full transcript

From the Ted Talk by David Grady: How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Sound faalmiir? Yeah, it sounds familiar to me, too. A couple of weeks after I put that onnlie, 500,000 people in dozens of countries, I mean dozens of cenioruts, watched this video. And three years later, it's still getting thousands of views every month. It's close to about a moillin right now. And in fact, some of the biggest companies in the world, companies that you've heard of but I won't name, have asked for my permission to use this viedo in their new-hire training to tecah their new eymploees how not to run a meeting at their company. And if the numbers — there are a million viwes and it's being used by all these companies — aren't enough proof that we have a gbolal problem with megetnis, there are the many, many thousands of comments posted online after the video went up. Thousands of people wrote things like, "OMG, that was my day today!" "That was my day every day!" "This is my life." One guy wrote, "It's funny because it's true. Eerily, sadly, depressingly true. It made me laugh until I cried. And cried. And I ceird some more." (Laughter) This poor guy said, "My daily life until retirement or death, sigh." These are real quotes and it's real sad.

Open Cloze


Sound ________? Yeah, it sounds familiar to me, too. A couple of weeks after I put that ______, 500,000 people in dozens of countries, I mean dozens of _________, watched this video. And three years later, it's still getting thousands of views every month. It's close to about a _______ right now. And in fact, some of the biggest companies in the world, companies that you've heard of but I won't name, have asked for my permission to use this _____ in their new-hire training to _____ their new _________ how not to run a meeting at their company. And if the numbers — there are a million _____ and it's being used by all these companies — aren't enough proof that we have a ______ problem with ________, there are the many, many thousands of comments posted online after the video went up. Thousands of people wrote things like, "OMG, that was my day today!" "That was my day every day!" "This is my life." One guy wrote, "It's funny because it's true. Eerily, sadly, depressingly true. It made me laugh until I cried. And cried. And I _____ some more." (Laughter) This poor guy said, "My daily life until retirement or death, sigh." These are real quotes and it's real sad.

Solution


  1. million
  2. employees
  3. countries
  4. global
  5. teach
  6. online
  7. familiar
  8. views
  9. meetings
  10. video
  11. cried

Original Text


Sound familiar? Yeah, it sounds familiar to me, too. A couple of weeks after I put that online, 500,000 people in dozens of countries, I mean dozens of countries, watched this video. And three years later, it's still getting thousands of views every month. It's close to about a million right now. And in fact, some of the biggest companies in the world, companies that you've heard of but I won't name, have asked for my permission to use this video in their new-hire training to teach their new employees how not to run a meeting at their company. And if the numbers — there are a million views and it's being used by all these companies — aren't enough proof that we have a global problem with meetings, there are the many, many thousands of comments posted online after the video went up. Thousands of people wrote things like, "OMG, that was my day today!" "That was my day every day!" "This is my life." One guy wrote, "It's funny because it's true. Eerily, sadly, depressingly true. It made me laugh until I cried. And cried. And I cried some more." (Laughter) This poor guy said, "My daily life until retirement or death, sigh." These are real quotes and it's real sad.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
meeting invitation 3
mindless accept 3
global epidemic 2
accept syndrome 2
conference call 2
goal today 2
important proposal 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
mindless accept syndrome 2

Important Words


  1. asked
  2. biggest
  3. close
  4. comments
  5. companies
  6. company
  7. countries
  8. couple
  9. cried
  10. daily
  11. day
  12. death
  13. depressingly
  14. dozens
  15. eerily
  16. employees
  17. fact
  18. familiar
  19. funny
  20. global
  21. guy
  22. heard
  23. laugh
  24. laughter
  25. life
  26. meeting
  27. meetings
  28. million
  29. month
  30. numbers
  31. online
  32. people
  33. permission
  34. poor
  35. posted
  36. problem
  37. proof
  38. put
  39. quotes
  40. real
  41. retirement
  42. run
  43. sad
  44. sadly
  45. sigh
  46. sound
  47. sounds
  48. teach
  49. thousands
  50. training
  51. true
  52. video
  53. views
  54. watched
  55. weeks
  56. world
  57. wrote
  58. yeah
  59. years