieved. The results indicated that global business leaders effectively use significant communication strategies to achieve their goals.

A TED Talk style patient video education intervention to improve care coordination for rural patients with early-stage cancer: A feasibility study.

236 Background: Effective care coordination is a key component of high-quality, patient-centered cancer care. However, cancer patients residing in rural areas often experience substantial barriers to care and suboptimal care coordination. To date, there is a paucity of interventions to improve care coordination for rural cancer patients. In this pilot trial, we assessed the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a remote, tablet-based patient video education intervention focused on cancer care coordination among rural patients in Hawaii. Methods: We conducted a single-arm pilot study to assess the preliminary effects of a novel, TED-talk style patient video education intervention presented by clinicians and a patient advocate. Video content focused on cancer basics, care coordination, and self-advocacy. Eligible participants were newly diagnosed with early-stage cancer (I-III), within one month of starting adjuvant chemotherapy, able to speak/read English, and residing in rural areas (defined as RUCA ≥ 4). We assessed the feasibility and patient-reports of acceptability and satisfaction using semi-structured interviews. Validated instruments were administered at baseline and post-intervention and used to assess the preliminary effects of the intervention on patients’ perceptions of care coordination (CCI; Care Coordination Instrument) and self-advocacy (adapted Cancer Self-Advocacy Scale; Hagan et al. 2018). Descriptive statistics were used to assess study outcomes. Results: From 01/2022 to 12/2022, 19 patients enrolled on the study (21 approached); 74% were female, 42.1% identified as two or more races, 26.3% Asian, and 21.1% White. Mean age was 52.2. The majority of participants were receiving treatment for breast cancer. Five patients became ineligible after enrolling on the study (disease progression, relocation). 71.4% of eligible patients completed all assessments. No changes were observed in the overall perceptions of care coordination. Improved scores were observed for the CCI communication domain (+4.5; Cohen’s d = -0.76, 95% CI: -1.45, -0.03). For self-advocacy, there was an overall trend for improved scores for the informed decision making and connected strengths subscales. All participants reported high satisfaction with the intervention. Conclusions: Results support the preliminary feasibility, satisfaction, and acceptability of this intervention for rural patients. Although the effects on the overall perceptions of care coordination are unclear, preliminary data suggest that the intervention may improve communication aspects of care coordination and self-advocacy. Further study is needed to evaluate the intervention in other rural areas. Funding support: The HOPE Foundation for Cancer Research/SWOG. Clinical trial information: NCT05162404 .

Initiating language engagement with multimodal learning tasks

Engaging students in meaningful learning is currently a significant challenge for many teachers and those who observe daily how students’ attention spans are affected by a variety of distractions in the classroom. In fact, engagement has become one of the most fashionable research topics in educational psychology. The present study explores the engagement among five engineering undergraduates for one semester while working on L2 tasks, which entailed the multimodal analysis of 8 technology-related TED Talks and was purposefully designed to initiate them into multimodal literacy and foster their language learning. A narrative qualitative analysis of an open-ended questionnaire that the students completed at the end of the semester shows that the students were working on the task and engaged in the process. All five students acknowledged that they found L2 task completion meaningful because it could lead to positive academic outcomes and help them see the relevance of L2 in the real world. The multimodal L2 task presented in this study may offer a pedagogical scenario that can be replicated by other L2 lecturers across different contexts and communities to develop students’ multimodal competence while initiating their language engagement.

TED Talks and the Textbook: An In-Depth Lexical Analysis

The development of TED Talks textbooks has been a welcoming addition to English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogy. The textbooks offer educators and learners a suitable framework for practicing all four of the language skills (i.e., listening, reading, speaking, and writing). However, the use of TED Talk resources could create specific vocabulary challenges for learners as they progress through each unit in the textbook. Research suggests that although textbook frameworks encompassing listening resources benefit learners with a familiar lesson approach, the varying vocabulary load and the presence of academic vocabulary and multiword units (MWUs) presented between the chosen resources and the textbook itself could lead to comprehension difficulties for learners. This study investigates the vocabulary of 12 TED Talks included in the commercial textbook Keynote 2 to understand the lexical profile, vocabulary load, and the academic and multiword unit coverage for each of the chosen listening texts. The results showed that the TED Talks selections and the textbook provided inadequate vocabulary practice, limited academic vocabulary exposure, and a lack of item repetition for learners. The study suggests the inclusion of ideal supplementary materials and appropriate TED Talk selections to help provide educators with suitable guidance to support their learners’ varying vocabulary knowledge.

