You are cordially invited to the 3rd Anniversary Edition of TEDxTheHague salon!
Yes, thanks to your support we've made it through a 3-year journey of connection, inspiration and discovery. That's 31 sessions, over 100 TED videos watched and — often passionately — discussed, and 1 awesome TEDxLive event. And be assured, we're not done yet!
Please join us in celebrating this milestone during our October session, which is themed Lingua Franca. English is now the official or dominant language for 2 billion people in at least 75 countries. According to the British Council, speakers of English as a second language probably outnumber those who speak it as a first language, and around 750 million people are believed to speak English as a foreign language.
While the English language knits communities together all over the world, many fear irreversible damage to their language and culture and resist its relentless penetration. We will explore these issues with three TED talks and 1 additional video:
Jay Walker on the world's English mania
Jay Walker is fascinated by intellectual property in all its forms. He explains why 2 billion people around the world are trying to learn English. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English — "the world's second language" — by the thousands.
Patricia Ryan: Don't insist on English!
Longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: Is the world's focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL? It's a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas.
Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies
Patricia Kuhl studies how we learn language as babies and shares astonishing findings about how they learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.
Clifford J. Levy: My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling
Clifford J. Levy is Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times. His three children attend an experimental school in Moscow where instruction is only in Russian and classes are videotaped to improve teaching.
RSVP if you want to attend
We hope this theme will resonate with you, awaken your curiosity and make you decide to attend TEDxTheHague. To stimulate conversation, we admit up to 20 guests. If you want to be put on our final guest list, please RSVP. First-come, first-served!
We look forward to a stimulating evening filled with spirited conversation and new discoveries.
Organizing team
