Shadowing Practice: When Family Falls Apart - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Don't you think it's miraculous that you can turn struggle into some kind of wisdom for yourself?

That you can actually find love after you've been really hurt?

That you can rebuild after something precious has been stolen?

Ruth's prologue is tough right now, but it is going to tip us toward a brighter world.

So, how many of you, if we turn this place into a bit of a Bible trivia pub night,

could knock out the beats of the book of Ruth?

Show of hands.

You think you could do it?

Some of you could?

That's okay.

There's no shame here.

Honestly, until a few weeks ago, big parts of the story were kind of foggy to me, even me.

I'm a professional at reading the scriptures, so sometimes I also need reminders.

So the book of Ruth is the story of a family broken down by famine and then built back up by foreigners.

So here's some bonus trivia for you as well.

Ruth is one of the shortest books in the Bible, but it actually comprises one of the longest stories in the Bible.

Ruth is one of only two books named after a woman.

You better believe I was going to point that out.

Bonus points for the fact that

Ruth is the only book named after a non -Israelite woman.

And Ruth is a very, very important matriarch as far as the biblical story goes.

Does anyone know to whom?

She's the great -great -grandmother of?

I mean we can kind of trace everybody here right but King David so keep that in mind.

Today we will take our time to settle into the story

of Ruth by biting off just the first five verses

and after today we really haul so we're going to talk about prologue,

estrangement, what you're left with, and hope anyway.

Verse 1 opens pretty generically, but it tells us everything.

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.

So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.

So the first thing we're told is that this story is embedded in the time of the Judges, where the Jewish scripture places

Ruth after the writings, linking it to this virtuous woman in Proverbs 31.

The Christian canon does, in fact, place Ruth after the book of Judges.

For context, my favorite book about Judges in my personal library is called Gift of the Grotesque.

So that does tell you something about Judges, that while there were brief periods of peace and stability in Judges,

it is mostly a book of horror and chaos.

We're told over and over again that the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they suffered those consequences.

And then along comes Ruth.

Ruth does, in fact, begin with some horror.

There is starvation, there's displacement, and spoiler alert, up front here, there is a lot of death.

But Ruth will quickly become a story where, in fact, there are no bad guys, just people doing their very best.

So we are going to find a story full of kindness and generosity and even this Mr. Rogers,

like, won't you be my kinsman redeemer warmth to the people and the way that they treat one another.

But let's get to the hard parts first and then get them out of the way.

So here's what happens.

Again, in this opening line, we get the broadest sweep of the story.

A certain man, though not yet named, from Bethlehem, which means breadbasket,

goes to live in Moab with his wife and two sons because there is, ironic to the whole breadbasket thing, a famine.

And in biblical storytelling, famine shifts the stakes, pushing people from their ancestral land.

So where once they were rooted and at home they become strangers.

And curiously, there is this neutrality to the opening line.

Like we don't exactly know if we are meant to be critical of this man's choice.

We just don't know.

Should we question why it's just this guy's family who leaves and not others?

Is there this implication that he had the means to go and others did not?

So his wealth, it saves him, but does nothing for his neighbors?

I mean, that's what some of the rabbis suggest anyway.

But again, Ruth is a text that isn't interested in the bad guys.

This is prologue, and the meaning isn't actually in the past.

Now, I'm all for understanding your personal past.

I even preached a sermon this fall called Learning to Listen to Your Ancestors.

But right out of the gate here, I want to orient you to the energy of Ruth, to pull you toward a brighter future.

And this isn't a future that bypasses human involvement in favor of just waiting for God to act.

At every stop in this story of Ruth, you will see people considering their options,

problem -solving with others, acting strategically and deliberately, putting just one foot in front of the other,

knowing their rights, and advocating for their future.

Here's the deal with all that.

You might go your whole life and not actually be able to piece together the miracles that flow through your ordinary story.

