 My friends, we all have different reasons to improve our English. A working professional might want to improve his English so that he can give a praiseworthy presentation. A student might want to enhance his vocabulary so that he can pass an exam like SAT or IELTS. Irrespective of where we all are in our lives, we all want to enhance our English, from fluent in English communication so that we can communicate effectively and face the world confidently. And we all are looking for various ways in our day to day life so that we can improve English on a day to day basis. So this video is exactly for people like you who are looking for a simple way through which they can improve their English on an ongoing basis. But in this video I am going to talk about a very simple tool that will not only expand your vocabulary but will also help you know the grammatical errors you are making in your day to day life and the pronunciation of different words that we generally mispronounce. So all of this would happen just by using a simple tool and that tool is TED Talks. In this particular video I am going to address this simple tool in three steps. In the first step I am going to tell you what TED Talks actually are. In the second step I am going to talk about why you should be using TED Talks, what are the benefits of using TED Talks and finally I am going to take you through a process in which you can use TED Talks and expand your vocabulary by putting less than 30 minutes every day. So are you ready? Let's get on the board. TED Talks according to me needs no introduction. TED is a non-profit organization that started in 1984 with an intention to spread ideas across globe and I am very sure that all of you who are watching this video would have stumbled upon one or the other TED Talk while going through their YouTube. You would have watched at least one TED Talk. So this icon of TED would not be something which is very unfamiliar to you, right? So TED is basically a word that stands for technology, education and design. So you can actually connect the three dots and see that TED Talks are basically on these three issues. So there are different people who are invited by TED organization every year in their conference. They come on stage and they talk about either their life story or some accomplishment that they achieve or something related to technology, education and design. Now that you know what this organization TED is doing, you would be wondering that why is Arpita talking about TED Talks as a way to improve English, improve fluency. There are so many other ways. There are these YouTube channels that are available or there are so many books that you can buy. There are courses that you can attend. You can even talk to a friend. You can use the traditional way of reading the newspaper and highlighting the important words. There are so many ways to enhance your English. Why TED Talks? And what is so different about TED Talks that this would help you improve more than anything else? Let me answer this by giving you three valid reasons. The first reason, see in India we all love anything which is free, right? Be it a free toothbrush that we get with a new tube of toothpaste or be it anything else we all love free stuff and this is the beauty of TED Talks. These talks are absolutely free and available on YouTube without any charge. You can just write TED Talks and you will get the YouTube channel and there are more than 30 100 free TED Talks available. So the first thing is that it's free. You don't have to spend a single penny. The second valid reason why you should opt for TED is the fact that TED Talks are extremely interesting. See there has been a lot of research going around this issue that how do we learn and all the research synonymously say the same thing that if you're motivated, if you're interested in what you are hearing, you will automatically absorb the vocabulary, you will automatically absorb the sentence structure. But if you're finding something really boring, then you will not pay attention to those sentence structures to the key words that you come across. This is what happened with me when I tried improving my English through reading newspaper. Current affairs is something which I have never been interested all my life and while reading newspaper, you feel like it's a task, it's a daunting task. Whereas in case of TED Talk, it feels like you are just browsing and having fun on YouTube. You're not actually feeling as if you're learning something and that is the best way to learn. When learning doesn't seem like learning, it seems like play. It seems like an activity that you enjoy the most. You look up to that activity all your day, that's where TED Talks come to the play. So TED Talks are available on a variety of topics. You can pick any topic you are interested in. There are topics related to Bollywood actors. So you have speakers like Shah Rukh Khan coming and talking about his life story. Then there are TED Talks related to world leaders like Bill Gates. So you can choose the genre that you are interested in and you can go ahead and watch that TED Talk. And the third and the final reason why I would suggest you to improve your vocabulary by using TED is the limited time that you have to invest every day. See, guys, we have so much to do every single day that if I ask you to devote three hours every day to improve your English, I think none of you would be able to take it forward more than 15 days. You might do it in that intrinsic motivation for 10, 15 days. But after that, you will be back to square one. But TED Talks are very easy. Why? Because they are very short in length. So there are certain TED Talks which are hardly 10 minutes. There are talks which are about 15 to 20 minutes. But there is no TED Talk more than 20 minutes. And 20 minutes is a sufficient time to invest in improving your fluency. At the same time, it is sufficient time that you can take out from your day to day life. See, you might not be able to take out an hour's time every day. But I'm pretty sure that it is easy for each one of us to take those 20 minutes out from our day to day life. You can just watch a TED Talk while going or traveling to your college or you can watch it right before you want to sleep. Any of that slot you can pick, but just invest 20 minutes of your day and see the change in your English fluency within one month. Finally, we land on to the most important segment of this video, where I'm going to talk about how you should watch the TED Talks. We are now clear about the importance of TED