How To Think In English | Advice From Personal Experience

Hey guys what's up Stefanie the English coach here from englishfulltime.com

and in this video we are going to talk about how to think in English now when I

was in college and I was studying Spanish and I did you know all of my

classes in Spanish and I had professors that were native Spanish speakers one of

my professors would always say you just need to think in Spanish and that would

actually piss me off because I was like I would do it if I

knew how or if it was would come natural to me but the thing is it didn't it's

like I would have to force myself to think in Spanish and sometimes I would

have to translate in my head you know because I didn't have as much experience

speaking the language and she would just make me and the whole class feel really

bad because she would just say you just have to force yourself to think in

Spanish and I was like that's not what I want I want to be able to think in

Spanish the way that I think in English I don't want to have to plan what I'm

going to say before I say it I want to just be able to open my mouth and speak

Spanish right that's what I wanted well I learned from experience that that only

comes after you've been exposed to enough of the language for a long time

okay so I didn't start thinking in Spanish

and when you think in the language in a foreign language that's basically when

you're like fluent in that language I don't mean when you force yourself to

think in a language I mean when you can think in a language as naturally as you

think in your native language and you don't lack expressions you don't lack

vocabulary you can just like I can just sit here and think in Spanish if I want

I can just talk in Spanish if I want I'm fluent in Spanish right that doesn't

come right away it comes with time and you can't force yourself to think in a

language and think that that is enough that that is what will get you fluent in

the language what you need is enough exposure to the language so you want to

know how to think in English well you're going to achieve that by speaking in

English regularly with other people by surrounding yourself with English by

immersing yourself in English and that is how you're going to be able to think

in English it'll come with time and it comes

gradually so you're not going to realize it at first because you're learning

you're growing you're learning new vocabulary but then you realize it when

you look back and go wow look how far I've come now I think in English like I

don't I didn't even realize that this happened when did this happen because

there isn't like a moment where you cross over okay so obviously we can all

sit there and think of vocabulary in a foreign language and force ourselves to

do that but if you want to be able to think in English naturally you need to

be surrounded with a lot of English over a long period of time okay it comes it

comes with time and the cool thing is once you do this you may even start

dreaming in English a lot of people get so excited when they have their first

dream in a foreign language I know I did when I first started dreaming in Spanish

it was awesome because that's when you know you're really starting to think in

a foreign language so anyhow let me know what you guys think about this in the

comments I'm sorry I couldn't give you you know a step-by-step method of this

is how you think in English in a foreign language it just doesn't work like that

if you're not thinking in English if you still have to translate in your head it

is because you're not surrounding yourself with enough English or you

haven't been studying it for enough time okay it's your brain will naturally

start thinking in the language that it is surrounded with that is just how it's

programmed that's just how it works you won't even have to think about thinking

in the language you just will because our natural urges are to communicate and

you will have that urge to communicate in whatever language you communicate in

frequently okay so let me know what you guys think about this in the comments

and I will see you in another video bye hey guys thanks so much for watching

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