Ted Summary and reflection

THE LINGUISTIC GENIUS OF BABY

By :Patricia Kuhl

Summarized by : Najmiatul Fauza

Ms Patricia talked about the genius language of baby. The modern tools of neuroscience are demonstrating to us that what’s going on up there is nothing short of rocket science and what we are learning is going to shed some light on what the romantic writers and poets described as the “celestial openness”of the child’s mind.

Baby and children are geniuses until they turn seven and then there is a systematic decline . as the first critical period in development and that is the period in which babies try to master which sound are used in their language. By studying how the sound are learned, we will have a model for the rest of language and perhaps for critical period in childhood for social, emotional and cognitive development. They have been studying the babies using a technique that we are using all over the world and the sound of all languages. The result of the study is that they can discriminate all the sound of all languages no matter what country were tested and what language were used.

We are culture-based listeners, we can discriminate the sound of our own language but not those of foreign languages. The citizens of the world turn into the language bound listener is before their first birthdays. She also told about the performance on the head turn task for babies tested in Tokyo and United States; as they listened to “ra” and “la”, sounds important to English but not to Japanese. A six to eight months the babies are totally equivalent. Two months later something incredible occurs, the babies in the USA are getting a lot better while babies in Japan are getting a lot worse. That two months of testing is called as  the critical period of sound development. There are two things going on there.  The  babies are listening intently to us and taking statistics as they listen to talk. The statistic of English and Japanese are very different. English has a lot of “R s and  L s”. The distribution shows babies absorb the statistic of language and it changes their brain for the citizen of the world to the culture-bound listeners. Unlikely, adults are no longer absorbing those statistics. Bilingual must keep two sets of statistics in mind at once and flip between them.

Can the babies take statistic on a brand new language? The study of babies who had never heard a second language ( in this case Mandarin) for the first time during the critical period when the monolingual was tested in Taipei and Seattle on the Mandarin sound they showed the same pattern. Two months later something incredible happens. Taiwanese babies are getting better, not the American babies. The role of human being played in this learning exercise. The social brain is controlled when the babies are taking their statistics.  

This time is the golden age of knowledge about child’s brain development. In investigating the child’s brain, we are going to uncover deep truths about what it means to be a human and in the process we may be able to help keep our own minds open to learning for our entire lives.

ted summary and reflection

 HOW TO LEARN? FROM MISTAKE

By : Diana Laufenberg

Summarized by Najmiatul Fauza

She has been teaching for a long time, and in doing so, she has acquired a body of knowledge about kids and learning and potential of students. In 1931, her grandmother graduated from the eight grade, she went to school to get the information, because at that time school was where the information live. Information was being transferred from teacher to students and used to the world. Year by year when Ms Diana was a kid, she doesn’t have to go to school and library to get the information because the information already exist in her house.

Next, she took off from Wisconsin and moved to  Kansas , she had an opportunity to teach in rural Kansas school district and she taught American Government. In the first year kids in twelve grade not exactly all that enthusiastic about this subject. In the second year she changed the tactic and learned from themselves  . They were given the task to make an election in their community. It worked,  they learned American government by experiencing it.

After that, she moved to Arizona, where she taught in Flagstaff for a number of years with middle school students. She taught geography. The problem was how to teach seventh and eight graders to talk about genocide and dealt with the subject in a way that was responsible and respectful. Then she moved to Pennsylvania, she taught at the science leadership academy. In Philadelphia, every kids has a one –to-one laptop program, bringing it to school, taking home and getting access to it. The things needed to get comfortable with when the students are given the tool to acquire information is allowing students to fail. As a part of learning process. Telling kids to be never wrong is totally wrong thing. In this subject, they are given a task of creating an infographic  of soil pill, but they students were not comfortable with this new thing then she motivate them just  to go figure it out and they did it well. Learning has to include an amount of failure, because failure is instructional in the process. the main point is that, if we look at education as if it’s about coming to school to get information and not about experiential learning, empowering students’ voice and embracing failure we’re missing the mark and everything that everybody is talking about 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 right answer.

in my opinion, this speech is given us the experiences in teaching and learning by finding an appropriate methods to make the process effectively.

ted summary and reflection

DON’T INSIST ON ENGLISH

By : Patricia Ryan

Summarized by Najmiatul Fauza

Mrs Ryan told about language loss and the globalization of English . today, languages are dying at an unprecedented rate a language dies every 14 days and at the same time English is the undisputed global language.