Talks and why it is an effective way to not just enhance your vocabulary but to also find out the pronunciation mistakes that you're making on a day to day basis to improve on your grammar and to enhance your fluency in general. But it is also important to understand how can we achieve so many goals by just watching one TED Talk. Most of us, when I would say you to go and watch a TED Talk, I would simply play the talk on YouTube and would watch it and you're done. You think that your job is done, that's not the correct way. I'm preparing my little brother for SAT exams and it is during this preparation that I and he sat down and we tried to chart out ways we can improve on his vocabulary. For SAT, you need expansive vocabulary and that is where we were able to find out a step by step process in which he can expand his vocabulary using TED Talks and I'm going to share the same strategy with you guys. So step number one is to download and take the print out of the transcript of the TED Talk that you have decided to watch. See, I've done one sample for you. So basically this is a TED Talk that was given by Shahrukh Khan on the topic Thoughts on Humanity, Fame and Love. This is a very, very simple TED Talk, you will find it easily on YouTube. And the transcript of the same, that means whatever Shahrukh Khan has said, those lines you can download from the website of TED. So TEDx ka jo website hai vaha pe, you will find the TED Talk and just below that you will find the transcript. You just need to simply copy the transcript, paste it in a Word document and get the print out. Why this is important, I'll tell you shortly. So the first step is to download the transcript and take the print out. Second step is watch the TED Talk while keeping the transcript in hand and marking the pronunciations of words that you have been mispronouncing so far. So while you are listening to Shahrukh Khan, I'm pretty sure that there would be certain words that he would be pronouncing, which you in general would pronounce in a wrong way. For example, we all say neither. It's not neither, it's neither. So when you listen to Shahrukh Khan saying neither, you automatically understand that okay, I have been pronouncing this word as neither. So I'm wrong. So you mark the correct pronunciation right after that particular word. And if you are a Hindi speaker, I would suggest you to write down the pronunciation in Hindi. Because in Hindi, the sounds are way more clear than English. Aap agar neither likthe hai English mein, so it is difficult whether it's neither or neither. But agar aap Hindi mein na, na mein aakhi matra lagaate hain to aapko automatically pata chulata. It's na. It's not neither. E nahi hai, aahe. That is how you will understand the correct pronunciation of so many words. So that's step number two. Step three is after you've watched the TED Talk, you take the transcript with you and highlight the important phrases that are new to you or important words that are new to you. For example, there was a beautiful word that Shahrukh Khan used. That was pedil. P-E-D-D-L-E. Pedil means to sell. So he said that I love to pedil love. I pedil love to millions of people. What he meant by this phrase was that I sell love to millions of people in India by making movies that people are like, those movies which are very close to the hearts of people. Right? So you mark all these phrases and if in case you don't know the phrase or the word, you can check the meaning on internet and you can write down the meaning. That's step number three. Step four is to now make sure that you use these new words in your day-to-day communication till the time they become part of your active vocabulary. See, we all have two kinds of vocabulary. One is the active vocabulary. That means the word that we generally use in our day-to-day life. And one is a passive vocabulary. That means words which we understand, but we don't use it. For example, happy is a word that we have in our active vocabulary. Whenever I'm feeling happy, I would say I'm happy, right? But there's another word for happy. That is elated. I'm extremely elated to meet my new friend. Now this elated word might be in your passive vocabulary. You might have come across it. You know the meaning, but you don't use it. You don't substitute it when you have to express your happiness. You can go to your mom and say I am happy that you made my favorite dish today. Or you could substitute happy by saying I'm extremely elated mom that you made my favorite dish today. This is how you have to make sure that the words that you've mugged in your transcript are becoming gradually a part of your day-to-day vocabulary. And finally, after all of this is done, after every 15 or 20 days, make sure that you go back to the transcript of the previous TED talks and you revise them. Revision is the key, guys. It's not just something you would do for a competitive exam. It is also something you would do whenever you want to learn something new. Nowadays, I'm learning dancing. And when my dance teacher comes every day, she makes sure that we first recall the dance move that we learned yesterday. And that is how, that is those dance moves are getting imprinted in my brain. If I learn a move today and I don't revise it, I'm going to forget it. I'm not going to master it, right? So that's where revision comes into play. So a particular TED talk has to be approached in this manner. It might take three days for you to complete this activity with one TED talk, or it might even take five days. You have to download the script, then you have to listen to the talk, mark the pronunciation, then you have to highlight the new words, then you have to make an effort to consciously make sentences from these new words. And finally, you have to revise the TED talk. And once you're done with this TED talk, you can then move on and decide to watch the second TED talk. So this is how you are going to use TED talks to improve your English fluency, along with enhancing your vocabulary and checking the pronunciation mistakes that you're making on a day-to-day basis. So that's it for this video lecture. I hope the video will help you to improve on your fluency. We'll meet very soon in the next video lecture. For such videos, make sure you subscribe our channel because I would be putting up a lot of other videos on different topics that will help you to get over your day-to-day challenges. That's it from my side. I'll meet you very soon. Till the time we meet next, happy learning, keep loving literature, and stay tuned to arpitakarwa.com.