If you hear a kind word spoken

Witness to Our Thankfulness

In an essay called “The Art of Living,” Wilfred Peterson has written:

The art of thanksgiving is thanks-living. It is gratitude in action. . . .

It is thanking God for the gift of life by living it triumphantly. . . .

It is thanking God for opportunities by accepting them as a challenge to achievement. . . .

It is thanking God for inspiration by living to be an inspiration to others. . . .

It is adding to your prayers of thanksgiving, acts of thanks-living. [The Art of Living (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), pp. 44–45]

President David O. McKay counseled Church members:

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts. [Pathways to Happiness (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, Inc., 1957), p. 317]

Some of the beautiful words of Psalm 100 stress: “Know ye that the Lord he is God: . . . be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”

And again, the Lord, through his great prophet King Benjamin, has taught us there is more than just thoughts and prayers to proper thanksgiving. I quote:

I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice. . . .

. . . if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

. . . all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; . . . if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you. [Mosiah 2:20–22]

If we are truly thankful, our acts will be witness to our thankfulness.

Showing Our Thankfulness

Thanksgiving Day has always been designed to be a religious experience, a day to know the Lord and bless his name.

Three hundred sixty-four years ago, Governor William Bradford declared a three-day fast, and a small group of pilgrims gathered to “worship and give thanks to God.” Two years later, in 1623, on July 30, the first official Thanksgiving Day was set up for “the special purpose of prayer.” During the revolutionary war there were some eight special days of thanks, which were observed for “special blessings that had been received.” On November 26, 1789, more than 100 years after the first special day of prayer, President George Washington issued a special proclamation for a day of “giving thanks.” And about 100 years later in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our benevolent Father.” Now, after more than three and a half centuries, we still celebrate a “Thanksgiving Day.”

But in our hearts, is there sufficient thankfulness to really give praise to our benevolent Father? Does this thankfulness result in showing any true gratitude? Do we do any more than say a thanksgiving prayer over the traditional Thanksgiving feast? Or are some of our prayers and our lives like those described by the poet Robert Burns— “Three mile prayers and one-half mile graces”? Have we learned to say thank you and to show thank you?

I like these words—they seem to suggest action:

If you hear a kind word spoken 
Of some worthy soul you know, 
It may fill his heart with sunshine 
If you’d only tell him so.

If a deed, however humble, helps you 
On your way to go,
Seek the one whose hand has helped you. 
Seek him out and tell him so.

If your heart is touched and tender 
Toward a sinner lost and low,
It might help him to do better
If you would only tell him so. 
[Anonymous]

President Gordon B. Hinckley has taught us:

Absence of gratitude is the mark of the narrow, uneducated mind. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge and the ignorance of self-sufficiency. [CR, Oct. 1964, p. 117]

Thankfulness may indeed be measured by the number of words we use. Gratitude, however, must be measured by the nature of our actions.

And Richard L. Evans said: “Gratitude has not even been born until it has actually been converted into word and deed.”

Each of us should look for ways of saying thank you to each other, and we should show our thankfulness to the Lord by keeping his commandments.

Saying Thank You

In the past I have not always been able to say or show my thanks as I have really wanted to. Some years ago, almost every morning I found myself arriving in the parking lot of a certain institution at the same time as another individual. It was early in the morning, usually very dark and very quiet. Most of the time we were alone as we walked from our vehicles into the building. This individual was one of the finest persons I have ever known. I looked up to him. I admired him, I loved him. Yet I had never told him so. Each time we entered the building and climbed onto the elevator together, I found myself tongue-tied. I could hardly stammer “Good morning,” much less, “Oh, how I admire you” or “Thank you for all you have done and are doing for me.” After one of these mornings, I arrived in my office, disgusted with my inability to express my appreciation. In desperation, with a great desire to just say thank you, I took a pen in hand, and in longhand wrote a short note that expressed my feelings. Hurriedly I addressed an envelope and quickly mailed the note before my courage failed me. A very few days later I received a very sweet, short, three-sentence note. I could tell he had personally typed it out on the old typewriter he kept by his desk. It read:

Dear Dee,

That was one of the sweetest notes I have ever received, and I appreciate hearing from you. I am indeed grateful to be so close to you, and I hope that we may see each other once in a while. May the Lord bless you and assist you in all your efforts. With kindest wishes.

Faithfully yours,

While I had known this individual and worked closely with him for a long time, this was really the beginning of a choice and wonderful friendship with this special person—President Spencer W. Kimball. Oh, how President Kimball blessed my life because I took the time and had the courage to say thank you.

Think how the Lord then desires to bless each of us as we show our thankfulness by keeping the commandments. For he tells us that as we “abide the law,” we will receive the blessing (D&C 132:5).

