I watched Professors Argüelles' most recent video entitled "Do you want to be fluent in a foreign language?", and towards the end he said something that surprised me. He says "If you're serious about learning a foreign language, turn English off. Stop thinking in English. Make a commitment to thinking in the foreign language as much as you can." This advice was targeted towards people who had already spent years learning the language and were in the final stages of fluency. It still surprised me, however, since I always assumed that thinking in the target language is something you can't control, but something you automatically do based on your environment or who you're talking to.
Has anyone tried to train themselves to think in their target language? Or even think this is something possible or even worth doing?
Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Of course. Thinking in a language is for me a necessary step before speaking it in public, and I also do it to keep my old languages in shape. For instance I did an hourlong drive today, and I thought in Italian for roughly half of it and then switched to Dutch. I only thought in Danish the first five minutes or so. One good thing about thinking before jumping directly to attempts to speak is that I can formulate thoughts about fairly complicated things without showing it to anybody when my feeble cogitation attempts break down. This means that I also can permit myself to think in languages where I hardly can formulate a complete sentence.
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Perfectly possible. Recommended as deliberate practice, but past a certain level, you start doing that anyway. Some would say that something "clicks" when you provide your brain with enough input in context (this doesn't mean I embrace the idea of learning almost exclusively through input, that's like building a house without a foundation).
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
I don't believe anyone thinks in a language. Thoughts are not made up of languages; it's the other way around, language is what you use to express thoughts.
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Le Baron wrote:I don't believe anyone thinks in a language. Thoughts are not made up of languages; it's the other way around, language is what you use to express thoughts.
You do however use some language as an interface for thoughts, an inner voice or something equivalent. Hopefully, a single voice . Just like you can dream in other languages, sadly a process you cannot control as far as I know.
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Conscious thoughts may be like the tip of an iceberg, and whatever lies beneath them may be something different - but for me the conscious thoughts are mostly formulated as an incessant stream of language (although thoughts also can be geometric eller auditive - like when I deal with art or music). Saying that people don't think in languages leaves the question what the heck they then think in ...
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Le Baron wrote:I don't believe anyone thinks in a language. Thoughts are not made up of languages; it's the other way around, language is what you use to express thoughts.
I'm not sure on this. I know as a teacher I've spent huge amounts of my life explaining things to other people--as a result even when I'm by myself I often work through issues or think through things by "explaining" them in my head to an imaginary audience. I have no idea if this is common, but I definitely know that it manifests itself via English.
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Iversen wrote:Of course. Thinking in a language is for me a necessary step before speaking it in public, and I also do it to keep my old languages in shape. For instance I did an hourlong drive today, and I thought in Italian for roughly half of it and then switched to Dutch. I only thought in Danish the first five minutes or so. One good thing about thinking before jumping directly to attempts to speak is that I can formulate thoughts about fairly complicated things without showing it to anybody when my feeble cogitation attempts break down. This means that I also can permit myself to think in languages where I hardly can formulate a complete sentence.
I'm going to experiment with this then. Hopefully I can get myself into a nice groove of thinking in Spanish during my commutes.
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Valddu wrote:Has anyone tried to train themselves to think in their target language? Or even think this is something possible or even worth doing?
I learn ministories (Tripadvisor reviews .. semi-colloquial) by heart after translating them. After some repetitions I can reproduce them in Spanish without thinking in German first. And what comes into my mind first is the situation/constellation and then language. And I have noticed that at that moment my brain rejects German, because the connection between story/plot and Spanish is so strong.
Maybe in similar situations the brain decides to do the transfer in Spanish because it has something that is available for that situation.
In other situations for which the brain has not been "calibrated" I would be helpless in Spanish and the brain would look for something that is available in German first.
So "thinking in Spanish" is only possible if the brain has already stored something applicable in a certain situation.
Last edited by Kraut on Sun Sep 25, 2022 9:50 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Can you consciously develop the habit of thinking in your target language?
Valddu wrote:I'm not sure on this. I know as a teacher I've spent huge amounts of my life explaining things to other people--as a result even when I'm by myself I often work through issues or think through things by "explaining" them in my head to an imaginary audience. I have no idea if this is common, but I definitely know that it manifests itself via English.
That's you talking to yourself because you know how to express thoughts in a language. You're just not speaking aloud. It's very likely that if you didn't have any language capacity you'd still have thoughts.
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