Hey guys and welcome back to live English I'm Sabrah your British
University English teacher and as you can see we're in a bit more of a relaxed
setting today I'm in my lounge so we're going to have a little bit more of a
relaxed lesson and we're really going to be focusing on how to help you stop
translating and start thinking in English which can be a very tricky thing
I know
so these are my honest tips and they are based on observations of watching
hundreds of students learn English over the years but also I've drawn on my own
experience as an English Learner as I've learned Spanish and Italian so they're
my honest ideas and hopefully they're going to work for you now one thing I
want to say guys is that if you can't stop translating which can be very
difficult and I'm sure you've heard a million times translating stop
translating but I'm sure some of you are still maybe finding you do it and this
is because it's very hard to not want to cling to our mother tongue to not want
to know how to express something called what that word would be in our mother
tongue but at the same time I want you to have at the front of your mind that
if you do that it's actually quite destructive because you create
fossilized errors which mean that you're still trying to express yourself in your
mother tongue so you try and use the structure from your own language or use
the way that you would say that in your own language and kind of marry it with
English so superimpose that on to English and this can create errors a
good example of this would be and I'm going to single out Spanish students
don't be offended I could have picked any nationality this was just a very
easy example a lot of Spanish speakers still use the prepositions the way they
do in Spanish in English and it can sound quite strange because we use a
different preposition so if they haven't learned the correct preposition if no
one has corrected them over time they will still be saying it wrong and I've
heard very advanced speakers who are still making basic mistakes with
prepositions because they haven't learned their basics there and they
haven't stopped thinking in their own language they haven't transitioned to
thinking in English so number one is to change your living space to your English
learning zone so change your home to more of an English learning zone this is
actually how you can immerse yourself in the language because of course this is
how you are triggered to think in English the more you see
it the more you hear it you're going to thinking it's a lot more which is why
speakers who go and live in the country where that language that they're trying
to learn is spoken they do learn much more quickly if you can't do that if you
can't come to the UK if you can't go to the States then you can turn your home
into an English learning zone I'm going to explain to you how to do this when I
was learning Spanish I labeled literally everything I could find in my home with
the word in Spanish to help me learn all of those everyday items around the house
in my kitchen I also had lists of how to describe things in terms of taste I had
food idioms in Spanish there when I was cooking I could be looking at those
things every time I picked something out like the cheese grater I knew I could
see the word in Spanish it was very irritating for the people I lived with
it was super super helpful for me and it kept triggering me to think thinking in
Spanish so it's a really really good thing to do you could do for example
there might be somewhere in your house where you exercise and you could put up
a list there of all the ways in which we can exercise and for example the
movement you like to do so stretching bending so perhaps in your bedroom you
might want to put things like verbalist that you want to learn or adjectives
whatever but be creative and have fun with this and every time then that
you're even doing something where you're not learning English necessarily or not
focusing at least you can glance at it and somewhere that information will be
going in and it can also trigger you of course to start making sentences in
English so if you see those labels up in your kitchen you can think what am i
cooking today in my kitchen how would I say that in English how am I going to
prepare it how would I say it in English the second thing is to use all of your
five senses to learn so every time that you experience something new or
interesting I want you to use your five senses if you can you can't do this for
everything but if you can to describe that thing in English so what does it
smell like what does it taste like what does
it sound like does it have a sound and start them making those sentences in
English you could tell another person if they're there but if not you can just
talk to yourself or make sentences you could try this thing in English with
your five senses exercise when you're commuting to work for example when
you're doing the dishes when you're doing household activities when you're
in the shower when you're out shopping just as long as you're starting to make
those sentences in English and really pushing yourself with with vocabulary as
well it will help you number three is make sure that you wake
up reading or listening to something in English and then when you fall asleep
also fall asleep listening to something in English or reading something in
English so it can be quite a passive activity if you're tired but you want to
tell your brain that English is part of your everyday routines this is why I say
first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening now I do understand
you might be tired at those times but even if you are just glancing at
articles in English or looking at some of your vocabulary lists or listening to
a podcast that's on in the background or the TV is on in the background in
English whatever but you are telling your brain English is part of my
