Shadowing Practice: Why Have We Become So Mean? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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How did we get so mean?
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The problem with me.
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And then third, the key to loving.
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First, how did we get so mean?
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A couple years ago, I read an article and saved it.
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It was written by David Brooks.
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He wrote an article in The Atlantic with that title, How America Got So Mean.
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And he points out something there in the article
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that I think most of us have come to see or to realize and that it seems that people are getting meaner.
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We're getting meaner.
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Simply just how we increasingly treat those out in public or complete strangers.
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Brooks mentions in the article about an owner of a restaurant who recounts
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that he has to kick somebody out of his restaurant for crude or rude behavior about once a week.
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Something he said he didn't have to do like years, decades ago.
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The Wall Street Journal just on Monday had an article saying how nurses around the country are leaving in droves.
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What's one of the main reasons nurses are quitting?
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The way they say that they're being treated by patients and the patient's families.
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A number of nurses that were interviewed for the article talked about how not just verbal altercations, but even violence, physical, of getting punched,
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getting kicked, getting spit upon.
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And Brooks, in the article in The Atlantic, he asked the question, how did we get this way?
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How did we get so mean, or how are we getting meaner?
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And he argues that the problem goes deeper than because of what social media is doing or politics.
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He says that we've largely stopped forming people in virtue, in moral character.
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He says there were times when institutions, there are institutions like family, the institution of family, schools,
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churches placed a lot of emphasis on teaching people on how to be good and decent human beings.
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But that's changed.
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Emphasis has changed.
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Instead of teaching people how to become good, we started telling people that they're already good.
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And because you're already good, what you need to do and what really matters is that you just need to get in touch with yourself.
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You just need to discover yourself, discover who you are, doing what feels right for you.
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And Brooks says that the result of this is what we've created is what he calls a self -referential world.
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A world where it increasingly revolves around me.
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What I feel, what I want, what I think, what makes me happy.
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And when everything revolves around me, it becomes really hard to care about the other.
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And we can become mean.
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Which brings me secondly here to the problem with me.
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In the gospel today, we hear once again that the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus.
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They come up to him and they try to trap him by the question of which is the greatest of the commandments.
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And you don't have time really to say on how this is a trap.
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But out of the 600 commandments, they come up and they say, which of the commandments is the greatest?
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And notice what Jesus doesn't say.
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He doesn't say be a good person, be polite, have good manners.
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He says love God with your whole mind, heart, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.
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He boils everything down to love.
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why because love requires us to get over ourselves and
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that is not something we do well as human beings to love god means to have him at the center
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which means i cannot be the center to love my neighbor means
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that someone else good someone else's good matters to me
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and not just my own but the wild thing is
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that this cuts so much deeper than we first think the problem is
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so much deeper it reveals the the of the problem that's we within us be
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because of sin is so much deeper because we know
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that it's possible to do good things for people and still have it be all about me.
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You might say like, well, I'm a good person.
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Like I'm not one of those people that David Brooks is talking about in that article about being mean.
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Like I'm a generous person.
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I'm kind.
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I treat people well.
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But I can be generous because of what people will think about me and what I get in return.
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I can go out of my way to help somebody.
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But if they don't say thank you, how it bothers.
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See, my generosity, even in my generosity, there can be alternative motives on why I do the things that I do,
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that I treat people well well, it might be because it's out in public and that they'll think well of me.
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It can still be self -referential.
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And the place where our self -centeredness is most clearly seen is with those that are closest to us.
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St. Jose Maria Escriva, they composed a book of a lot of his one -
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or two -liner heavy -hitting quotes on different topics.
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It's called The Way.
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It's a great book to have on your, you know, your coffee table to pick up and just look at some of his quotes.
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And one of them, he's describing the person who seems to be wonderful from a distance.
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But it is a very different person up close.
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He says this.
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He says, your charity or your love.
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Your charity is ostentatious.
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It's showy.
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From afar, you attract you give off light from near you repel you lack warmth what a pity
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what a pity he says from afar you attract you give off light
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from nearby you repel and lack warmth from afar what a what a wonderful person he is Why,
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you know, man, he's really just a great guy.
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He's so kind.
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Or she's so generous.
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The way, how loving she is.
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From near, perhaps with our spouse or with our kids.
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Impatient, rude, crude even.
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That can be a very uncomfortable truth.
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The uncomfortable truth that even when, and it's on display then, when it becomes more distance, when we're trying to love others,
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we can still find a way that it might still have the corners of our hearts where it's about ourselves.
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This is sin in us.
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Our will being bent, which brings us to the key, the key to loving.
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It's really the required prerequisite of loving God and loving our neighbor.
