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  • - Do you translate everything in your head?

  • Because if you do, there's a good chance

  • that what you're doing to improve your English

  • is actually making it worse and not better.

  • Watch on.

  • Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingEnglish.com.

  • If you are stuck thinking in your native language,

  • translating everything in your head word by word,

  • rule by rule,

  • painstakingly computing your English sentences as you go,

  • there's a good chance what are you doing

  • to improve your English is making the situation worse

  • and not better.

  • You see, we get good at what we practise and many people,

  • although they think they are doing what they should be doing

  • to improve their English,

  • are actually practising these mental gymnastics

  • that make you do what you are doing.

  • First of all, let's think about what you probably did

  • when you were at school.

  • If you had English classes

  • and if you didn't like the classes

  • that typically people in Japan have

  • and certainly what I had when I studied French in the UK,

  • there's a good chance that you learned by

  • memorising lists of vocabulary, studying grammar rules,

  • translating sentences back and forth.

  • Learning to take the grammar that you learned,

  • slot in words, and construct and compute sentences.

  • And of course, your teacher would put you on the spot.

  • Hey, Julian!

  • She would say, stand up, tell me how to say

  • "I have a green apple" in French.

  • And then I would be expected to produce the sentence,

  • which of course I had no fucking clue how to do anyway,

  • but in my head I would trying to make it work.

  • I'd have apple.

  • (speaks foreign language)

  • No, that's potato.

  • (speaks foreign language)

  • I don't know pom.

  • You get the idea.

  • And I would all be a total mess in them.

  • Most people have English lessons like this.

  • What you are actually doing there is practising

  • thinking about what you're saying as you're saying it.

  • And of course in that situation,

  • if you get it wrong, what happens?

  • Your teacher punishes you by saying no, that's wrong!

  • Or by giving you bad scores on a test.

  • So that reinforces the feeling that you've got to

  • spend more time thinking about these things,

  • more carefully to compute them properly.

  • And then we get older, we struggle with our English.

  • We start thinking in our native language,

  • translating, not speaking as fluently as we'd like.

  • So what do we do?

  • We think well okay, obviously I need to memorise more words.

  • I need to study more grammar.

  • And a little bit at a time you train yourself

  • to think about everything as you are saying it.

  • The way you are learning, although you think

  • you are doing what you need to do to get more fluent,

  • you're actually making the problem worse,

  • because what you are practising is

  • not what you need to be able to do and that is

  • to be able to speak fluently and spontaneously

  • without all the mental gymnastics going on in your head

  • that are slowing you down in the first place.

  • And the first thing that you need to do is to

  • understand that very fact that what you are doing

  • is probably making the problem worse,

  • so that you are able to let go

  • and to start training yourself a little bit over time

  • to start speaking directly in English

  • without thinking in your native language

  • or having to you know, having to construct and compute,

  • and gymnasti-cize these sentences and all words.

  • It doesn't matter.

  • You get the idea as you go.

  • I will make more videos about this.

  • Talking about how you can actually do this,

  • but if you want to get into straight away,

  • I recommend you check out my book

  • Think English, Speak English:

  • How to Stop Performing Mental Gymnastics

  • Every Time You Speak English.

  • It's on Kindle.

  • It also comes in paperback.

  • Also via Amazon.

  • You can read the first chapter for free

  • and it comes with a complete audio version

  • and it only costs like $2.99 or something stupid like that.

  • If you wanna fix this problem that you are struggling with,

  • if you are struggling with it,

  • go to ThinkEnglishSpeakEnglish.com and check that out.

  • Otherwise this is me, Julian Northbrook,

  • signing out from other video.

  • Give it a thumbs up if you found it useful.

  • If you hated it, whatever, give me a thumbs up anyway

  • and I will see you in the next video

  • and I will talk more about this in future videos

  • so stay tuned.

  • Buh-bye.

  • (upbeat music)

  • (upbeat music)

- Do you translate everything in your head?

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