Think in English!
I think a lot of language teachers try to encourage their students to ‘think in English’ or ‘think in French’ or ‘think in Spanish’, etc.. But what exactly do they mean? This is what I would like to write about this time.
encourage ~ to = - 〜が＝をするように励ます / exactly - ちょうど・まさに
One of the exciting things that happens as you study a language intensively is that parts of your brain become stimulated - parts that you would probably never normally use. Some learners report having dreams in which they are able to understand and speak a foreign language fluently. Maybe you have experienced this - a dream where you were speaking in fluent English, even though you cannot yet speak fluently in real life? When you are encouraged to ‘think in English’, maybe this is what you imagine?
intensively - 集中的に・強烈に・徹底的に / become stimulated - 刺激される
report - 言う・語る・伝達する / having dreams - 夢を見る事
fluently - 流暢に・ペラペラ / have experienced - 経験した事がある
even though you cannot yet ~ - まだ〜出来ないのに / imagine - 想像する
Obviously, if you are not English, then thinking in English is a difficult thing to do - how do you get that little voice in your head to stop speaking Japanese all the time and switch to English? I believe this is possible, and the key is : your attitude to GRAMMAR. Now I’m not suggesting that students only need to know grammar - that’s not true. I believe in English lessons that are practical and offer students the chance to speak and listen and not just note down grammar rules. BUT, how you understand English grammar is actually very important if you want to achieve your goal of ‘thinking in English’.
obviously - 明らかに・明白に / switch to ~ - 〜に切り替える
the key - 要 / attitude to grammar - 文法に対する態度・捉え方
suggest - 提案する・すすめる / practical - 現実的
offer ~ the chance to = - 〜に＝をする機会を与える
note down - 記す / achieve - 達成する / goal - 目標・目的
At first, we see grammar as a set of rules that we have to learn. But it’s important to remember that you probably learned to speak Japanese (if you are a native) without once being taught a grammar rule. So, for all practical purposes, language comes first, and grammar rules tend to follow after, as we analyse the language we are using every day (I was about 14 before I really understood what a ‘verb’ or an ‘adjective’ really is). When we learn a foreign language though, the process is reversed. We start with the grammar rules and have to work backwards to being able to produce natural language.
see grammar as ~ - 文法を〜と見なす / without once being taught - 一度も教わらずに
for all practical purposes - 実際的には / tend to follow after - 後についてくる傾向にある
analyse - 分析する / process - 過程・プロセス / is reversed - 逆になる・裏返しになる
It is my opinion that what your teachers mean when they say ‘think in English’, is that you need to make the jump from grammar rules to real language. Remember that you are doing what natives do, but in reverse. Don’t think of grammar rules as rules imposed on you by teachers and textbooks and tests. The rules are simplifications of patterns that occur in any language. All grammar is about is RECOGNIZING PATTERNS in language. You did the same with Japanese when you were 2 or 3 years old - you listened to the people around you and you recognized the patterns in their speech; sometimes you probably made mistakes, but no-one ever told you that you had failed! A certain amount of trial and error is part of everyone’s experience.
in reverse - 常と反対に・自然と逆に
don’t think of grammar as ~ - 文法を〜（だ）と思わないで
imposed on you by ~ - 〜によって（あなたに）負わせられた
simplifications - 簡単化された物 / patterns - パターン・模様
occur - 生ずる・発生する・生まれる / recognizing - 見て理解して受け入れる・容認する
no-one ever told you that you had failed - あなたがそれで失敗したと誰も言わなかったでしょう
a certain amount - ある量・ある程度の / trial and error - 試行錯誤
Clearly, in Japan, it is probably impossible for you to be constantly surrounded by native speakers who love you and feed you and play with you (like parents do for their children) all the time speaking English so that you can become familiar with the language! No, unfortunately, you are an adult, so you will probably have to start with the grammar and work backwards. Try to see the rules as pointing out patterns in the language; keep your mind relaxed and every now and again, step back from your books and try to ‘get a feel for the language’ (the best way to do this would be by having a conversation with a native speaker, joining an Eikaiwa class, etc.).
constantly surrounded - いつも囲まれている / feed - 食べ物を与える
become familiar with - 何かに慣れてくる・親しむ / pointing out - 指摘する事
get a feel for ~ - 気持ち・感じを掴む・把握する
Once you can see and understand the patterns behind the grammar rules, you can ‘forget the rules’ and just speak. This is the final step towards ‘thinking in English’ : when the rules, those pointers to patterns in language, have become second nature to you. You don’t need to constantly remind yourself of an old friend’s name - it’s important to you, so you remember it. If you can have experiences using English which are important to you, your English will improve - it’s a ‘virtuous circle‘.
become second nature - 完全に身に付く・自然になる・潜在意識に入っているようになる
don’t need to constantly remind yourself - 絶えずに思い出させる必要がない
virtuous circle - 善循環
I hope that this post has given you an idea of how to take a positive approach to grammar; relax and don’t underestimate your natural ability to learn a language by recognizing patterns.
take a positive approach to ~ - 〜に（対して）前向きに（取り組むなど）
underestimate - 過小評価する・実際より少なく見積もる
natural ability - 生まれつきの能力・自然な能力
bamboo4 wrote:
I wrote an essay in 2007 dealing with the multi-lingual ability of some people, notably Swiss in my essay.
