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Read the letter from a young person below. Could it have been written a century ago?
Read the letter from a young person below. Could it have been written a century ago?
No teacher has ever done me any good – this may sound harsh but I mean it quite literally. Where I am from blacks are not welcomed with open arms into schools.
About five years ago my family collected enough money to move from where I was born, so that I could have a chance at having an education and living a real life. But without a good knowledge of elementary maths I was slow to progress.
I am now in college and learning more than I ever have in my life. But a poor math background has been holding me back.
I found the Khan Academy in June of 2009. I have spent the entire summer on your You Tube page. And I just wanted to thank you for everything you are doing. You are a Godsend. Last week I tested for a maths placement exam and I am now in Honors Math 200. No question was answered incorrectly. My placement test examiner was so impressed by the breadth of my knowledge of maths that he said I should be in a class for algebra. Mr. Khan, I can say without any doubt that you have changed my life and the lives of everyone in my family.
I wish you and the Khan Academy the best of luck.
Read about the Academy.
1. If you s or p something you make things people need or want available for them.
2. If you g or c something you make it exist or happen.
3. If something is n it was established or made without a purpose to earn money. Very often it is also f which means that you don’t have to pay money to use it.
Match the definitions with the words
Listen to the introductory part of Salman Khan’s public talk in which he shows the montage of his lectures.
How can you describe the tone of his lectures (relaxed, serious, interested, boring, unemotional, inspiring, entertaining)?
Now listen to the second part of the talk and do the following quiz about Salman Khan and his Academy.
for the collection of videos on academic subjects
for the number of viewers
for the high subscription fees
half a million
a million
five hundred thousand
No. He used to work in the financial sphere.
No. He is a financial analyst at a hedge fund.
Yes. He is a maths teacher.
It was a way to tutor his cousins in maths.
His cousins asked him to help their friends.
He did that to give refreshment to his cousins who had problems in maths.
They liked the remote tutorial more than tutorials in person.
They were bored.
They preferred tutorials in-person.
Such a reaction is natural because you can stop and repeat the explanation as many times as you need.
You are not embarrassed about things you haven’t learned yet.
You feel comfortable because there are no teachers in the room.
Your learning process is not interrupted by foolish questions.
Listen to the second part again and complete the following sentences from the talk with the words from the recording.
I want to talk a little bit about really just how I got started. And some of you all might know, about five years ago I was an analyst at a hedge fund, and I was in Boston, and I was tutoring
my cousins in New Orleans, .
And as soon as I put those first YouTube videos up, something interesting happened – actually a bunch of interesting things happened. The first was the from my cousins.
If they have to something that they should have learned a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a couple of years ago, they don’t have to be embarrassed and ask their cousin. They can just watch those videos. If they’re bored, they can go ahead.
Can you explain the meaning of these words?