Students must learn essential knowledge and skills to deliver an impressive English speech or presentation for academic purposes, job hunting, and business occasions. Global perspectives and inter-cultural communication skills are taught here to facilitate most Chinese English learners. 学习在学术交流、求职、海外留学与商务场景下进行英文演讲与演示所必备的知识与技能，强化中国学生的全球化视角与跨文化沟通技巧。
5.10 为演讲如何建设积极词汇量 How to Active vocabulary
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From the course by Peking University
Essentials for English Speeches and Presentations 英语演讲与演示
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From the lesson
Week5. 积极词汇建设与图表描述Active vocabulary building
背了那么多本单词书，一开口还是发现自己词不达意？记下再多的单词，没有转化成积极词汇量还是然并卵啊！本周课程不仅阐述了如何多角度建设积极词汇量，还从大量TED演讲中汲取知识和经验，以经典数据展示为例，帮助同学攻克图表描述的难关。This session deals with the bricks to build up the speech tower, the vocabulary issue. The concept of active vocabulary is advocated and recommendations were given here.
Meet the Instructors
Hongyan 宏岩 ZHANG 张Dr.
School of Software& Microelectronics北京大学软件与微电子学院
Next let's talk about when Chinese students
reach the ideal level
not the imaginarily-high level
then at that time
how large their vocabulary should be?
Let's look at this picture
which says that the requirement is like this
I use the dark color to show
the higgest level an exam requires
and the light color
to show the lower one
we can see that the lowest level
is about 4000 words
Unfortunately, many people think that
after taking CET4
their English is still insuffient
they cannot make an academic speech
they can not
attend a job interview
that is totally in English
If they want to further their study abroad
you have to attend those exams required
as if you have never learned English before
4000 words is far from enough
and it is not only about the vocabulary
there are also many other problems
As we have said before
to truly master a language
you have to be able to
listen, speak, read and write it
and reach a certain level
The number of the active vocabulary
according to my research over the past years
I believe the appropriate number should be
five thousand
we need 5000 active words
These words can
actually help you resolve
almost all the problems you meet in exams
and in daily life
In academic communication
you may need a little bit more than 5000
About the 5000 words
It contain many familiar ones
and those that need you to put your heart in to it
is surely less than 5000
We all know the word
"and", right?
So if we drop these familiar words
we only need to learn by heart
about 2000 to 3000 words
Well, you know
if we
neglect
all the English education we had before
Can we remember
2000 to 3000 words
Ok, let's set the goal in a higher level
3000 words in a short period of time?
They need you to put all your energy in them
Based on your exsiting English base
you still need
to learn 3000 new words
make it clear when are they used
how do we pronounce them
When you are about to speak them
You know their collocation
and under what circumstances they are used
When you hear them you can recoginze them
and when you want to write them down
they can instantly appear on the paper
You can always speak them out whenever you want
and use them on appropriate places
The time and energy you need to achieve this
seems to have nothing to do
with our current system
The other day, I heard a suprising story
which is very funny
and yet pretty reasonable
An English teacher who becomes
tired of the old
teaching system
so he began to
teach a bunch of students English
as in old times, in private
After three years
These students have already
reached the level of CET4
all of them
Only three years
and those juniors reached such a level
they have no trouble in passing CET4
This brings us to reconsider
what makes it become a reality
what are some influential aspects
and back to our topic today
When we are giving a presentation, a speech
we need to consider
how to do it beautifully
About this topic
What I am going to share
is my sincere
feelings and experiences
First of all, I want to say that language study
has to have a clear goal
now for us, it is
to speak well during our formal speech
our presentation
what we need to do is
to imitate and to lear from
those excellent speakers
the top speakers of the world
specifically speaking
I mean those who are not professional speakings
I don't recommend you
to learn from them
but from those who works
in different walks of life
those who comes from different countries
We cannot only watch those native speakers
that will urge you to
pursue the perfect status of language
Going on that road
is not beneficial for us
What we need is effective communication
If we leran from a German
to analyze how does he present a data
how does he make things clear
we might learn more
On the platform of TED
there are plenty of
excellent speeches like this
In the past few years
and in the future
when I am giving this MOOC
related with speeches
and presentations
I am trying to and will continue to
draw resources from TED
because TED has made it clear that it aims to
let people all over the world
who are interested in learning
gain new ideas from TED
We can not only learn ideas from TED
but also a kind of nutrition
of the language
In cooperation of listening to this course
I hope that
on the one hand
