Eavesdropping on plants by Professor Jack Schultz

Fortunately I found a ted talk speech by Prof Jack Schultz one of the inventors of “talking trees” theory which I have introduced to you in my microteaching session. Here you can watch his ted talk where he described different stresses related to a plant’s life. He started his talk with describing these stresses from plant’s point of view and continued to the strategies taken by plants against these stressors. After a brief description of materials and methods of his research, he named some applications of his work in the future. In conclusion, starting with a transition phrase of “take home messages” he reviewed whole lecture and emphasized the necessity of changing audience’s mindset about the silence of the plants.

The 3D animations and the proper pictures helped lecturer to give the audience, a sense of the application of his study in the real life. In some photos, he used humor to make the atmosphere funny.

During his lecture, Jack Schultz played with his hands and moved in the room to share more eye contact with listeners. Although you can’t feel lots of enthusiasm in the speech, but his movement and eye contact was enough to connect him with the audience.

Professor Schultz divided his long sentences to thought groups pretty well. For example you can see that from 6:01’ to 6:11’:”When plants are attacked/ by insects/, they hurled/ a bouquet /of molecules into the air/. I ‘m picturing here/ many of molecules/ that emerge from a corn plant/, when it’s being attacked/ by an insect.”

Intonation of speaker changed during the talk to emphasize keywords. For example at 0:20 you can hear this pattern …”actually a plant’s life is pretty stressful”. (Stress on plant and stress and more on stress). An example of Wh- question intonation could be seen at 9:15 when he says: How does it find the Caterpillar? (Stress on Cater- and falling intonation for rest of that)

As wrap up I would like to say that Prof. Schultz did a great job to give talk about a complicated concept in a simple, clear way. His proper pace and smooth transition with lots of suitable pictures and real daily life examples helped the audience to bond with his research of interest.

Eavesdropping on plants

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