Hey there, this is Teacher Ola Podcast episode 21, Translating In Your Head – 4 Best Tactics to Sound More Natural
My name’s Ola and I teach English online, through 1:1 lessons, and this podcast is for you if you’re an English learner who wants to speak English with more confidence and get rid of speaking barriers. You’ll boost your vocabulary, brush up your grammar, improve your pronunciation. ! Go to my website for full transcripts and worksheets to each episode. Happy learning!
Hello and welcome! I’m so glad you could make it. Today, I’m going to look at some techniques that will help you sound more natural. In episode 13 I spoke about filler words, which make you sound like a native. You can find that episode at teacherla.com/13. Today I have a bunch of tips on how to limit or even stop, to some extent, translating in your head.
Some teachers say you have to start thinking in your target language, here, in English, and I used to hear it as well, maybe not at school, but later. And, I’ve always had a problem with embracing that idea. In my opinion, it’s impossible. I’ve always felt something’s wrong and it caused my frustrations. How can I stop thinking in Polish, I’m Polish! I was born and raised in a Polish-speaking family, a Polish-speaking country, it’s my mother tongue. My brain has grown and developed in the Polish environment. Again, I thought something was wrong with me, but really I’ve always had a hunch that it’s not that simple.
Eventually, I’ve come across a study done by the Bangor University in Wales, which suggests that even bilingual adults can’t stop thinking in their mother tongue. What they did is they monitored the brainwaves during some tasks and proved that participants’ brains translated words into their native languages, always.
Listen to how one of the study’s authors, explained the conclusions the scientists were able to draw from the study:
“Bilingual individuals retrieve information from their native language even when it’s not necessary, or, even more surprising, when it is counterproductive, since native language information does not help when reading or listening to second-language words.”
So, you see, this research was done on adults who learned English relatively late, after the age of 12. We don’t know whether or not the same results would be obtained with children who learned English at an early age.
Nevertheless, it gives us some explanation. It’s impossible to think in any other language than your native one. But! You shall not worry about that. It’s OK.
Translating takes up time though. First, you hear a question, then you translate it into Polish, next you think about your answer, then translate it into English and it’s time-consuming. What you can do is you can pick up the pace. Accelerate the whole process. You can achieve that by creating shortcuts in your brain.
Now, I’ll share with you 4 best tactics when it comes to translating in your head. How to make it faster, how to make it more efficient, and how to sound more natural.
- Speak to yourself.
I have a whole episode just about talking to yourself in English. I explain there why, how, and when you should do it. You can tune in to that episode at teacherola.com/9. It’s episode 9. Speaking to yourself out loud is a key factor. Your fluency will skyrocket when you start self-talk on a daily basis. Train responses to common questions, prepare yourself, make your brain prepared for answering that question. Thanks to that you won’t freeze up, but give your best answer, something like your default answer. Sing out loud in English, name objects that surround you, name events surrounding you. Copy native speakers. Note how do they respond to common questions, what phrases they use and incorporate them into your self-talk. Hone on the art of speaking out loud, fast, and without wasting time for translations. When you’re not alone, in public places speak to yourself in English in your thoughts. I spoke about it in more detail in episode 9, so I do really recommend checking that one out, cause I don’t want to repeat myself.
- Immersion
The best would be to travel to an English speaking country or even move there for some time. I know, it’s probably impossible for you, but in this day and age, it’s not necessary. What you can do is surround yourself with the English language. Change the language on your phone, on your facebook, and all social media channels, on your apps. Train yourself to use English without too much thinking. It has to become your habit, something you do automatically.
Another element of immersion is listening. Listen when you do something that doesn’t require full focus. While cooking, cleaning, painting your nails, tidying up your books, brushing your teeth, listen to the radio, or a podcast, anything. You don’t need to pay attention to the content, it can be just a background noise. It gives you lots! It helps you to familiarize yourself with pronunciation with accents.
Another thing is using the language, speaking to other people. A good idea is making friends who don’t speak Polish. You can find them in Facebook groups for example. Connect it with your hobby. The point is, you put yourself in a place where you can’t escape. Force yourself to use the target language.
- Use Monolingual dictionaries
First of all, don’t look up words during a conversation. Some of you take out your phones in the middle of a sentence and try to find the word you need in an online dictionary or in an app. Not good! It destroys the flow of the conversation. It becomes weird, and it doesn’t feel right. It’s not comfortable neither for you nor for the person who’s standing there waiting for you. Instead, define what you mean, explain it, ask for the word. Say something like: ‘How do you say….’, or ‘How do you call it, ‘it’s like…’, ‘it’s similar to…’, or ‘it’s when you…’.
Dictionaries. Don’t use English-Polish, bilingual dictionaries. Use monolingual ones, no excuses. In such dictionaries, you have a definition, or usually more than one definition of the word you don’t know given in simple words. Simple English. For example, you want to check the word ‘bicycle’ and the definition you’ll get is: a road vehicle with two wheels that you ride by pushing the pedals with your feet. And this particular example comes from my favourite online dictionary: Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. I also recommend Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, The Free Dictionary by Farflex, Longman Dictionary. You’ll find all the links in the show notes at teacherola.com/21. Each dictionary is a bit different, one gives you a word of the day, another one gives you more collocations, yet another gives you more example sentences. What’s important is that they give you the language. Besides the meaning, you see how the words behave in a phrase. How to glue it (so to speak) into the phrase. What prepositions, what tense, what verb form, basically grammar, but not only, also vocabulary – what common phrases, collocations the word you look up forms.
It all comes down to finding and learning a natural way of speaking. Making your learning as effective as possible. Don’t waste time looking up a word in Polish. Waste of time. You’ll learn a meaning but you still won’t be able to use it effectively, to communicate. Moreover, reading definitions in English creates those shortcuts I told you before.
- Learn every day
Consistency. You have to show up on a daily basis. It doesn’t have to be long, like I don’t know 1, 2 hours a day, anything will suffice. Even 5-10-15-20 minutes a day. Set a goal, like I’ll talk to myself for 10 minutes a day for the next week, or: I’ll be listening to BBC Radio 4 every day while cooking. This is how you train your brain, create shortcuts, start thinking faster in English instead of translating every sentence word to word. It’s a trap, be careful.
If you were to remember only one thing after this episode, I want it to be this: be consistent, have some kind of contact with English every single day. Be it listening, reading or talking.
Now, tell me what do you think. Can you think in English?
Go to teacherola.com/21 and grab your free worksheet and transcript.
If you think someone needs this episode, make sure they get it, share a link with them. I hope you’ll be here next Wednesday, next time you’ll learn practical things, in particular: how to say ‘thank you’ in English. Till then, have a great week, take care, stay warm and happy learning, bye-bye.