How long has it been since any of us has really expressed a sincere and specific thank you to someone near or dear to us? To our parents? To a faculty member? To a student? To a roommate? Or to the Lord?

“Thanks for the Memories”

My grandson taught me a lesson about saying thanks. Jared, who is now eight years old, lives in Hong Kong. As he has grown up, he has heard his father and me talk about our fishing trips. He has even accompanied us a time or two on short trips. But, because of his age, he had never caught a fish. Two years ago as his parents prepared for home leave, they noticed that Jared prayed each evening that he could go fishing, and he continued so to pray. When the family arrived in the United States, we arranged a fishing experience. We visited Jackson Hole and found a place on the Snake River where Jared could indeed catch some fish. And he did. He caught several. I’ll admit that he wasn’t very interested in baiting his hook or taking the fish off the hook when they were caught. Nevertheless, he seemed to enjoy the experience. I was interested in the report Jared would make to his Father in Heaven that night. It was very short. It expressed true thankfulness. It was only four words long. He said, “Thanks for the memories.”

Each of us has been given very special experiences and memories. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all say “Thanks for the memories?”

The Way We Live

Alice Cary, in her poem “Nobility,” states:

True worth is in being, not seeming,—
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good—not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.

For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There’s nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

We get back our mete as we measure—
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.

For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.

In our “doing and doing,” each of us can say thank you to those around us by simply living that golden rule.

I would like to conclude these remarks by stressing three sentences from the mission statement of this great university:

All students at BYU should be taught the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Any education is inadequate which does not emphasize that His is the only name given under heaven whereby mankind can be saved. Certainly all relationships within the BYU community should reflect devout love of God and a loving, genuine concern for the welfare of our neighbor.

If we do have this loving, genuine concern for others, Brigham Young University will be like no other place on earth, and so it should be.

Remember, as important as saying thank you is, it is more important to show our thankfulness in the way we live. We need to give others some reason to say thank you to us. May we show our thanksgiving this year by our thanks-living. For the Lord God has said:

And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundredfold, yea, more. [D&C 78:19]

May we be so blessed, I pray, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

©Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.

Are you afraid of listening to natives too?

How well do you understand English from listening? I have never met an adult learner in 15 years who would say it’s a walk in the park for them. Really. Never.

‘Boy, this is the hardest part, because you not only need to understand what the other person is talking, which is hard due to all the different accents there is, but you also need to comprehend what they are talking!’

‘But listening, oh boy, that’s the tough one. You have to face native speed of speech, accents, intonation… I always thought English as a “hungry language”, its speakers “eat” a lot of letters we were taught they were pronounced. And you seem to say full sentences without moving your lips. We just hear a mumble.’

These are just some answers I received when I asked which skill is the hardest in learning English.

Listening is a difficult skill to master. We can’t deny that.

In a situation like that, we usually end up blaming ourselves (I am hopeless, I have no language talent, learning languages is not for me) or native speakers (they ‘eat’ words and they speak too fast – crazy language, crazy people).

The thing is English is no exception in that. It’s equally hard for any other foreign language to master. The French speak incredibly fast and so do Spanish speakers. Try to listen to a German native speaker when you are a complete beginner. I will not even mention Chinese with their tonic system.

What you need to know about listening and understanding

As I said, listening is hard to master. But not because there is something wrong with our ears. It happens because people try to learn listening using the same methods they learn reading. But how is it possible? They are so different, reading and listening.

When you read a text, you can see it in front of your eyes. It means two things:

• you can see all the words separately in the page
• you have time to stop, to return to some point and think about it.

What happens when you listen?

• You need to decode a line of sounds, with no breaks, because they are all connected together.
• It’s usually quick, especially in conversations.
• And you have no control over what’s going on (I mean you have less opportunity to ‘rewind’ and to think about it). You rely on your memory.

In fact, a listener very often hear something like:

So, you just can’t learn to listen like you have learnt reading.

Another popular myth: you will learn to understand what people say if you listen a lot. But again, just listening to a lot of stuff in unadapted English is a long (and frustrating) way. It’s not focused learning. Without strategies, it will take you years.

It’s a bit funny how most listening tasks you will find on the Web or in the textbooks are tests.

So, somehow you learnt to listen already (when? where?) and now you check yourself. But when was the actual learning happening? If you just hear a lot of text in English, it doesn’t mean learning. If you don’t understand what’s going on, how would you learn?

Even if you come to a teacher for help, it is not always productive. First of all, teachers try to speak comfortably for you, even native speakers. That’s why many people say they understand their teachers well, but can’t understand people in the streets.