Using TED Talks to Improve Motivation of Learning English Language Skills among Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities

This study aimed to use TED Talks, which are abundant with real-life examples of English language use, that might improve the public speaking skills of elementary-level Jordanian EFL students with learning disabilities. The study also aimed at identifying the attitudes of the students with learning disabilities toward using TED Talks to increase motivation to learn English. This research used a quasi-experimental approach. The present study included 68 female EFL tenth graders from the Irbid Schools for Girls, a public institution under the Irbid Directorate of Education. The researcher created an educational program based on the TED talks. The pre-post-test was used to measure the students’ progress and a questionnaire was used to measure their attitudes to this strategy. The program seems to have created good levels of interaction among the students and boosted their appetite to participate and engage with the visual and audio materials presented in the TED Talks videos. The students showed positive attitudes toward using the TED Talks program to raise their motivation to learn English language.

Predicting the Views of TED Talks using Machine Learning Model

A forecast of such accuracy would have significant implications in this respect for content creators, marketers, and researchers alike. The paper questions whether machine learning models can predict the views that any certain TED Talks receive with a dataset containing features on the duration of the talks, characteristics of the speaker, the date of publication, metrics indicating audience engagement, and so on. In this work, we employ techniques of multiple regression, decision trees, and ensemble methods to identify empirically which factors have the most influence and to come up with the best models for the prediction. Indeed, the results obtained easily indicate that the ensemble models-especially Random Forest and Gradient Boosting- perform way above the rest. These features help to emphasize the fact that machine learning will help guide a content strategy to better reach audiences and give insight into a deeper understanding of how digital content is consumed. Keywords: TED Talks, machine learning, predictive modeling, view prediction, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, digital content analysis, audience engagement.

Effects of TED Talks on Students' Foreign Language Learning Emotions

This study explores the effects of TED talks on students' foreign language learning emotions. It aims to investigate how TED talks influence emotions experienced during foreign language learning and how these emotions affect language learning outcomes. The study consists of two experiments, utilizing different methods and designs. Experiment One focuses on examining the effects of TED talks on the emotional experiences of language learners, while Experiment Two investigates the relationship between these emotions and language learning outcomes. The findings from both experiments contribute to a better understanding of the role of TED talks in foreign language learning and shed light on the potential benefits of incorporating TED talks into language teaching.

Neurodiversity in the Minds of Students: From Perception to Campus Programming.

Neurodiversity is a social justice movement at the nexus of neuroscience, academia, and public policy. A contemporary view of neurodiversity is one that embraces neurological differences, encompassing all "neurotypes," including more specific identifiers like autistic or dyslexic. The goal of this study was to investigate student awareness and perception of neurodiversity since they are the next generation of public policy makers. Students enrolled in Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience (N=146) were exposed to different information sources (popular, academic, TED talk, or choose/find their own) on the topic of neurodiversity. They then wrote a paper where they summarized: a) the information source used, b) their ideas to better support a neurodiverse society, and c) their opinions on aspects of neurodiversity. Several important findings emerged. First, 64% of the sample had never heard of the term neurodiversity; this class was their first exposure to it. Second, students conducting their own searches on neurodiversity had the highest level of optimism (p < 0.05) that society was ready to accept neurodiversity. Students identified even higher rates of receptivity (85%) amongst their friends. Third, student ideas to advance neurodiversity were organized into more salient categories for campuses to consider. Our findings challenge neuroscience programs to consider their role in providing "first exposure" opportunities to students in the diversity, equity, and inclusion realm, especially in areas directly related to our field. We also discuss the growing relevance of neurodiversity in research and academia and offer programming possibilities to enhance neurodiversity awareness and support on college campuses.