I will share something
according to my experience
but I am aware that there are many things
that can not be taught on classes
I believe that if on class
we want to finish learning 3000
and we learn at once 30 new words
or even 100 new words
then all of a sudden, our students would become old
it is not suitable to do
Those who actually have some thoughts
and who are dedicated to doing something
need to find some unique resources
that is to say
I am still planning about it
that while our courses
is playing on the Internet
this book will come out
I choose its name
as that of
our course, that is,
Essential for English Speeches
and Presentations
And in the book, I will add 1500 words
which are frequently used in speeches and presentations
which can directly
enhance your ability
Why do I make the number as 1500
You know that VOA
has tried before
to use minimum vocabulary
to tell American stories to the whole world
to tell their culture and features
and VOA created a system
that is the special English program
which is made up of only 1500 words
it aims to tell all global things in these words
Any sophisicated concept
can be explained
in simple words
The 1500 words we need to remember
is probably a little bit harder
than that of the VOA
but they have their roots
they come from
a large corpus
of English speeches
This is what I am talking about
and what we are going to do
Our work is based on data
it is not randomly decided
It is based on certain data that
we draw these vocabulary our
Let see what is
the most influential
most powerful words
Certainly, what is unique about us is that
meanwhile we are aware that
on which aspects our Chinese students need to improve on
How what we want to say
is expressed by others
in what kind of languages
this answer lies in my book
is what I need to do next
Besides, I recommend
those students
who are English majors
to do a hardwork
You need to find some time
to do this job
to distinguish
the fine shades among words
Especially those words
that you would be
using frequently
to those frequently-used words
you need to tell their differencecs
This is what I often did
back when I was in the university
when I was a freshman and sophomore
majoring in technical English
I did that pretty often
and if you now need me
to recommend you
some tool books to read
With all my observations over years
I still think that
this book is satisfactory
its unique part is that
this dictionary is actually compiled
by some Chinese English-learning experts
to distinguish one word from another
You can see that
this version is a a Chinese one
because when you read the English version
and try to understand things in English
the differences between words
those fine shades
those tiny differences are hard to be noticed
Once there were students
who chose the English-version dictionary
and when looking at the explaination
they found that
the differences between two words
those fine shades
between the two
is still not that clear
thus it became pointless to read the English one
I really think this dictionary is a good one
if you have got time, check it out by yourself
it may take a long time
but you will see that
about any concept
it will be compared with at least seven or eight
sometimes even more than ten words
their tiny differences are listed one by one
Hard work
but for ambitious
English learner
you can do this
There is one
more entertaining way
Situational comedies
We all like to watch them
Of course, in old times
Chinese students like to watch
Friends most
This TV Series
is rather beneficial
for daily communication
but as you know
many spoken language
what we use in our daily life
is unsuitable to be used
in speeches or presentations
Under these formal conditions
we need to use words as those that are presented on the court
those precise languages
we need them to debate
moreover, their customers
pay them by hour
which requires their language
to be more precise
and powerful
I recommend two situation comedies
for you to choose from
The first one
would be Boston Legal
Its Chinese name is
Up to now
it has all been finished filming
all together six seasons
It is nice to
watch an excellent TV Series
which has already had an ending
Another one
would be a little bit old, that is
The Practice
These are super good
What do we need to learn from it?
During the court debate
How they can express those concepts
that is related with all walks of life
those differences between various ideas and cultures
and many other stuff
in a precise way
This is what we need to learn
what we need to put efforts on
I believe
to many students
particularly, those interested in this course
In fact, like some of my former students
who I taught about Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation
they are my MTI students
While giving certain classes
the most difficult part for them
is by using the language similiar to the court ones
to do interpretation
This is actually
for an English major
the most challenging task
for us, the common English-learners
we don't have to do this
but we surely can learn a lot from it
What is the best part?
that is to say, nowadays
we can see
the most vivid expression in them
is when they are debating with each other
we can definitely learn a lot from that
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