Stop Translating in Your Head! Think in English

What's up everyone! I'm Andrea your Reallife English fluency coach and in today's lesson we are talking all about how to think in english and stop translating in your head So you might think to yourself what's the problem with translating in your head? well apart from the fact that it's going to take very long to communicate to your response to someone it can be very very stressful you're going to put yourself in a situation where you're putting your brain under a lot of unnecessary stress and it's going to be working overtime to try and translate what's being said to you but also to then translate what you want to say so if you're having a conversation with someone you're already trying to understand what they're saying to you so you're translating that information and then while they're talking you're then thinking of your response and if you're thinking in your native language you're actually going to then have to translate what you are thinking into english now this takes a lot of time and by the time you respond you're probably going to be quite flustered you're probably going to be a bit frustrated with how long it's taking you to respond and the person that you're speaking to might not be very patient so in today's lesson i'm going to be giving you some great tips on how to think in english and stop translating in your head and also without taking too much time to respond to someone in case you're new here i want to let you know that we are here to guide you beyond the classroom so be sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell down below so that you don't miss any of our new lessons so before we get into all the practical elements of what you can do to start thinking in english there's some really important information that i would like to share with you the key to language fluency and thinking in a foreign language is to get rid of the perception that it has to be perfect aiming for perfection could lead you to what experts call... so, you might be listening to this and start thinking oh my gosh this sounds a little bit like me when i speak i want everything to be perfect and then i freeze and i cannot communicate and i cannot speak so this is really important to think about when we are working through the lesson and all the practical things that you can do to stop translating in your head and start thinking in english you need to stop thinking about being perfect and you just need to start thinking about communicating effectively and this is really going to help you in your english language journey so that you can start communicating more effectively and more naturally so the first thing that you can do to start thinking in english is to start with simple vocabulary now you can start this right now have a look around the room that you're in and start naming objects in your head so you can think about the objects and just start thinking about the name of them and if you don't know the name of them you can write it down and check it later this is a great way to start thinking in english so just take a few seconds now have a look around the room that you're in and just spot some different things and think in english what is the name of that object this is a great starting point because if you think about the way that babies and children learn is that they start by being immersed in the language just by absorbing all of this vocabulary they don't ever need to translate their first language because they just learn it from scratch without having to translate anything in their head and studies have shown that this could also be true for second language learners so even if you're much older and you're learning english later on in life you actually don't need to translate everything to learn the language if you take this approach if you think about a small child what happens is they repeat the words a lot so they start repeating all the vocabulary that they're learning many times they're practicing using it so this is what you should do as well all it takes is five minutes a day to look around the room that you're in or you may be outside somewhere and think in english start naming the objects in your head and this is a great practice to develop thinking in english but also remembering vocabulary now if you do struggle to learn vocabulary ethan created a great lesson recently on how to remember vocabulary so you can click up here or in the description box below to watch that lesson later on by thinking of these words in english you are less likely to have to translate them in your head because your first thought when you see this object will be in english so i highly recommend that you try this so while you're doing this there are many other things that you can practice not only learning new vocabulary but you can also practice pronunciation as well if you come across some objects that you don't know the word in english then i highly recommend that first you practice describing this object in a different way still in english because this is a really useful tool for fluency and also what you can do is you can keep a little book with you or a little journal or diary and you can note down the word in your native language and then you can ask your teacher or you can look up the word later now this can be really useful because you're going to have a bank of vocabulary new vocabulary that you can learn and that you can keep practicing and once you know the word in english whenever you see that object you can start identifying it in english thinking about that object in english as well if you'd like a bit more structure and guidance to progress on your english language journey then i highly recommend our real life native immersion course which will take you on a 41 week real life english language adventure each week you'll explore a different topic related to our goal to help you understand and use real native english and making it a permanent part of your life and the best part is you can try it right now for free with our three-part power learning series all you have to do is click up here or in the description box below to learn more and sign up now i highly recommend it so after starting with simple vocabulary you can then move on to simple sentences so what i recommend