Constructing renewable energy sphere for efficient search

In the field of renewable energy (RE), traditional methods for understanding, development, and education have heavily relied on 2D table formats for data retrieval and presentation. However, these formats suffer from inefficiency and an inability to fully capture the relationships between variables. In response to this challenge, Li et al. (2022) demonstrated that their therapeutic 3D sphere system significantly outperformed the therapeutic 2D table in query processing time. Furthermore, Shih et al. (2020) utilized a T-test to underscore the superiority of the TED Talks sphere over the TED Talks 2D table format website in terms of convenience, query processing efficiency, usefulness, and intuitiveness. Building upon this foundation, this study referenced and enhanced the work of Li et al. by introducing a three-dimensional spherical visualization model driven by cluster-based binary integer programming (BIP). This novel approach resulted in a 58% reduction in information retrieval time and achieved an impressive 86.4% user satisfaction rating. It is worth noting that compared to the previous Systematic Review and Synthesis (SRS), user satisfaction experienced a significant 19% improvement. This improvement enhances the search efficiency for RE information, thereby fostering public awareness and development of RE. Taking energy supply-demand balance sheets as an example, this study demonstrates that the spherical retrieval system (SRS) constructed by the visualization 3D spherical model resolves the issue of inefficient retrieval in 2D table formats, and the newly added functionality of highlighting objects on the spherical surface intuitively illustrates the one-to-many relationships between individual RE supply and demand. To optimize hardware and software performance, data mining techniques are employed to cluster supply data, reducing complexity, and improving optimization efficiency. The experiment is that testers search for the same targets and compared the proposed 3D SRS with the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) 2D website in terms of retrieval speed and accuracy. The statistical results of the T-test indicate that the proposed 3D SRS is more effective and accurate than the Taipower 2D website. The research findings indicate: 1. The new 3D SRS reduces query time by 58%. 2. Adopting the k-means algorithm for clustering and batch optimization can transform from an initially infeasible solution to finding the optimal solution within 12 s. This method also reduces computer software and hardware costs, providing effective solutions for relevant applications. These technologies can be used for the education, promotion, publicity, and dissemination of RE.

"These Lyrics but it's the opening of a Ted Talk" - A Public Speaking Activity Inspired by TikTok

"These Lyrics but it's the opening of a Ted Talk" - A Public Speaking Activity Inspired by TikTok

In memory of our mentor: Frans de Waal (1948-2024).

The world lost a towering figure when primatologist Frans de Waal passed away on March 14,2024. Many are aware of his multitude of contributions to the field. His ability to see what animals were actually doing changed how we viewed first primates, then other species. He shared these insights through both traditional scientific outputs, such as journal articlesand scientific presentations, and less common outputs, such as 15 books and two TED talks viewed millions of times. What may be less well known is his impact as a mentor. Here, 25of us who were Frans' graduate students, postdocs, and long-term research assistants share his personal impact on our lives.

The impact of TED Talk videos on students’ presentation performance

The impact of TED Talk videos on students’ presentation performance

A Study of Nonverbal Persuasion in TED Talks

This study investigates the realm of nonverbal communication and its persuasive impact in the context of TED talks. Nonverbal communication plays a significant role in effectively conveying persuasive messages, especially in TED talks, which are considered a useful database for the study. Surprisingly, little researches and studies have investigated the role of nonverbal behavior in persuading and influencing others. The study aims to find the most common body movements in TED talks, analyze the common movements kinetically to have a better understanding of these movements, and investigate the nonverbal persuasiveness of the selected movements. The study adopts a model consisting of Birdwhistell's (1952) kinesic analysis model and Andre et al.'s (2011) nonverbal persuasion analysis model. Final results reveal that (1) hand movement is the most common type among other types of movements, (2) the persuasiveness of nonverbal communication is achieved by basing on the following persuasive body behaviors: importance, emotion, certainty, the sender’s competence, evaluation, and the sender’s benevolence, (3) body language, such as hand gestures, head nods, and facial expressions, can be broken down into smaller parts, these smaller parts, known as the kinemorph, kineme, and kine, make the body movements understandable.

Context-Aware Machine Translation with Source Coreference Explanation

Abstract Despite significant improvements in enhancing the quality of translation, context-aware machine translation (MT) models underperform in many cases. One of the main reasons is that they fail to utilize the correct features from context when the context is too long or their models are overly complex. This can lead to the explain-away effect, wherein the models only consider features easier to explain predictions, resulting in inaccurate translations. To address this issue, we propose a model that explains the decisions made for translation by predicting coreference features in the input. We construct a model for input coreference by exploiting contextual features from both the input and translation output representations on top of an existing MT model. We evaluate and analyze our method in the WMT document-level translation task of English-German dataset, the English-Russian dataset, and the multilingual TED talk dataset, demonstrating an improvement of over 1.0 BLEU score when compared with other context-aware models.