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

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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