Since it is relatively short, I will reproduce it here:
MULTILINGUAL ABILITY
Quite sometime ago, in fact, many years ago, I was in Switzerland as part of my trip to Europe. I took a train from Italy and arrived at Zurich to come to that beautiful country high mountains and perennial peace.
As it was my habit wherever I went, I ended up in one of the local bars and sat at the counter, flanked by local people as I had several glasses of beer. I struck up a conversation with one of the customers who were sitting beside me, who happened to be a Swiss folk of the German descent. He was probably in his fifties then and I probably was a bit younger than him at that time.
As we drank our beer, we talked in English and he was quite fluent in it with a slightly thick accent. We talked about each other’s nationality and he said he was a Swiss of German descent and I told him I was Japanese.
To maintain our conversation, I asked him “Is it true that Swiss people can normally speak several languages?” He said that it is generally true and he himself spoke German, French, some Italian and English. He also said that he also could handle some archaic Swiss tongue that the people do not normally use.
I asked him what gave the Swiss people such multilingual capabilities and he said that the Swiss communities ordinarily comprise different ethnic groups which together made up that country so that the ability to speak many languages was the necessity of life in Switzerland.
I asked how would one develop such multi-lingual ability and he said, after a pause, that it probably is because the children get exposed to such multi-lingual environment early on. “So it is not because of the education system you have?” I asked. He said that the education system in Switzerland certainly supplements that environment but it does not initiate it.
He said that it is your first conversation you have, greetings or what have you, that sets the linguistic environment. For example, if you go to a bread shop in the morning, it is the first sound you hear, “Bon jour” or “Guten Morgen,” or “Good morning,” that triggers the linguistic environment for that particular situation. Thereafter the conversation automatically follows that linguistic environment.
I said “I see (the truth was that I did not truly see) but how you deal with translation problems?”
“Translation problems? What do you mean translation problems?”
“I mean if you are not clear as to what was said; wouldn’t you refer to your knowledge of your mother tongue, such as German, to see what was said?”
“What do you mean ‘mother tongue’? There is no such thing as ‘mother tongue’. You assume my mother tongue is German, but it is not correct. Yes, I probably understand the German language much better than French or Italian, but I don’t think that’s why my ‘mother tongue’ is German. When I speak French, I speak French and when I talk in English, like I do now, I speak English. If you do that, there is no ‘translation problem’ that you speak of”
It started to dawn on me what this man was saying. He was telling me that his brain or mind, or whatever, works in compartments. If he used one of those linguistic compartments, his referent is that compartment only. He was like three or four persons, each speaking his own language, but none of them deal linguistically with any other one of him.
This revelation of how multi-lingual abilities work flabbergasted me. I immediately put that to practice, in reading books, writing letters and in doing everything that involved my Japanese and English. The complete dissociation of these two compartments (in my case) did not come easily, I think it took several years for me to develop and nurture this double linguistic personality. After many years, I think I have come close to doing that, and it also made my life easier because when I think in Japanese, I don’t have to think also in English, and vice versa.
I still have translation problems but thy have largely become selective merging of the dissociated linguistic compartments of a higher order (and I don’t even bother myself to see how that expression appears in Japanese).
June 1, 2007
Posted on 24-Feb-08 at 10:08 am | Permalink
ben wrote:
I find that my Japanese and English tend to operate totally separately from each other, and I tend to become irritable when people ask me to perform as an interpreter. It can be done, but it’s more a question of jumping from one compartment to another - seeing the meaning from an Englishman’s point of view, and then flipping over to a Japanese person’s point of view - rather than some smooth translation process in my mind.
This is particularly true of English-Japanese, where the cultures are so different, but also of any language pair, I believe; (this is going off at a bit of a tangent, but…) I always feel it’s so futile to translate things for people who don’t know anything about the country or language - translators or interpreters are much more than simple middle-men; their role in a bi-lingual conversation is absolutely critical and they need to exhibit an extremely fine sensitivity to not only language and grammar, but also the socio-cultural context of both speakers.
Posted on 28-Feb-08 at 11:41 am | Permalink
bamboo4 wrote:
I agree, ben-san, with what you say in the sense that endowment with biligiual ability is a completely different matter from having the skill as an interpreter or translator. When I was young (it seems to me that that qualification is ubiquitous in my case - everything happened while I was younger), I worked as a court interpreter in criminal cases and it certainly wasn’t the question of being bilingual but it was the question of how you juxtapose the vocabruaries of the Japanese against English or vice versa while serching for and establishing some common grounds between two languages dissociated to the every extent possible from the cultural backgrounds of the two languages. It is a very difficult task but you have to do it while maintaining accuracy because a man’s freedom is partly dependent on it.
In reminiscence, I probably was able to do that because of the impetuousness associated with younger age - I would not be able to perform that function smoothly at my present age, probably because I now know too much.
Posted on 28-Feb-08 at 1:52 pm | Permalink
ben wrote:
I think I understand what you mean. How interesting and ironic it is that the deeper one’s knowledge of 2 languages, the more difficult (almost unnatural?) it feels to translate between them. And it becomes an irksome task to simplify the infinite nuances of Another’s linguistic consciousness into vaguely ‘corresponding’ words that can hardly do it credit; what is most important has usually to be left unsaid!
Still, as I suspect you would probably agree, it is usually quite fun to give it a bash anyway…
Posted on 03-Mar-08 at 11:59 am | Permalink