Listening Comprehension: My Escape From North Korea

Instructions: Listen to the TED talk and answer the questions that follow.

Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/hyeonseo_lee_my_escape_from_north_korea?language=en#t-31973

Questions

1. What did the speaker learn in school in North Korea?
2. What did the speaker see when she was seven years old?
3. What did the speaker find shocking in the letter that her mother brought home?
4. What terrible experience can the speaker not erase from memory?
5. What was the impact of the famine in North Korea in the mid- 1990s?
6. How did many North Koreans cross into China?
7. What happened to many of these Koreans as they crossed?
8. After the speaker escaped to China, how long did it take her to see her family again?
9. How did the speaker manage to satisfy her Chinese interrogators?
10. What is life like for illegal North Korean immigrants in China?

Listening Comprehension Advanced: How Schools Kill Creativity

Instructions: Listen to the TED talk and answer the questions that follow.

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en

Questions

1. When will children starting school “this year” be retiring?
2. According to the speaker, what is unpredictable?
3. The speaker mentions a child named Serena. How does she relate to the topic of his talk?
4. According to the speaker, how should we treat creativity?
5. What advantage is there of not being frightened of being wrong?
6. What did Picasso say about children?
7. According to the speaker, how do we lose our creativity?
8. What, according to the speaker, is common to all education systems on Earth?
9. What does it mean to “educate children from the waist up”?
10. According to the speaker, what is the purpose of university education?

Listening Comprehension Advanced: One More Reason To Get A Good Night's Sleep

Instructions: Listen to the talk about sleep and answer the following questions.

Video link: http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_a_good_night_s_sleep/citations#t-656964

1. How much of our life is spent sleeping?


2. Who was Galen and what did he propose?


3. What happens to the mind if we don’t sleep?


4. According to the speaker, the brain is “an elegant design solution to” what?


5. What is “especially critical” in the brain?


6. What solves the nutrient delivery problem?


7. Which solution is unique to the brain?


8. What surprising difference is there between the awake brain and the sleeping brain?


9. What is the connection between sleep and Alzheimer’s Disease?


10. What analogy does the speaker make between our houses and our brains?