Thinking in English? Let's rethink this advice!

You’ve probably heard that you need to stop translating everything from your language into English before you say it. 

You know that translating slows you down. It also leads to mistakes because word-for-word translations often don’t work. Maybe in English, we would use a different tense, a different preposition or a different word order, for example.

But how do you stop translating everything? How do you break this habit?

Many people say that the solution is to learn to think in English. I’ve even said the same myself in the past. But I’ve been thinking about what that really means and now I would like to challenge this idea a bit.

One problem is that our thoughts are not always made up of words and sentences – in any language. A lot of our thinking happens in abstract ideas, images and emotions.

Another problem is that thinking in English is a difficult thing to do. For people who are already worried about their English and their progress, it can feel like just adding unnecessary pressure. 

And the third problem is that I believe the reasoning is the wrong way round. You don’t become fluent because you learn to think in English. Rather, as you become more fluent, you may start thinking in English without even trying to. 

When we’re talking in our first language, we usually don’t consciously plan every sentence before we say it. That would still be quite slow. Speaking is a lot more automatic than that. The thought processes involved are fast and unconscious.

And that’s where you want to be eventually with your English. 

So the goal isn’t to construct or hear English sentences in your mind before you say them out loud. The goal is to become so familiar with English that you can speak automatically without really needing to think consciously at all.

I’m not actually disagreeing with or contradicting other teachers because I know what they are trying to say. I’m just trying to explain it in a different and more precise way.

So how can you speak English more quickly and automatically without having to translate in your head first? Here are some suggestions:

1) Get lots of input. You need to do lots of reading and listening. Read and listen to things which are the right level for you. This way, you don’t have to translate every word in order to understand so it helps to break the habit.

2) Learn vocabulary chunks. By this I mean that you should learn common phrases and short sentences so that you don’t have to construct everything you say one word at a time.

3) Describe what you’re doing as you go about your day. You can say it out loud, or silently practise forming simple sentences in your mind. Keep it simple and forget about trying to be perfect. The idea is just to go straight from your idea to words without thinking about the grammar or searching your memory for words.

4) Use a monolingual dictionary - a dictionary where English words are explained in English. That will help to reduce your reliance on translation.

These activities will help you to gradually be able to speak a bit faster and more automatically. It won’t happen overnight but you will get there with practice.

I’m learning German at the moment and even though I’m at a very low level, there are certain simple sentences which come to me automatically and without translation. When I need to say something more complicated, I still need to translate. And that’s okay for my level.

A final thought. Translating isn’t always a bad thing to do. You may have seen criticism of translation as a learning method, or of apps like Duolingo that use translation exercises. But translation itself isn’t always wrong.

When I translate from English to German, or German to English, it helps me to see the similarities and differences between the two languages and I find that really helpful. But this is in my study time and not in the middle of a conversation!

To summarise, the goal is not to learn to think in English. The goal is to speak English more automatically.

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