Don't you think it's miraculous that you can turn struggle into some kind of wisdom for yourself.

That you can actually find love after you've been really hurt.

That you can rebuild after something precious has been stolen.

Ruth's prologue is tough right now.

But it is going to tip us toward a brighter world.

I think we need that right now. But first, some specifics.

Let's get to the who is who.

So the man's name was Elimelech, and his wife's name was Naomi.

And the names of his two sons were Malon and Kilion.

And they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah.

And they went to Moab, and they lived there.

Now Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left with her two sons.

So after no names were given in verse 1, we get this fire hose of proper nouns in verses 2 and 3.

Elimelech, Naomi, Malon, Kilion, all Ephrathites from Bed Brath,

bread basket, I knew I was going to do that, bread basket Bethlehem.

You try and say it three times really fast.

Bread basket Bethlehem in Judah.

And all these names, they actually have special meaning.

Elimelech means God my king.

Malon means weakly.

Kilion means to waste away.

And Naomi means pleasant or sweet.

And those are these breadcrumbs that will guide the whole story.

But let's take a moment to talk about Moab.

Moab is meant to stand in for a place of extreme extreme foreignness.

You see, back in Genesis 19, Sodom and Gomorrah have burned to the ground on account of unrelenting wickedness.

And alone with their father

Lot, two daughters think that they are the only people left in the world.

And so they get their dad super drunk, and their incestuous plan results in two sons,

one of whom is Moab.

100

Adding more fuel to the foreigner fire when the Israelites were hightailing it out of Egypt after their enslavement,

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the Moabites, we're told, did not help them out with a little bit of food or water for their journey.

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But, you ask, is there more reason to distrust these Moabites?

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Why, yes, there is.

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In Numbers 22 to 25, the king of Moab attempts to curse Israel through a prophet, and while that doesn't work,

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the Israelites still mess around with the Moabites, have sex with them, and sacrifice to their gods.

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These are two people groups that do not get along.

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They have history and stories that they tell themselves to justify themselves about that history.

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At some point, though, they were family.

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Lot was Abraham's nephew, but eventually their descendants became estranged.

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And while it's easy to look back on these ancient stories and think, you dum -dums, what a mess you have made of things.

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Let's be honest here.

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estrangement is a prickly and personal reality in many of our families.

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It's thought that up to one in four people are impacted by some form of estrangement.

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In addition, when asked about it, each side in estrangement lives in a totally different version of the story.

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While one side attempts to establish new boundaries, the other side feels totally blindsided.

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I'll tell you one thing that I know.

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Estrangement is horrible because it comes from desperation.

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In trying to understand the other side's desperation feels pretty impossible most of the time.

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Maybe you didn't have to leave home because of a famine, but you did have to leave because it hurt you to stay.

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Or the flip side, after doing your best,

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the people you sacrificed so much for tell you that the home that you made for them wasn't good enough.

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I am so sorry for any estrangement.

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that you find yourself in.

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I know it feels like an immovable force in your life.

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And I know that that can haunt you.

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But what if all the boundaries and the heartbreaks and the clashing memories,

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what if they just aren't permanent?

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Because nothing is try to leave just a little

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ellipses in your estrangement just a dot dot dot toward some form of reconciliation even

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if you can't quite plot it out right now because even Israelites and Moabites,

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they find their way back to each other.

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And this story, it is a love story.

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So just put a pin in that for now.

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Back to Ruth's gritty prologue.

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Let's see what these fatherless men do next.

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They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other

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Ruth, and they had lived, after they had lived there for 10 years, both Malon and Kilian also died,

138

and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

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In just four

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Hebrew words, Naomi loses the hope of a third generation.

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Married 10 years, neither of the sons have babies.

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In fact, in Hebrew, verse 5 doesn't even spell out Naomi's name.

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It simply calls her Haisha, just the woman.

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Like it hurts too much to get that close.

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So before they know it, these three women are left without protection in a world that needs men to protect them.

