The advantages of using TED talks materials in ESL classrooms

Abstract

This article presents TED Talks materials to teach English in secondary and higher educational institutions. The authors describe such advantages of TED Talks materials as their authenticity, availability, variety, utility, user-friendly usability of the website with the materials, and the existence of scripts for each video. The authors prove that TED Talks materials are effective for developing students’ speaking skills and extending their vocabulary by describing the experience of conducting English classes using TED Talks materials during the professional-pedagogical practice, the results of which are also given in this article. After 34 English lessons with the use of TED Talks materials within the framework of the elective course «English for Academic Purposes» for 8-11 grade pupils,the participants of the classes demonstrated better public speaking skills and could speak on different topics for more than 10 minutes without any visual aids.