Do you still do mental gymnastics to go from one language to another?
Yes, ma'am.
Do you struggle thinking in Spanish in spite of studying the language for years?
Yes, ma'am.
Do you need to stop in the middle of the sentence to translate that word you need?
Yes, ma'am.
Welcome to WNS. Today we'll talk about why you still translate from your language to Spanish
Every time you open your mouth to say something.
What's translating? Is going from one language to another using one of the languages as your foundation to produce or understand the other language.
Translating is also a learning strategy. What's a strategy?
It's a tool that comes as set of actions or behaviors that help you learn or understand another language
Translating can help you improve your Spanish, especially, your vocabulary.
Why? Because it helps you create connections between words or full sentences from different languages
Plus, when you start learning, it's a tool that helps you get familiar with the language little by little.
Translating gives you that sense of immediate gratification when it comes to understanding what's going on (like having these subtitles ;) )
It's easy and fast and you get rid of the problem of communicating a sentence or a word.
Well... if it's so useful, why can it be a problem?
You might have already noticed that when you translate word by word
What you say might not make much sense. It is words in Spanish, but it's not Spanish.
The other day, we were at the gym with a friend
And Cody was working out his legs.
And he said: my legs are pasta. My friend and I were lost...
What Cody meant was that his legs felt so weak that they felt like pasta.
Like cooked pasta...
But we don't say that in Spanish so for us it was a weird comment.
So when you translate directly, language doesn't sound natural and you end up being "the weirdo".
Besides that, translating in your head eventually becomes a bad habit.
I bet you end up tired. It's like doing mental gymnastics.
You speak, you stop, you think, you translate, and in the mean time
The person who is listening to you gets bored and looks at their phone.
The question might be why do you still translate?
Some people say it might be out of fear of not saying things correctly
Fear of mixing up structures and saying things like: what do you do yesterday?
Not being confident enough on your skills or not having enough vocabulary or knowledge of the language to say what you mean.
This is what's up: many students when learning a language, we want to make the new language logical to us.
It's a valuable process but sometimes we generalize all the rules we've learnt
Or we transfer expressions directly from our language to the new one.
It's like we come up with a mutant, hybrid language between the one we speak and the one we learn.
It's a normal thing that happens at the beginning of our learning process
but some students can't get over that phase because they over analyze or over use those strategies.
So, Maria, how can we prevent or fix that bad habit? I'll tell you...
Translating is fine to create connections / relations and learn new words, but it's also important to use OTHER strategies like...
DESCRIBING or PARAPHRASING: Saying the same thing using other words.
Example: I can't find the "highlighter" NO! Instead, describe: I can't find that marker we use to color sentences in a book...
Oh! the resaltador! You do take longer, but it benefits you a lot more
Learn to use CHUNKS. It's frequent combination of words we use everyday to sound more natural
Don't question language SO MUCH! It's OK to try to find a connection between the language we speak and the one we learn,
but sometimes it's just better to ACCEPT there's ways to say things
that make NO sense in our language.
And it's not worth it to do the exercise to translate or analyze every single word.
Listen ACTIVELY. Listen to audios in Spanish.
Take notes, say /write your opinion, think about the topic or share your experience about the topic.
Try to get used to organizing all that INPUT in CHUNKS. How? Taking notes,
saying it in your words, highlighting.
These activities prepare you to use the language when speaking or writing.
Let me know in the comments: What's your opinion?
Do you have the habit of translating in your head?
And how do you think translating helps you learn Spanish?
And how can it be an obstacle to keep on learning?
That's all for now, subscribe, give the video a like, and if you're going to learn a language: Why Not Spanish?