Shadowing Practice: How We Built the World’s Largest Collection of Thich Nhat Hanh's Teachings - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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In this video, you will discover how Living Gems was put together and how it was made,
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In this video, you will discover how Living Gems was put together and how it was made,
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as well as we will understand how your contribution will be a refuge for so many around the world.
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Thay Thich Nhat Hanh had a teaching career spanning many decades,
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and for the last 25 or 30 years of that,
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we have recordings, whether audio or visual recordings,
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of what he was teaching.
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And so across the Living Gems archive,
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we can see the evolution of his teachings.
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We can see him grow older and wiser before our eyes.
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We can also see him introducing new insights and terms.
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And so it's an opportunity to really see each teaching in its full context.
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These talks were not accessible.
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You had them somewhere, but you couldn't really find it.
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and now they become accessible and like not just as a talk as a whole
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but within you know every part of it becomes accessible.
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Each video is about one hour two hours long.
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It takes you a year day and night to watch all these videos making them truly discoverable for people.
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That's the technical challenge.
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The way we did it is by splitting up each video in smaller portions and making those portions searchable.
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Anything that comes up in your life is searchable basically.
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Friends from all over the world have been sending us different archive tapes
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that they had collected over the years
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and with the magic of the team we've been able to find some real gems
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that we didn't know were there some real legendary moments encounters sometimes between thai
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and the audience sometimes thai teaching on tour in china
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or america or other countries and this gives us a sense that we didn't miss out.
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We were there, we could have been on that tour,
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we could have been in that hall,
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and it gives everyone an unfiltered direct access for that wisdom to come into our hearts,
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for us to learn and grow,
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and to never feel that we missed out on meeting him in person.
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We have all kinds of tapes, VHS tapes.
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We also have smaller ones which would have been used in cameras.
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We also have a lot of talks which only exist in sound form and we even have more modern digital sound formats,
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mini discs and these almost always work so that's why I like them.
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I think I've been at it for I think two years and there's already thousands of tapes digitized.
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There's thousands still to go.
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There's a lot of steps we do.
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De-noising it, de-interlacing it, of cleaning up the audio.
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One of the things
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that I'm using is this video capture device to kind of bypass the processing circuitry in a common video player
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and actually grab the raw magnetic signal straight off the video heads to get
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that kind of last bit of image quality
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and also to work with tapes that are degraded beyond what conventional workflows can cope with.
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A chance to do something which is beneficial to the whole world,
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like that is really special.
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Digitizing these talks, not digitizing people's Christmas videos.
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There's a lot of fun stuff here.
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Although I do digitize people's Christmas videos too.
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Some of the richest and deepest teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh were when he was able to speak in Vietnamese,
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his native language.
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And so with the search of living gems,
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you are able to find the result within the Vietnamese Dharma talks
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that he gave and to see directly below it subtitles
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in English or in French and hopefully in the future many more languages.
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Quite a complicated stack of making sure this transcription happens according to the style of Pumulish.
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To make sure that it uses the correct Sanskrit terms,
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that it also transcribes things that are written on the whiteboard, the Chinese characters.
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We've also added the ability for people to make changes and to suggest changes to the transcript,
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to description and title in a way comparable to Wikipedia.
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So in this way, it's a tool that's maintained by the entire community.
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And that is a lot of problem solving over more than two years by the developer team and the digitizing team.
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You know like first it was just you know one developer,
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three developers, four developers.
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The team has been growing and growing in order to make this all possible.
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And then over the last year or so we've had more than 80 volunteers helping review all the transcripts.
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And I can feel the joy and the smile of our late teacher just knowing that we are working together
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to make his teaching accessible.
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We're very happy that we can launch Living Gems and make it available to you.
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And we are very grateful for any contribution you can make to support the work,
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to support the team, to support the equipment, to support the servers.
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Digitizing more material, improving the material as well,
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improving the audio, the video,
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and also adding new features and translations for other languages.
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There's so much we can do with this,
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more than we can currently even imagine.
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We have put together a sliding scale of options where we can contribute.
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For those of us who can contribute to a higher tier,
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please know that by supporting that, you are supporting many.
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We can really keep this Dharma alive,
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keep it relevant, keep it accessible,
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and allow this project to continue to grow and respond to the challenges of our times,
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and in such a way that it is available anywhere on the planet for whoever needs it a place of refuge,
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inspiration and nourishment.

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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?

The video titled "How We Built the World’s Largest Collection of Thich Nhat Hanh's Teachings" offers a unique opportunity for English learners to engage in meaningful shadow speaking. Shadowing is a technique where you listen to a speaker and repeat what they say in real-time, allowing you to mimic their pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation. This particular video is valuable because it presents a clear and articulate speaker discussing a subject that carries deep emotional and intellectual significance.

As you practice with this video, you not only enhance your speaking skills but also immerse yourself in the profound teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. The context of the speaker's narrative—exploring the accessibility of wisdom—encourages learners to reflect on their own experiences, making the shadowing process more relatable and impactful. Engaging with this material can lead you to articulate complex ideas more confidently in English.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

In the video, several key structures and expressions can enhance your understanding of English grammar:

  • Present Perfect Tense: The speaker mentions, "I think I've been at it for I think two years." This usage highlights an ongoing action related to the present, which is beneficial for students aiming to express experiences that connect to the current moment.
  • Passive Voice: The phrase "tapes digitized" demonstrates how passive constructions can highlight the action being done rather than who is doing it. This structure is essential for more formal contexts.
  • Subject-Verb Agreement: Phrases like "Friends from all over the world have been sending us different archive tapes" exemplify correct agreement and reinforce attention to detail in sentence construction.

Common Pronunciation Traps

While practicing shadowing, you may encounter certain pronunciation challenges. Here are a few words and phrases from the video that could be tricky:

  • “Thich Nhat Hanh”: Ensure you pronounce his name clearly, paying attention to the tonal quality typical in Vietnamese names, which might differ from standard English pronunciation.
  • “Accessible”: The speaker emphasizes this word multiple times. Pay attention to the syllables to avoid muffling, ensuring clarity.
  • “Digitized”: This term may be pronounced swiftly in natural speech. Practice slowing it down to master the correct articulation.

Using the shadowspeaks method with this video will help you grasp these nuances and improve your overall fluency. Consider leveraging a shadowing app or site to facilitate your practice, allowing for a more structured approach to mastering these challenging aspects of English pronunciation.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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