Think in English

Question

This article is very interesting and I'm trying to do it. searchwarp.com/swa9345.htmIt isn't so easy but I want to speak English good and hope to find more different ways.

Pieanne · Accepted Answer

It's quite a good idea! But I'd like to stress that reading in English will also help you a lot to think in English.

CalifJim · Answer

That's a good approach. And don't forget to vary the patterns you learn by substituting other words at a fixed position in the sentence. "I see the tree", "I see the road", "I see the flowers", "I see the plate", etc. And then there are the cases where you transform the pattern itself in a regular way. "Do you see that tree?" "Yes, I see that tree". "Can you hear the wind?" "No, I can't hear the wind?" "Do you shop at Macy's?", etc. The patterns, substitutions, and transformations are endless. Mastering "all the patterns" is, in effect, knowing the language!

I once heard that a word or expression must be used in a meaningful way at least 400 times before it is "yours" forever, so yes, repetition, no matter how tiresome, is necessary.

CJ

Klavier · Answer

That website says that, for ex., for the word 'book' you must see it  and not translate it into your mother tongue, well that's easy, the  next time I have this 'thing' in my hands I could say: this is a BOOK  instead of 'libro', but what about words like honesty, humble, promise,  how can I think in these words in English?

CalifJim · Answer

True, the abstactions have to be approached a little differently, and they take a little longer to "think in English". In these cases, there are really two approaches.

1) You imagine a scene in which the word applies. "honesty" might be the face of a friend telling you something. The look on his or her face is such that you feel how honestly he or she is speaking. "humble" might be a mental image of a person you know -- or a character in a novel or film -- who you feel is humble. "promise" may require you to dig into your own personal feelings to the time you made an important promise to someone. You need to get in touch with how you felt then, when you made that promise. And so on. Even with abstractions, repetition is important. You have to use the new word in as many sentences as you can.

2) The second approach is that you learn the meaning of the abstractions through language itself. I mean that when you read, you see that words are being used in certain contexts. You learn the meaning of a certain word by guessing the meaning from all the other words around it, not by looking it up in a dictionary. Once you get this far -- and this can't start to make sense until after you have mastered quite a few words -- you will sometimes not even know exactly how to express a series of English words in your native language even though you know perfectly well what that series of words means inside your mind. I can't overstress the importance of reading for this purpose -- especially materials that really interest and excite you.

CJ

Jesusloving · Answer

yep~~it's a good idea to think in English~~a better way to improve your English

Worksboy · Answer

I agree with it ~!

I think I could learn more from there.

I will try my best to practice English by thinking in English.

Thank you all!

Anonymous · Answer

Hi ! Pieanne

When i speak english i feel hard to express in english word what i am thinking to say and i think more about to say grammitical correct english which makes me hard to speak english fluently.

Raj

Pieanne · Answer

Hi, Raj!

You ought to read in English, and watch / listen to/ films etc in English - with subtitles-. The main thing is to get a grip on the vocabulary. There are many useful threads/posts in the Forums to do so. Don't worry too much about grammar, it will come !

SsnowFlake · Answer

if you going to watch movie I suggest tou you watch it with english suntitle and take a note

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