everyday routine and it will actually get you starting to think in English
throughout the day and also at night it could help you to transition into
dreaming in English if you listen to a podcast or watch something in English
again if you're tired it can be quite passive but you're still going to be
absorbing the subconscious mind it's still going to be absorbing all of that
information or most of it and you're still going to be paying attention to
things like the pronunciation the vocab some where your brain is still taking
that in so it could help you to also get that further into your mind so to help
it stay in your mind or even to dream in English so it's still helping your brain
transition now before is quite a unique tip but I really like it it's basically
to use your learner style to help you to think in English
now some of you may know this and some of you may not but basically some of us
are more visual some of us are more auditory so listening some of us are
more reading and writing and some of us are kinesthetic so it means we like
learning through touch and physical movement very often people are a
combination of two of these or even three
so for example I'm auditory and visual predominantly now your learner style is
basically the way your brain takes in information best so as long as you know
it and do those activities you'll actually learn so much better because
you're clinging to your strengths so you're doing the things that but
actually really enhance learning and will really enhance that transitioning
over to thinking in English so if you're like me and you're more auditory going
out and having conversations with people joining conversation group is going to
be essential to your learning and helping you think in English so that's
really important you do that and also probably you'll have a lot more fun you
could also listen to podcast YouTube all of those things that we've talked about
if you're more kinesthetic then you're going to like movement you're going to
like touching things so the learning with the five senses is really going to
help you and using your sense of smell so thinking about describing things that
you can smell in English thus describing things that you can
touch so using that activity we did before really going to help you but also
things like for example when you're doing exercise you could be listening to
songs in English you could be listening to podcast and you'll absorb the
information better because you're moving if you're more visual seeing English
everywhere as much as possible looking at for example and verb lace or boat cab
you Larry or things on Instagram that help you with learning that's all going
to help you a lot flick through things in English on the
bus as much as possible some of these things they don't require a hundred
percent concentration so use your learner style to maximize how much you
think in English number five is to learn vocabulary in phrases not single
words if you learn just one word it's quite hard to be able to remember that
word and you will find that you don't necessarily keep it in your head for
very long it'll be floating around without a
connection our brains love patterns they love connections so immediately try to
link it with something else so imagine you've just learnt the word crowd or
you've learnt the word gregarious I immediately tried to put it in a phrase
so what is a gregarious person like well they're sociable who do I know that
sociable my aunt Louisa she's super sociable so she's gregarious my aunt
Louisa is gregarious she just loves throwing a party with phrasal verbs this
is particularly important I often have students tell me I know the phrasal
verbs or I kind of made them but I never use them I don't actually include them
in daily conversation and it's because you haven't started to put them in a
phrase so let's look at the phrasal verb to catch up to catch up means to try to
be at the same level as someone else in your life have you had to catch up
before have you ever been behind it could have been that you were having to
catch up at school because you had some time off or it could have been that
someone was running ahead of you and you had to catch up with them so start to
think of examples and obviously make those relevant to you as that will help
you as well number six this is my most serious tip this is all about discipline
now thinking in English and stopping translating does not necessarily come
naturally especially if you're not living in the country you have to apply
a little bit of discipline so when you reach for Google Translate when you
start thinking I want to translate that or just not sure let me translate stop
think do you want to have fossilized errors in ten years do you want to still
be making the same mistakes that you're making today or do you want to stock
that so I want you to have that picture in your mind of the fossil think do I
want to still be making these mistakes in ten years and hopefully that will
make resist you also do have to make a
conscious effort to think in English it's not going to happen naturally the
tips I've given you today will help inspire you and trigger you into
thinking in English but you have to make the effort so wherever you go whatever
you're doing try to spend even if it's just five minutes describing things
about your environment describing what you're doing thinking about your friends
how you would describe them but using that time to consciously just shift over
into English as much as you can right guys I hope these tips have been useful
for you today do share below any other tips you may have and your experience of
perhaps leaving behind translation and starting to think in English are you
doing it be honest with me I'd love to hear about that in the comments below
we'll see you in the next video guys bye bye