TED-Ed Lesson:

I made a TED-Ed lesson based on Melissa Marshall’s Talk Nerdy to Me talk. Marshall briefly discusses some of the difficulties people have understanding scientific and technical content, and offers a few tips to better communicate these ideas. The need for clear and simple communication is certainly not limited to scientific or technical fields. The ideas from this talk are fairly universal concepts for more effective communication.

Many language learners are excited to use new, challenging vocabulary as often as possible. Though this can be great practice, it also leads to misunderstandings. Communicating in clear and common language may seem less impressive at times, but is much more practical in most situations. The primary objective of this lesson is to have students understand the difficulties of using jargon. Students learn what jargon is, why it is beneficial to communicate in clear, simple terms, and then practice re-wording a term that may cause a misunderstanding. Students could be evaluated by their discussion reply or by rewriting a few jargon-rich sentences in clearer terms.