TED Video Exercise – Jay Walker: The world’s English mania

This video is a great introduction to critical thinking in an International Business course.  The topic is provocative and allows you to introduce the issue of questioning assumptions and also finding credible sources.

Assignment:

First, without looking it up, I would like you to ask yourself if you can:

  1. List the 5 (five) languages spoken by the most people in the world.
  2. What languages do you now think is spoken by the most people in the world?  Second most?  How about 3rd thru 5th most?

Then I would like for you to write these down – on a paper, in your notepad, in Evernote – wherever most convenient to you.

Second, still without looking up the answer, I would like you to watch the video below.  After the video I have a few more questions. Here is the video you need to watch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html

I hope you found the video interesting.

  1. Now I would like you to look up the answer using any reference tool; an encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Google search, Bing search, anything convenient to you…
  2. Here is the last question?  How reliable do you think your reference source is?  Are there more reliable sources?  Any suggestions on where I could find a reliable source for the answer to the question “What language is spoken by the most people in the world on August 27, 2013?

This is it for this exercise.  Thank you for going along on this ride with me…

Comments Off on TED Video Exercise – Jay Walker: The world’s English mania

Filed under Resources

Comments are closed.