Advanced Level Listening: How to Spot a Liar

I noticed that some of you would like more realistic listening practice, so here's another Ted lecture for you to test your listening skills!

How are your listening skills? Listening to long English lecture style listenings are an important ability. Students on our university preparation programmes practise listening to lectures, because in American universities, lectures are the main way of teaching. It's a difficult task to listen and take notes for future reference at the same time. This skill is also important if you need to listen to business presentations in English.

This lecture is about lying (the telling of lies, or false statements; not telling the truth). Deception is a part of our everyday lives and the speaker explores why we lie and how we can recognise liars.

To answer the true or false questions below, you only need to listen to the first five minutes, but feel free to listen to the whole lecture and let us know what you think!

Have you experienced listening to an English university style lecture? Would you like to enter an English-speaking university, why, where, and what would you like to study?

If you want to read a transcript, you can turn on the English text by clicking the small CC box at the bottom of the video.

Decide the following statements are true or false:

• 1. The speaker argues that only 50% of the population are liars.
  
  False
  True
  
  
• 2. She states that all lies are bad and that we should only tell the truth.
  
  True
  False
  
  
• 3. Nearly a trillion dollars was lost by corporate fraud and deception last year.
  
  False
  True
  
  
• 4. She says that lying is a tool we use to connect who we want to be with who we are.
  
  False
  True
  
  
• 5. Every day you will be lied to between 200 and 300 times.
  
  True
  False
  
  
• 6. Introverted people lie more than extroverted people.
  
  False
  True