Translating in Your Mind … Not a Good Idea

Let’s think a little bit about the way you speak your native language and imagine that you are walking down the street with a friend chatting and hanging out for a while. You’re paying close attention to what your friend says and you’re so interested in the conversation that you don’t even think about words, your brain just answers the questions your friend asks you and it lets the words come out naturally through your mouth, this is the process the brain does every day.

It is really important for all of us the learners, to not translate word by word of what we want to say in English, this is because if you think too much, when speaking, you are going to sound unnatural, your speech will sound forced, and you will become stressed and frustrated. Of course, none of us want to feel bad when speaking English.

The most important thing you need to do when learning a language is to listen, the more you listen to a language the more known and natural it will be for you when you hear words or conversations in the new language. So before trying to speak, focus on listening until you understand easily the native English speakers, after this first step you are going to be able to speak, so here it comes another great advice for great speaking: no matter if you make grammar mistakes DO NOT TRANSLATE word by word in your mind what you want to say, focus on the idea of whatever you’re about to say and let the words come out naturally from your mouth, of course, at the beginning you are going to make grammar mistakes, but who cares? We are not learning grammar rules, we want to learn how to speak English and just like children make grammar mistakes when they’re learning how to speak, we are going to make them too, it is completely natural.

LISTEN, LISTEN AND LISTEN TO ENGLISH

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WHEN SPEAKING FOCUS ON IDEAS NOT ON WORDS

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LET THE WORDS COME OUT NATURALLY FROM YOUR MOUTH (RELAX).

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NO MATTER HOW MANY MISTAKES YOU MAKE WHEN SPEAKING, YOU’LL CORRECT THEM AUTOMATICALLY EVENTUALLY

Actually translating is not natural for us when speaking, I guess that we often try to translate from our native language to a foreign language because of the way schools and the old methods of learning foreigner languages have taught us. Remember that even for children, fluency comes with time and patience, so be constant on listening to English and you will succeed.