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And at this point, you might be saying, why did I come to church today, Bobby?

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This story is bumming me out.

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I get it.

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The prologue certainly feels like it does.

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But as far as literature is concerned,

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a tragedy is when you begin with life and order and then end in ruin and death.

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Ruth is not a tragedy.

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Ruth is tragedy's inversion.

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A better way to think of the story of Ruth is to note

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that we are just not at the funny parts yet.

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And I don't mean funny, ha -ha, but funny as it pertains to literature as comedy.

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A comedy makes this ascent.

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It goes from disorder and death to life and restoration.

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And yes, Act I in Ruth is where death and threat abound.

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But this is only the beginning.

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It is only prologue today.

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And none of this loss will define either Naomi or Ruth.

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These two women will show more agency and self -determination than almost anyone else in Scripture.

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Now, here's a little theory.

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I have.

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Throughout the entire book, the narrator only steps in to attribute an action to God directly two times.

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And neither of those attributions are here in the prologue.

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The first is in 1 verse 6, where Naomi hears third hand,

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actually, that God has remembered the people back in Judah and provided them with food.

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And that will get us rolling back to Bethlehem.

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And the second incident is when Ruth gets with Boaz in the final chapter and the Lord makes her conceive.

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And even there, no one hears from God directly.

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The narrator simply makes the scribal point.

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And my theory is that if you aren't used to having access to prophets and priests and temple rituals,

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if you have never heard a sacred story that reflects your experience,

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if the only times you knew that God spoke, it had to do with people who aren't like you,

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well then you don't even need God to speak to be a part of God's good story.

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Just by being alive, by pushing toward a better future, by getting through hard times,

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by choosing new family when yours falls apart, you define your life not by the worst parts,

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but by what you do with what you're left with.

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One of my favorite things you'll see about Ruth is that she does not wait for God to say that she's included.

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She just acts like she is.

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I love that.

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Some people wonder, maybe did a woman write Ruth?

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or at least did women pass along her story to each other until it was written down by a man?

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And who knows, but you can't help but trace this subversive perspective here.

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In Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, the priests and the leaders,

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they will oppose marriage by Jews to foreign women,

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particularly Ammonites and Moabites, the descendants of Lot's daughters.

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And Ruth reverses that.

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So while this story starts heavy, it moves on quickly to offer this alternative view of family that will,

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again, ultimately lead us to Jesus.

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In fact, after chapter 1, our heroines don't dwell on their past anymore.

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Again, we know that there's so much tragedy here in the prologue, but it doesn't exactly stick to them.

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They refuse to be defined by the sickly story of others, the grief that they certainly move through,

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and the infertility that threatened to halt their family name.

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The thing you need to remember about Ruth is that it is designed with this perfect symmetry.

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Chapter one mirrors chapter four, chapter two mirrors chapter three.

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So listen for that in the weeks to come.

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But for today, you can actually see the symmetry when you compare the prologue with the epilogue.

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So we're going to kind of cheat a little bit and look at that.

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In chapter one verses one to five, of course, we're introduced to this family story as if it's a family story of death.

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But chapter 4, verses 18 to 22, the very end of this book, will give us a family story of life.

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The epilogue will name descendants until we arrive where this little book has been driving all along.

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Thanks to Ruth, a foreigner.

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A Moabite, Boaz, whom we'll meet in chapter two, will have a son named Obed, and Obed will have a son named Jesse,

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and Jesse will have a son named David, and of course, that's

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King David to you.