I remember one colleague of mine who just came back from her internship in the USA and started teaching English to adults. She used to be saying: ‘I spent so many years learning English. I don’t want to spoil it by speaking unnaturally. I will show my learners how real English sounds’. Well, intermediate and advanced students loved her. Elementary students hated her. At first. But somehow, after a month or so, each of her students developed a better listening understanding of English than mine, for example. Guilty on the spot. I DO speak too comfortably for my students. I can list you many explanations for this, but I won’t. This is just a reality.

So, the first takeaway from this article: Don’t be afraid of being exposed to original listening material. I also vote for variety. Listen to the texts of different difficulty and of different origin. The more accents (both native and non-native) you hear, the more prepared you will be for real life. Learn which TV series you can start with.

The key thing in this process: LEARN to listen, don’t just wait for a miracle to happen one day.

What kind of strategies could help you improve your listening skills?

I will switch now from general linguistics to English. What exactly do you need to know about English to hear it better?

First of all, ‘what you see is not what you hear’. Don’t expect the words will be separate like you see them in this written text.

Let’s take an example.

You see a phrase: ‘half an hour ago’. If you could hear it the same way it is written, the sound would be something like that:

In reality, even in slow pronunciation, the words won’t have pauses between them.

If this phrase is a part of a longer text, it will be pronounced even faster.

Ok, is it all non-stop stream of speech? No, it isn’t. When we speak, we divide our speech into units, not into words. The words serving one meaning will live together. We call them ‘tone units’. We use them in all languages to organise our speech and put accents on the parts which are most important for our message.

The phrase from the example: ‘half an hour ago’. It means 1 unit of information. All the words here constitute 1 meaning. The speaker will pronounce them together, in 1 unit, to serve the meaning. The non-stop speaking all the time is not possible: we need to breathe. These breathing pauses made between short ideas constituing a bigger one.

So, in the sentence: I came home half an hour ago (7 words) there are actually only 3 tone units: I came // home // half an hour ago. They will say it: /aikeim//heum//havenaueegeu/. Just 2 pauses.

Of course, it is not:

Nobody speaks like that. You don’t speak like that.

Here is your first step in improving listening: your brain should get used to the fact that it hears not words but tone units containing one idea. Train yourself for that.

Some practice.

How many tone units can you identify in these sentences:

– When are you going on holiday this year?

When // are you going // on holiday // this year? (4 tone units)

– What kind of books do you prefer?

What kind of books // do you prefer? (2 tone units)

Practise with this ‘difficult’ piece. This one should be hard:

(video source – 00:27)

Even in this fast talking, we can hear some small pauses the speaker does between the tone units:

‘Thanks // for coming back on//. – How is it going? (one tone unit, that’s why so fast) – It’s going awesome! (again one tone unit – they all seem to be stuck together). We’re gonna // have // some fun today…’

I recommend you to practise this way: listen to some short extracts (up to 1 minute long) with the transcript to hear how sentences are divided into tone units in natural speaking. Let your brain learn to hear it differently from what he reads. Listen to the same extract several times until you can hear which small groups the words are organised into in every sentence.

You can use listening materials from the web or some podcasts.

Here are some example resources I always recommend my students:

English Numbers | Listening Test

Deep English

Listen a minute

6-minute English

It’s crucial that you practise listening to very very short extracts, as I said, not longer than a minute. Also, always practise with the text in front of your eyes. You will need some time to re-wire your brain from trying to listen for single words to listening to tone units. They are logical. After listening to 10 or 15 sentences (not at once, every day or every other day), the whole listening process will become different.

Inside the tone unit, words will be organised hierarchically (what a word, hah), so to say, by their importance. Your next step will be to learn the hierarchy of these words and ways how they are connected together. If it seems like a lot of work, no, it isn’t. It’s, again, quite logical. It’s focused work and it is some work, yes. But it is much better than just ‘listen to as much English as possible for a long time’ without any control of what’s happening with your English skills.

Divide this ‘stream’ you hear into into units and then learn how words work together inside each unit. This way, you will focus and start improving. And you will start understanding English, even the films, quite soon (of course, if your vocabulary is good enough 🙂

So, the key takeaways from the today’s post are:

– listening is a skill to train; you can’t learn to listen the right way just by random listening;

– don’t be afraid to vary the difficulty of your listening material;

– expose yourself to as many accents, both native and non-native, as possible;

– develop a simple short routine to learn listening using short (up to 1 minute long) extracts to train yourself for the right focus;

– learn not to expect to hear single words (like they are written in the page) but tone units where words are grouped around 1 small idea.

In the next post, we will continue re-focusing your brain from what it reads to what hears. Stay tuned!

Please share this article with your friends if you find it useful. 

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