An important skill for American college students is to listen to professors' lectures and to take written notes of the main ideas presented in those lectures.  The activity below asks you to listen to a short speech and to summarize the ideas presented by the speaker.  Here are some tips to help you in this activity and in the future:

• listen to the intonation (the rise and fall) of the speaker's voice to see what he is emphasizing
• think about what words he uses to introduce the most important points
• consider changes in his speed of talking -- when does he talk fast and when does he talk more slowly?
• if the speaker makes jokes, decide whether or not the jokes are important to the content of the speech
• speakers may have different accents than you are used to, especially since English is spoken in so many places around the world

Activity

Listen to the short speech presented at the link below.  Then, write a 2-3 sentence summary of it.  Because this activity is for practice, feel free to rewind the speech and listen to it more than once as you try to write your summary.  Note:  You only need to listen to Sir Christopher's actual speech.  You should ignore the first 3 minutes of introductions as well as the question-and-answer session after his speech.

November 6, 2002
HE Sir Christopher Meyer talks candidly to students on Iraq, October 03, 2002

If you have trouble using this link, try this one instead: http://www.rice.edu/projects/baker/, and look for the heading of the link above.  Also, if you have trouble with the audio, close the RealPlayer window, wait for a minute, then open it again.

To view this clip, you may need to install the RealPlayer program on the computer you're using.  For more information, click this icon  on the linked page.

To see a native speaker's summary of this speech, click here.

More Practice

To continue practicing these skills, click on the link below:

His Majesty the King of Jordan, May 9, 2002

This is another speech from the Baker Institute, and this one includes the written text of the speech, so you can check for yourself to see if you correctly identified the main ideas as you listened to it.

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