Week 3 Listening Task

1. TED TALK LISTENING
QUESTIONS

2. INSTRUCTIONS
On iLearn you should be able to see an audio file and a video.
1. Listen to the audio only and answer the questions.
2. Watch the Ted Talks video without the subtitles and see if you can
hear the sentences you practiced.

3. BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE
LISTENING TASK
Who is Adong Judith?
Adong Judith is a writer-director who is passionate about telling the
stories of social issues (for example, human rights).
What is the ‘Northern Ugandan war against Joseph Kony’s rebel
group’?
Joseph Kony’s rebel group (known as the Lord’s Resistance Army)
formed in 1987, terrorised Northern Uganda for two decades. This
led the government to move the people out of their villages into
camps for safety. Unfortunately, the camps were in poor conditions,
resulting in disease and violence. Furthermore, there were many
abductions of children to be raised as soldiers, and mass murder of
civilians.

4. VOCABULARY
Read the following vocabulary, understand its meaning and try to
pronounce the vocabulary:
Numbs, taboo, perpetrators, inappropriate, recipe, transitional,
amplifying, bridge, extreme, middle ground.

5. QUESTIONS
The following sentences are in the listening. Try to hear the
vocabulary you learnt and fill in the gaps.
1. When I write and direct plays, I'm __________ voices of
disadvantaged groups, I'm fighting the self-censorship…
2. And most importantly, I am breaking the silence and provoking
meaningful conversations on ___________ issues…
3. …often one-sided nature that blinds us to alternative view, that
___________ our empathy…
4. So, what you have is two ___________ that shut out all possible
avenues of conversations

6. 5. …move disagreeing parties to the conversation table to ___________
misunderstandings.
6. …I brought together victims, political leaders, religious
leaders, cultural leaders, the Amnesty Commission and ___________
justice leadership…
7. … when the Commission ignored them and instead facilitated the
resettlement of the war ___________.
8. He told me that he didn't want me to leave feeling
disappointed, due to some of what I considered ___________ laughter.
9. You will discover a more powerfully uniting truth in the _____ _____.
10. Therefore, share your ___________ truth

7. ANSWERS
1. amplifying
2. taboo
3. numbs
4. extremes
5. bridge
6. transitional
7. perpetrators
8. inappropriate
9. middle ground
10. recipe

8. GUESS THE
EXPRESSION
“Silence is Golden” is the rule of thumb
What do you think this means? You will share
your guess tomorrow. I trust that you won’t
use your dictionary or Google. 

9. DISCUSSION
Do you think films, plays or books are a better way to understand
social issues when dealing with conflict and misunderstanding? Why?
For example, people may criticise about people being obese is
generally because they brought it on themselves. However, we
actually don’t know how they came to be like that. We perhaps tend
to say “it’s because they are lazy or because they have lazy parents”.
Sometimes, it’s better to see reasoning by actors because we may
watch it in a different perspective.