She had seen a lot of changes. She had been choosing by British council to teach English in Kuwait, because the government wanted  to modernize the country and to empower the citizens through education. The major change of how teaching English had morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business as today. English is no longer just a foreign language on the school curriculum and no longer the sole domain of mother England. It had become a bandwagon for every English speaking people? And why not? After all the best education is to be found in the university of the U.K and the U.S.

Nowadays, English teachers are the gatekeepers and people have to satisfy them first that their English is good enough. Now it can be dangerous to give much power to a narrow segment of society may be the barrier would be too universal. She is not against teaching English. She loved it that we have global language and we need one today more than ever. But it is against using it as a barrier.

The giants upon whose shoulders today’s intelligentsia  stand did not have to have English, they didn’t have to pass English test. For instance, Einsten was considered remedial at school because he was dyslexic. Fortunately, that he didn’t have to past an English test because it wasn’t invented yet until 1964 as the TOEFL.

The reasons why people would focus on English because they wanted to get the best chance in life . the best job go to people out of the western universities. When students come to US from abroad we may not be giving them enough credit for what they know it in their language . when a language dies we don’t know what we lose with that language use it to spread great idea. She ended the speech by showing the sentence from Thomas Gray”full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its Sweetness on the desert air”.

Finally, her point of view about English is quite different from other people today who think about English as international language that represent hope and the language of problem solving . mind your language and let spread great idea and celebrate diversity.

Ted Summary and Reflection

WHY IS “X”THE UNKNOWN

By Terry Moore

Summarized by Najmiatul Fauza

In this speech Mr Moore will give the answer  about the popular question t that is why is “x”the unknown?

Where that X comes from? About six years ago, he decided to learn Arabic which turned 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. Arabic was one of the reasons as western science  , mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries.

The little system in Arabic called Al-Jebra or Al-Jebr in English. One example , the Arabic text containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to Europe or called Spain in the 11^th and 12^th centuries.  The problem in translating the Arabic into Spain were some sounds in Arabic that do not exist in European Languages. One of the culprits, the letter SHEEN and it made the sound “sh”. It also the very first letter of the word “SHAIAN” which means (something) or some undefined , unknown thing. Adding “Al”in front of the word “Shaian”it became the define word “Al-Shaiu” the unknown thing. The problem for the medieval Spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material was that the letter “SHEEN”and the word “shaiun” could not ne rendered into Spanish because it does not have that ”SH” sound . so, by convention they created a rule in which they borrowed the “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 replace the Greek “kai” with the latin X.  Once that happen, this material was in latin it formed the basis for mathematics textbook for almost 600 years.

Now we have the answer to our question, why is “x” the unknown ? because they can’t say “sh”in Spanish. I still little bit confused about the history why X is the unknown. However this speech give us the knowledge of the history of the unknown word X is because the Spanish could not say “SH “sound of the Arabic Language.   

Ted summary and Reflection

THREE WAYS TO LEARN ENGLISH

By Jamila Lyscott

 Summarized By : Najmiatul Fauza

Hello everyone...

I would love to post the summary and reflection from Jamila Lyiscott, her speech is very hard to be understood, because she speak very differently... I am sorry if the summary is not really understandable.

Jamila lynscout is an articulated person., which means she can speak three language based on the condition and situation.  She said that when it comes to enunciation and diction, she didn’t even think of it. Moreover, when her professor asked her a question and her answer was tainted with a connotation of urbanized suggestion there’s no miss directed intention because she was articulated. she said that who control articulation?.  The English language is a multifaceted oration subject to indefinite transformation. She also told about her experience when her professor(perhaps he was a British ) came to her block and said ”Hello” then she stopped him and said no” your being in articulate the proper way to say is what’s good”. She also told that even their language has rules. For example when her mommy said ”ya’ll be mad going to the store” then she corrected her mom about the language didn’t follow the law because the word mad never go before a present participle.  

After that, she told that she may not always speak in front of the audience with excellency of speech. She can speak three tongues one for each : home, school and friends. She is a tri- lingual orator, sometimes she is consistent and inconsistent  with her language now. She also ask the audiences to be no confusion, hesitation but this also not a promotion of the ignorance. This is a linguistic celebration.

Before she ended her speech, she told the story about her last job application she put tri-lingual person. She can help to diversify the market consumer by saying: what’s good, whatagwan and of course   hello.

After listening to ms Jamila’s speech I come to the conclusion that “articulate “ here is kind of using a proper language based on the group that you are talking to. For instance, you are talking to a British man you have to say” hello” on the contrary to the American teenager you can say” what’s up bro. Being a tri lingual person is an interesting ability, because not all people have this capability. Sometimes, for non native speakers is very hard to understand broken English because they learn formal English. So that’s all for this section....