Questões sobre Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension

Counting our blessings is an age-old piece of advice – but it turns out that writing lists of good things that happen to us actually does help improve our mood.

Of all the interventions brought to us by psychological research, I think this is probably my favourite. It's both simple and well-evidenced. And as such, it has become well-known.

There are various names for it – three good things, three blessings or a gratitude list. There are variations too in the exact instructions given, but essentially the exercise involves spending a few moments in the evening reflecting on your day, then writing down three things that went well or that you enjoyed. The final element is to think about why these things felt positive to you. You can choose anything, however small and seemingly inconsequential. Perhaps you bumped into a friend you hadn’t seen for a while? Perhaps you and a colleague laughed about something together. Perhaps you enjoyed your walk home from the station in lovely early evening light.

Alternatively, you could include something much more significant, perhaps even life-changing. Like passing an important exam, or getting a promotion, or hearing that a relative is going to have a baby.

Counting your blessings is of course a very old idea, and exercises of this kind had been used clinically for some time. The initial research investigating whether any of us might use this method in everyday life to improve our wellbeing was published in 2005 by Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson, two major figures in the field of positive psychology.

The study involved 577 people who were randomly assigned to different groups. As a placebo, one group had to write every evening about their early memories from childhood. Other groups were given different interventions to try out. In the arm of the trial that interests us, people were asked to list three things that had gone well that day and what caused them to go well. Over the next few months, the volunteers in all the groups were given scales to measure their happiness.

The results were impressive. Notably, within a month, the people who were assigned the three good things task began to show improvements in their happiness levels as well as a decrease in depressive symptoms – with the positive effects lasting for the six months of the study.

Meanwhile those in the placebo group saw a brief spike in happiness in the first week, but their mood soon returned to baseline, and there was no change at the six month follow up.

One reason that the three good things strategy can work is because it begins to counter the hard-wired tendency we have as humans to register and remember the negative rather than the positive. There's a strong evolutionary reason why we think this way: it's vital for our survival. So, we hardly notice if a small cat is following us up the street, but if it was a lion we certainly would. Our brains are primed for danger in order to keep us safe. Which is fine, except that in a world of war and suffering, hatred and division – all of which we can instantly access on our phones – this negativity bias can overwhelm us.

An important element of the three good things exercise is that it helps us to focus on the positive in a concrete way. And although I've been suggesting it's an end-ofthe-day exercise, its real strength lies in the fact that the impact soon begins to spread through the day. You find yourself searching out good things to add to your list from the moment you get up. (Whenever I get my favourite seat at the front of the top deck of the bus I think to myself, that's one for my list. How lucky!) And before you know it you are training yourself not only to look out for threats, but for good things too.

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      When we set out to study pandemic-related changes in schools, we thought we’d find that learning management systems that rely on technology to improve teaching would make educators’ jobs easier. We believed technology would mean positive stimulus to teachers. Instead, our data and analyses showed that teachers whose schools were using learning management systems had higher rates of burnout.

      During the phenomenon of the covid-19 pandemic, when schools across the country were under lockdown orders, schools adopted new technologies to facilitate remote learning during the crisis. These technologies included learning management systems, which are online platforms that help educators organize and keep track of their coursework.

     We were puzzled to find that teachers who used a learning management system such as Canvas or Schoology reported higher levels of burnout. Ideally, these tools should have simplified their jobs. We also thought these systems would improve teachers’ ability to organize documents and assignments, mainly because they would house everything digitally, and thus, reduce the need to print documents or bring piles of student work home to grade.

   However, the data told a different story. Instead of being used to replace old ways of completing tasks, the learning management systems were simply another thing on teachers’ plates.

(David T. Marshall, Teanna Moore & Timothy Pressley, 01.07.2025. Disponível em: https://theconversation.com. Adaptado)

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          Francois Gouin wanted to learn German, and decided that a year in Germany would be just the thing. At the time of his trip to Germany, you would have found a rather well-prepared, confident Francois Gouin who, despite his young age, is already a gifted Latin and Greek professor.

      With language learning already part of his career, he is encouraged by his advisors at the College of Caen (Normandy, France) to follow his pursuit of German and deepen his studies at the University of Berlin. Excited with his prospects, Gouin takes his determination and suitcases, and sets off for Hamburg.

     Once in beautiful Hamburg, with its countless shops and bustling academic centers, Gouin unpacks his suitcases, and immediately begins his language journey. He spends the first 10 days in seclusion studying in his room. With him, he has a grammar book and a dictionary. He believes languages are learned using “the classical process”, a process he says he used for mastering Latin and Greek. To Gouin, the classical process is the study of language through “an acquaintance of its forms.” In other words, to learn a language, he feels it best to faithfully study grammar and vocabulary!

      After ten days of seclusion, he feels supremely confident, and is anxious to try out his skills. To experiment with his new knowledge, he decides to visit some university classes. Any guesses how that went? Well, Gouin is in for a surprise. Here are his own words: “But alas! In vain did I strain my ears; in vain my eye strove to interpret the slightest movements of the lips of the professor; in vain I passed from the first classroom to a second; not a word, not a single word would penetrate to my understanding.”

(Shane Dixon. The language learner guidebook: powerful tools to help you conquer any language. [S.l.]: Wayzgoose, 2018.)

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     Inside the classroom, some learners seem to take advantage of what is going on more than others. Aware of this, teachers will frequently say that successful students possess some or all of the following characteristics.

1. A willingness to listen: good learners listen to what is going on – not just in the sense of paying attention, but also in terms of really listening to the English that is being used, soaking it up with eagerness and intelligence.

2. A willingness to try new things: many good learners are not afraid to ‘have a go’. They are prepared to try things out and see how it works. Of course, not all successful language learners are extroverts, but the urge to use the language (loudly or quietly) is an important one.

3. A willingness to think about how to learn: good learners bring or invent their own study skills when they come to a lesson. They think about the best way to memorize vocabulary, the best way to read a text (slowly, translating every word? Or quickly, trying to get a general understanding?), the best method of drafting and re-drafting a piece of writing.

4. A willingness to ask questions: although some teachers can become irritated by students who are constantly asking difficult (and sometimes irrelevant) questions, the urge to find out why is part of a successful learner’s equipment.

5. A willingness to accept correction: good learners are prepared to accept corrections if it helps them. They are keen to get feedback from the teacher and act upon what they are told. But this only works where teachers are able to offer constructive criticism. It involves teachers in judging their students’ responses to correction so that they can act accordingly.

(Jeremy Harmer. How to teach English, 1998. Adaptado)