How To Think In A Foreign Language

How many languages do you think in?

Most people aren’t aware of the fact that when we think we actually do so by conversing with ourselves internally using our native language.

We think, rationalize and make sense of what we see and feel using real language in a constant dialogue within our own minds.

One fairly common term for this is what many people refer to as the inner voice (or monologue). Training this inner voice to use your target language rather than your native language is crucial in your progress toward fluency.

The Wrong Way – Thinking In Your Native Language While Speaking A Foreign Language

When you’re learning a new language, especially in the early stages when you have limited vocabulary and comprehension, you’ll tend to communicate in this order:

1. Hear the foreign language

2. Internally pull it apart and translate it using your native language

3. Internally translate an answer using your native language

4. Speak in the foreign language

As you can imagine, this process slows down the flow of conversation immensely as your mind’s always scanning the input and trying to produce a translation and response.

By this time the other person you’re chatting with is ahead of you in the conversation and has to slow down or stop and clarify meaning.

On top of all this the grammar and word-order of your native language interferes with that of your foreign language resulting in confusion and mistranslation.

This is a natural habit that even the best of us struggle to break.

Understanding How Information (Language) Processing In The Brain Works

Knowing a thing or two about how the brain accesses information (in this case linguistic information) will help you in your endeavor to think with your target language.

When your brain accesses stored information about a language (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc.), it does so in one of two ways – automatic or controlled.

Automatic access is effortless on your part, something that through repeated practice you’ve developed automatic routines and patterns that you don’t have to think about when performing them, and on top of that you can perform several automatic tasks at the same time with ease. For example, your native language is an automatic process and it’s simple for you to speak while doing something else, e.g. talking while driving.

Controlled processes are, as the name implies, controlled by yourself. These processes are voluntary and occur where you haven’t had enough practice or exposure to develop routines.

You have to actually think about what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

To understand what I mean, try speaking a language that you don’t know very well while driving a car – it’s very difficult to focus on what you’re trying to say while your mind’s occupied with something else.

The reason why training yourself to think in your target language is so important is that it will rapidly speed up its shift from being a slow, strictly controlled process to more fluid and automatic.

Your goal here is to make thinking in your target language an automatic, natural reflex which will ultimately do the same for your speaking.

Tips On How To Train Your Mind To Think In Your Target Language

Training yourself to think in a foreign language is an exercise in mind discipline – much like meditation.

It can be quite challenging at first, but if you follow these tips you’ll notice huge improvements in your foreign language acquisition in no time at all:

Play target language music over and over. When I first started learning Arabic I used to play Egyptian pop music constantly while I was driving and at home. The lyrics would get stuck in my head even though I didn’t know the meaning of all the words. It’s an excellent way to condition your mind to start thinking in another language.

Are you a religious person? Pray in your target language! Not religious? Talk to yourself! If your target language level is high enough to hold a basic conversation, I highly recommend you do this regularly especially if you don’t have contact with native speakers. This helped me a lot when I was studying French and Arabic.

Spend time describing things you see around the house to yourself in your target language and every time you start to think in your native language, block it out by talking over the top of yourself in your target language. Starting out, forget about verbs and concentrate on describing things. If you’re at Elementary Level, you probably know basic nouns (house, dog, man, bread, etc.) and basic adjectives (big, small, long, short, etc.) If you have limited vocabulary this will get boring quickly but it will motivate you to acquire new words to use. You’ll learn vocabulary faster this way as new words become associated with actual objects that you see, rather than dictionary definitions.

Try to devote at least half an hour a day where you only think in your target language.

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