you do is to start thinking and start narrating what you are doing so say for example you are doing your laundry at home you can start thinking about the process you can start thinking about what you're doing if you're separating the colors if you then start putting the clothes into the machine you can actually narrate what you are doing ah time to relax this sofa is so comfy oh i love this cushion cozy you could even do this while you're walking down the street you can make observations on the things that you're seeing and it doesn't have to be very elaborate and super descriptive you can start off with simple sentences it's just a great way again to train your brain to start thinking in english it's so hot today did i remember to put sun cream on i didn't bring any water out with me maybe i should go and buy some the roads are quiet today this taxi driver is driving really fast there's not many people out a great way to build on narrating what you are doing in english is to have small conversations with yourself now this might sound a bit strange to you to begin with but it's a really great way to prepare for when you go out in the real world and you start having conversations with people if you think about a really successful athlete what do they have to do before they go out and perform in a race or a competition they practice they repeat what they do constantly to perfect it so you can do the same oh gosh it's so hot today oh that breeze feels nice i'm sure we said that we were going to meet at four o'clock i wonder where ethan is you could even look at it as a performance so you're preparing for when you go out on the stage to actually speak english in the real world it's a great way to prepare and it can really build your confidence as well if you are interested in building your confidence and having a different way of thinking about your english language journey we did a great lesson over on learn english with tv series with cristiano ronaldo who is also an english language learner and there are many things that we can learn from him when learning a language so if you're interested in watching that i highly recommend it you can click up here or in the description box below to watch it straight after this lesson with this one you can even create a script to fully prepare for a situation that you're going to be in so to fully prepare for this what you can do is write a script and actually practice it that way when you do go out and you start speaking in english you're already fully prepared you have memorized some things you have vocabulary you've already kind of experienced it in a way and so it's not a completely new situation or scenario for you it could also really be useful to actually think of questions and answers in your head so you can even have this conversation with yourself you can ask questions you could imagine you're speaking to a friend and you'd be saying the questions and then giving the answers as well and it's just another way to prepare for when you are actually doing this in the real world there are so many ways that you can do this you can do it when you take your dog for a walk you can do it when you're in the shower literally when you're doing anything that doesn't require you to think too much so that the focus is on thinking english it's astonishing but the brain cannot tell the difference between real and imagined action in fact in one study the brain actually sent the same signal to the legs when someone imagined running at the same time as when they did actually run so what this tells us is that the brain doesn't distinguish between visualization and between the real thing so if you practice this beforehand your brain is going to be sending the same signals as when you are really in that situation and actually having a conversation with somebody another great way to start thinking in english that you can start doing right now is to change just one of your life things into english so for example this could be changing the language on your laptop or changing the language on your phone even changing your calendar you could start journaling in english if you wanted to or you could even change one social media app to english so here you have a lot of options and you only have to start with one thing and then later on you can start to build from this as you get more confident and more comfortable with it okay so let's write the shopping list so that i don't forget anything today what do we need okay we need bread milk eggs bananas maybe i'll make aubergine palm yeah we'll get some aubergines mozzarella tomatoes great when i first moved to barcelona and i went to visit my school for the first time and then started working there it wasn't so tech savvy and by that i mean that the technology wasn't really advanced or wasn't really up to date to be honest and so in my classroom i had a computer where i wasn't even able to change the language into english now this forced me obviously to have to learn how to use this computer in spanish but what was great about it was that i learned so much vocabulary related to the use of a computer in spanish and when i was thinking about what i was doing and trying to find documents or showing people something on my computer i was thinking of these words in spanish not in english because i associated my experience and all the vocabulary related to this in spanish first so this is something that i really recommend i've experienced too and it really works so i highly recommend you just change one of your life things and then once you do that you're going to find that you're going to want to change quite a lot of others as well once you get comfortable with these things as well another great tool is to google information in english especially if you're learning something new because like me with the computer if you're googling information in english then you're more likely to think about that information in english so it's just another way of training your brain to think in english without translating in your head not only this but a great bonus is the fact that most of the information on the web really great sources of information are in english so you're going to maybe find some better or just a more range of vocabulary and information on the topic that you are researching