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See, what we need, what we desperately need is to be loved by someone whose love is completely free of selfishness,
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who doesn't have an ounce of self -centeredness in it, someone who isn't trying to get something out of it by loving us.
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God has nothing to gain by loving you and me.
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and yet he gives everything.
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Romans 5a, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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Not when we had everything all put together, not when we stopped sinning, not when while we were still sinners, Christ died for you and me.
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That's the love in which we need to receive.
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this is why others commenting on this
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and church fathers on the jesus's greatest commandment of loving god
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and loving our neighbor ourselves what do a lot of times they point to first john chapter four we love
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because he first loved us we cannot it sounds cliche right we can't give what we haven't received
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but it is so true especially when it comes to this and receiving the authentic and non -self -referential love.
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You notice, you're saying Paul in the second readings, right?
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He's talking about the Thessalonians received the gospel,
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became imitators of Christ, and then they became models for others.
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They received, they were formed, and then they became an example for other people to live their life, to be men and women of virtue,
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to be men and women of love.
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We need to teach our young people.
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We need to be taught about moral character and virtue.
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We need to teach them how to love.
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We have to show them what love looks like.
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But it starts with, and perhaps it's most importantly, to teach them how to receive the love of God, that your life matters.
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That you're worth the trouble.
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That God went to the cross for you.
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That an infinite God loves you more than you can imagine.
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But perhaps that starts with us receiving that.
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And so let me ask you.
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When was the last time you actually received the love of God?
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Where you sat with it?
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You soaked it in.
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you absorbed it
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give the Lord 30 minutes this week where you're going to sit down
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and you intentionally say this time this 30 minutes is just to sit and to soak in the love of God
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whether that's coming here to the church or the adoration chapel or it's finding a spot in your home
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you might consider praying with the four verses Isaiah chapter 43 verses 1 to 4.
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Open up the scriptures to those four passages for 30 minutes as you read it.
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Your only objective is to receive and soak in authentic,
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non -self -referential, non -self -centered love.
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If we want a generation that knows how to love and maybe to be not so mean,
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we have to become people who know how to love.
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And perhaps that begins with first allowing ourselves to sit and receive the love of God.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Have We Become So Mean?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: loving, article, self. This video has 131 sentences and 1577 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:42. The speaker talks at a steady 135 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| neighbour noun | /ˈneɪbɚ/ | A person living on adjacent or nearby land; a person situated adjacently or nearby; anything (of the same type of thing as the subject) in an adjacent or… |
| institution noun | /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/ | A long-established organization or type of organization, particularly one involved with education, public service, or charity work. |
| nurse noun | /nɝs/ | Anyone performing this role, regardless of training or profession. |
| trap noun | /tɹæp/ | A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body. |
| generous adjective | /ˈd͡ʒɛn(ə)ɹəs/ | Noble in behaviour or actions; principled, not petty; kind, magnanimous. |
| virtue noun | /ˈvɝt͡ʃu/ | The idea of all that is good or excellent (in every sense of those terms) in a human being, collectively instantiated by a varying number of human traits known… |
| soak verb | /soʊk/ | To be saturated with liquid by being immersed in it. |
| moral adjective | /ˈmoɹəl/ | Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially conforming to principles of rectitude. |
| charity noun | /ˈtʃæɹɪti/ | An organization, the objective of which is to carry out a charitable purpose. |
| discover verb | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | To find or learn something for the first time. |
| increasingly adverb | Increasing in amount or intensity. | |
| rude adjective | /ɹuːd/ | Lacking in refinement or civility; bad-mannered; discourteous. |
| attract verb | /əˈtɹækt/ | To pull toward without touching. |
| emphasis noun | /ˈɛmfəsɪs/ | Special weight or forcefulness given to something considered important. |
| uncomfortable adjective | /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/ | Not comfortable; causing discomfort. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| give off verb | /ɡɪv ɒf/ | To emit; to produce and send forth; to come across in some manner. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| come up to verb | To approach. | |
| get over verb | To overcome. | |
| open up verb | To open. | |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. | |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. | |
| put together verb | To assemble, construct, build, or formulate. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How did we get so mean?
- First, how did we get so mean?
- What's one of the main reasons nurses are quitting?
- How did we get so mean, or how are we getting meaner?
- Where you sat with it?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was written · being treated · were interviewed |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have come · has changed · we've created |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who seems · someone who isn · people who know |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 24 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, warmth /wɔɹmθ/, bother /ˈbɑðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: institution /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, impatient /ɪmˈpeɪʃənt/, referential /ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃəl/, adoration /ˌæ.dəˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: institution /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/, generosity /ˌd͡ʒɛn.əˈɹɑ.sə.ti/, importantly /ɪmˈpɔɹ.tənt.li/, desperately /ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹət.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like neighbour, institution, nurse.
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.