How to think in English and stop translating in your head

hey guys welcome to my channel today I'm gonna share my story of how I started thinking in English and when we don't think in English we tend to speak slower we tend to translate things in our heads and we just tend to be less proficient in our English so thinking in English is a key thing for you to move from being intermediate to upper intermediate advanced and native speaker levels so if you're interested continue watching if you think that this could happen overnight it cannot unfortunately so my story is I started thinking in English for

a couple nights when I was in the UK I think it was my second of first visit it was really early on I was a teenager so the process went faster so what happened every morning when I woke up in my home stay with the host family I will be really embarrassed about my English because my brain is still sleeping and they would ask me questions in English don't be like oh my god they're asking me about my breakfast but the only way I can say what I want is in Russian in my native language

because I just woke up and this was the hardest moment to switch languages throughout the day but by the evening because I was communicating solely in English with other people it would be really easy for me to talk about what I want for dinner or just you you know discuss anything and because I spent the whole day thinking in English I went to bed thinking in English and then I think it was my week 3 and normally when you go to learn your language somewhere during summer you stay for like maybe four or five weeks

or whatever but by week three I went to bed thinking in English and I had a dream in English and I woke up in the morning and I realized I'm actually thinking in English and that was like this huge transition for me because I didn't have this switch in the morning because I woke up with my brain functioning in English already and my level back then was I think upper intermediate so it's pretty good in English not spoken English I was good at grammar it's good vocabulary but this switch was crucial and remember coming down

to the kitchen and sharing with my homestay and hey guys I just dreamed in English and it went away I came back to rush it when it went away because I switched back to speaking Russian I switched back to reading in Russian but I created some tips for myself because I really wanted that feeling to stay with me throughout my life and I really wanted to still be able to think in English even in my own home country so I have created a couple of rules for myself that I've pulled carefully until I moved to

the US and when you're in an english-speaking environment super easy so uh well rule number one travel to an english-speaking country stay with focus as often as you can linguae trip comm all the programs are listed there so you know select the one that fits you but yeah that requires your time and money but this is the most effective way this is when I went through this transformation when I came back to Russia the second thing I did I brought a lot of books in English with me and a lot of magazines you don't have

to go somewhere to bring stuff in English you can just go online but for me switching to reading in English only and I told myself okay starting this day for all the non study related materials I'm switching to English because this is the way to introduce this practice of consuming information in English into my everyday life so maybe you follow this rule as well maybe you tell yourself hey from now on I will only do fun stuff in English so whether it's a YouTube video whether it's Instagram whether it's a book that you're really maybe

you know switch it to English and the third thing that is really still working for me here in the u.s. when you learn a new concept in English so for example right now I'm learning a lot about like childbirth and pregnancy and I realized that when I encounter a new topic in English and I learn all the terms I cannot think about this topic in my native language because I don't even know what things mean I can not translate them because I learned the concepts in English straight away I'm not doing this translation in my

head and fourth tip is that all of us are doing these translations like when we're as cool we'll learn that this is a pencil but we don't learn the concept we learn the translation and they tell you a pencil in your own language and this is how your brain learns the word but this is the wrong way this is not how kids learn language and your goal is to learn the language like as if you're a kid so when you're learning a new concept you get rid of this stuff so for example if you want

to read more about photography or if you want to read more about filmmaking blogging do that in English and if you're encountering Yukons have teachers go : you go to images and you read what that word means without translating it and this is the key I remember when I moved to Germany for a semester to study mathematics I learned so many new words regarding econometrics and like mathematics in German and then I came back to Russia I couldn't speak Russian during my classes because everything I knew was in German this is like game-changer as well

so learn new concepts in English and do not translate stuff from your own language into English try to learn them as a as a concept and of course other daily activities that you can switch to English in our goal we have 12 hours a day right we do a lot of stuff in our native language just because we're surrounded by it but our goal is to take all the things during the day that can be done in English and do them in English so the next thing of course switching your phone your smart phone your

laptop to English this is like number one things you should do after watching this video because this is the key the next thing you could do is if you have a daily planner if you have your habits tracker if you have whatever like a calendar where you're writing things down do that in English again this would tell your brain okay when I was a kid by the way I had a diary where I wrote down all of the activities that happen to be during the day well I could I think I did it till I

was 18 or 19 I did it at first in English because I didn't want my parents to understand what was going on and then I switched to German and I did it in German that was again amazing practice for me and because I really wanted to do it and because I really had a goal of other people not getting what I'm writing about it was great way to practice languages another exercise that I would recommend doing is if you have a favorite song try to write down its lyrics while listening to it there would be

some words you won't be able to understand you will look them up later so your goal when you're listening to a song it's just writing down everything you understand maybe leave some blanks and might ask to you there are a lot of songs out there that you can practice with but the most challenging son for me was a son by Modest monkey float on do that first like start with that song you'll be so confused but the other songs would be so easy so you just switch on the song and you write the lyrics down

helps you with listening helps you with thinking in English and well it's gonna improve your listening dramatically and the key thing in all of the things that I mentioned is being regular so you start with just one thing birthday maybe like even like switching your phone to English and then you introduce more and more and you if you have an activity tracker and it really looks like it's hello it's a really simple thing when you can make it yourself like activity tracker for example you have English some and here you have Jim and here you

have your supplements or whatever and like everyday you just put a plus in front of a thing that you've done so try to introduce a daily habit of like an English song or reading in English but when you do reading tell yourself read at least like 10 pages because otherwise reading is very vague you're like I've read a text message in English 10 pages at least and then every day like Monday Tuesday Wednesday so super easy to make you just put a dot in front of things you've done and this way you develop a regular

habit that wasn't for me guys I hope you enjoyed watching this video if you're not yet thinking in English so scram to this channel because watching more of this content would definitely help you switch your brain from your own language into English like this video if you enjoyed this content and please let me know down in comments below what is this thing that you're doing in English everyday thank you so much and I will see you in the next videos