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So don't go thinking that your story is over or already written

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or too broken to count for something your life is looping around in a sacred circle too

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and by the time you come back around to the place you thought would break you a look

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there's something special right there

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in the thing that makes you different that makes you desperate for change that makes you long for more

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it is this very thing this restless rebuilding

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that will be the gift that you have to give to the world

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the next part of your story it just might reflect the last hard parts opposite

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you don't get the attention you needed as a child

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well now look at you giving

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so much attention to the children in your life you come from a broken family

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or had parents whose marriage was

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so toxic well now look at you forming partnership as true

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equals your grandparents as they aged their world their thinking their interests

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they got smaller now look at you learning new things as you age

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this to me is one of life's greatest gifts that we get to make of something new

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when we've been given something quite hard thanks to the hidden

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work of god in partnership with the deliberate work of our healing phyllis tribble says

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that in ruth the human movements they are open and deliberate,

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while the divine activity is hidden and fortuitous.

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So today, may you remember what that kind of hope might look like.

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It's trust that even when a story starts with pain, God is not far off.

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that maybe God is so close

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that we can hardly tell God apart from the world

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that we live in and the world that we work to make a little bit better right now.

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación se basa en el vídeo “When Family Falls Apart”. Este vídeo tiene 233 frases y 2778 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 22:40. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 123 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. El 83 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
verse sustantivo	/ˈvɝs/	versículo, verso
famine sustantivo	/ˈfæm.ɪn/	hambruna, hambre
tragedy sustantivo	/ˈtɹæd͡ʒ.ɪ.di/	tragedia
basket sustantivo	/ˈbæskɪt/	cesta, cesto
rebuild verbo	/ɹiːˈbɪld/	reconstruir
scripture sustantivo	/ˈskɹɪpt͡ʃɚ/	escritura, escriptura
partnership sustantivo	/ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/	asociación, colaboración
mirror sustantivo	/ˈmiɹɚ/	espejo
bonus sustantivo	/ˈbəʊ.nəs/	bonificación, plus
horror sustantivo	/ˈhɒɹ.ə/	horror
steal verbo	/stiːl/	robar, shacar
reflect verbo	/ɹɪˈflɛkt/	reflejar, reflectar
priest sustantivo	/ˈpɹiːst/	sacerdote, cura
define verbo	/dɪˈfaɪn/	determinar, definir
wisdom sustantivo	/ˈwɪzdəm/	sabiduría

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
break down verbo		descomponerse, averiarse
fall apart verbo		despedazarse, desintegrarse
get along verbo		llevarse bien con, avenirse
get through verbo	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	aguantar, salir adelante
knock out verbo		noquear
pass along verbo		hacer llegar
stand in for verbo		hacer las veces de/por, formar por
write down verbo		apuntar, anotar

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:

That you can actually find love after you've been really hurt?
That you can rebuild after something precious has been stolen?
You think you could do it?
Some of you could?
She's the great -great -grandmother of?

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	you've been really hurt · has been stolen · is embedded
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	you've been · has been stolen · have burned
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	Bethlehem, which means · people who aren

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 39 contracciones y formas reducidas, como don't, we're, aren't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, warmth /wɔɹmθ/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: partnership /ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/, desperation /ˌdɛspəˈɹeɪʃən/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, determination /dɪˌtɜːmɪˈneɪʃən/, restoration /ɹɛstəˈɹeɪʃən/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: deliberate /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət/, desperation /ˌdɛspəˈɹeɪʃən/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, stability /stəˈbɪlɪti/, determination /dɪˌtɜːmɪˈneɪʃən/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: scripture /ˈskɹɪpt͡ʃɚ/, steal /stiːl/, spell /spɛl/, stability /stəˈbɪlɪti/, stranger /ˈstɹeɪnd͡ʒɚ/
/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: verse /ˈvɝs/, solve /sɒlv/, arrive /əˈɹaɪv/, reverse /ɹɪˈvɝs/, involvement /ɪnˈvɑlv.mənt/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: wisdom /ˈwɪzdəm/, refuse /ɹɪˈfjuːz/, pleasant /ˈplɛz.ənt/, oppose /əˈpoʊz/, hose /hoʊz/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como verse, famine, tragedy.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

Shadowing Practice: When Family Falls Apart - Learn English Speaking with Video

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