okay so my next tip might seem like an obvious one but it's so important so it has to be in this lesson and that is to listen to english as much as possible the great news is that there are so many ways that you can do this with all of the resources available to you right now you can start by listening to the radio you can listen to your favorite song and you can actually sit down and think of the words and start to write the words down so that you can learn the words to one of your favorite songs then you're going to start thinking of the words in english and then singing it and so it can be something really fun and a fun way to practice thinking in english you can listen to podcasts and a great way to start with this is with the real life english podcast where we have so many great lessons for you to learn english in a fun natural and convenient way so i'll put that link down in the description box below so that you can check that out later if you haven't already so my next tip for you is to choose one new thing to learn in english now this can be really fun because you should choose something that you've really been wanting to learn for a while what i recommend you do is that you only watch videos only read instructions only read information about this one new thing that you are learning in english now this could be anything it could be learning a new recipe trying a new hairstyle so learning about that before you do it or a dance class or some sort of sports activity you could even learn to draw in english so what you need to do is make sure that the information that you are watching or reading about it is in english only and this is key in thinking in english because if you do this the only reference that your brain will have is in english not in your native language for example when i first moved here i really wanted to try pilates reformer classes which is pilates using the equipment which i hadn't done in england before so when i started i had no idea about the body parts in spanish the equipment ways of moving your body or anything so everything that i learned was in spanish i had no choice but to learn it in spanish because at that time there were no classes like this in english but also i saw it as a great opportunity to learn more spanish and immerse myself in the language so when i think about this exercise or the parts of the body related to different movements i'm thinking in spanish because my only reference is spanish not english at all so the same can happen for you if you learn one new thing in english then you're only going to be thinking about it in english so it's a great way again to train your brain and to practice thinking in english my next great way to help you start thinking in english is to plan and recap your day in english so this is a great way to get started in the morning when you wake up to start thinking in english one great way is to have a radio in english as your alarm because then already you're immersing yourself in the language so you're more likely to start thinking in english or when you're waking up and you're in bed or you're making your morning coffee or tea you can start thinking about your day in english so you can just start thinking about what you have planned that day what you're going to be doing and the more that you do this again you're going to train your brain to think about this in english not only starting your day with english but also ending it can really lead to great things you can think about what you did that day how it went if you had a good time or if there's something you would do differently and that way the last thing you're doing before you go to sleep is thinking in english too this could even lead to you dreaming in english which really could actually happen so we've learned lots of different ways in how you can start thinking in english and stop translating in your head but you must remember to do these things consistently and frequently so you don't have to do everything you just need to start with one of these things and you can set yourself a 30-day challenge because studies show that you need at least 30 days of doing something consistently to make it a habit to make it part of your routine so i challenge you to choose one of these things that we've spoken about here today one of these things that you've learned today that you can start doing now and you need to practice it every day for 30 days then it's more likely to become a habit once you've done this you could then choose another thing and do that for 30 days alongside the first thing that you chose and then you can keep building on from that and you'll see how quickly you'll start to think in english more and more you can even think about including your family or friends in this maybe they're going to help you to make you accountable you might even come up with a rule with your children that in the morning when you eat breakfast together you speak only in english you might even have a work colleague who is also learning english and you can decide together on one of these things that you're going to do and you can check up on each other as well so i guarantee you that if you start doing this you are going to start thinking in english and having to translate in your head much less i've experienced it myself and i know that these things work so i wish you the best of luck don't forget to choose just at least one of these things to start doing today and also don't forget to check out all the amazing resources that we have down in the description box below that are going to help you progress even more in your english language journey and i'll see you in the next lesson

Channel: RealLife English

Views: 111,735

Rating: 4.954246 out of 5

Keywords: think in english stop translating in your head, stop translating in your head, stop translating in your head & think directly in english, how to stop translating in your head, think in english, how to think in english, how to think in english easily, how to think in english like a native speaker, learn to think in english, ways to think in english, stop translating english, start thinking in english, english fluency, how to understand native english speakers, speak english faster

Id: qTMlPGnfHaU

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020