Think in the target language!

[woodcutter]

"Think in the target language" - common advice.

I don't know about you, but whenever I think in a foreign language I tend to only be able to think in a very dull and shallow way (no cheeky comments please!). I also have the sense I am a puppet master manipulating myself, rather than a person naturally thinking.

It it possible to really think in a language which is far from your best?

[revel]

Hey woodcutter!

I'm sure I've said it elsewhere, but, well, one of the dooms of being an ESL teacher is the constant repetition of things, and your question is a nice cue to my thoughts on the matter.

To my students who are not yet fluent English Speakers I always make a clear distinction between "think in English" and "think like an Englishman/woman, American, native English speaker". This advice comes from my firm belief that speech comes from thought, comes from our desire to share the neural activity that otherwise would only be sensed by ourselves.

If any up-to-intermediate student tried to think in English, he/she would probably have such deep thoughts as "The teacher always has breakfast at a diner in the morning," or "The little boy broke the glass window with a ball."

One also has to be able to identify thought in oneself. I once asked a four-year-old what he thought about something and he rapidly replied "I don't know how to think, I'm only four." (Perhaps something his father had said to him once or many times....) The step of thinking in L1 and then translating into L2 seems unavoidable, but there are some ways of helping oneself over that part of the process. One I recall using myself concerned food.

Upon arriving in Spain I had little food vocabulary accumulated and almost no food-buying linguistic talents and so bought my food in a super-market for a few weeks. However, when living in New York City, I never shopped in super-markets, I am vegetarian and usually shopped in specialty stores or Korean vegetable shops. Even so, I did not have to speak to do my shopping. Then I discovered the central market in my neighborhood in Barcelona. Before going there I tried to imagine the conversations I would be holding with the vegetable lady (un kilo de cebollas, por favor; cuánto vale? etc....) I began making the shopping list in Spanish. I let the vegetable lady teach me the names of the foods I was indicating with my right index finger. I spent a few hours practicing numbers to make sure I was understanding what I was being charged and that the change returned was correct. While putting away the food I would think about each of the items and the dishes that I would be preparing with them. While eating I would leave the boxes and bottles on the kitchen table and would read the ingredients to my self (my mouth was busy chewing).

Reading is often touted as a vocabulary building instrument, I also think it is, when done to oneself, a thinking tool. Preparation for social situations is also a good tool for thinking as a native speaker would. I insist on the "thinking as" rather than "thinking in", since once you think in the same manner as the native, you will naturally be using their language to do so, otherwise you are not thinking, you are translating, a different mind process, related as they are electrical impulses in your grey matter, but different. Just think how satisfying once you are dreaming in L2!

peace,
revel.

[LarryLatham]

Hoo Boy! At the risk of controversy (well, I rarely shy from that), and also at the risk of getting in way over my head (which also seldom deters me, I'm afraid), I'd like to point out that the scientists (including linguistic scientists, as well as cognative scientists) tell us that humans do not think in a language that we use for speaking or writing, although it regularly seems that way to most of us as laypersons. Instead, we think in what some have called mentalese, which is universal, and quite different from English or Chinese or French or Polish. Then, when we wish to express ourselves, we code our thoughts in the language of our choice.

Now this may be, for some of you, merely a bit of high-brow trivia hardly worth the effort to bother with. On the other hand, some may wonder if it has any implication or application in the 'common advice', as woodcutter has reminded us, that students should "think in (English)."

I believe revel has an excellent suggestion when he tells us, "To my students who are not yet fluent English Speakers I always make a clear distinction between "think in English" and "think like an Englishman/woman, American, native English speaker."" Perhaps there is a palpable difference between 'thinking in English', and 'thinking about English'. The latter could be summarized as remembering (at appropriate times) the overall structure of English, the rules about placement of words in phrases and sentences, and the prosody, as well as the lexical items you have internalized.

Then again, maybe this is just "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato".

Larry Latham

But, as an afterthought, you might take a look at this, which popped up on Yahoo! today:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... anguage_dc
...and then try to imagine just how one would go about thinking in Silbo.

[Harzer]

Larry took the words, well some of them, right out of my mouth

We think at some even more abstract level and then process those thoughts into language as best we can. Shakespeare did it pretty well - but that doesn't mean that we can't have the same thoughts he had - our processing is just not as precise.

"I know what I want to say but I can't find the words" may be only small-bore ammuntion in support of this view, but it still needs explaining away by those who disagree with it.

[Atréju]

I was reading Philip Pullman’s ‘A la croisée des mondes’ yesterday evening, here’s an account of how I was thinking before I went to sleep:

Le bave du crapaud atteint pas la blanche colombo, parque, parfois, on se sent un peu, je ne sais quo, on ne peut pas, come se dit ‘think’ ? penser en un train de thought coherente, on est forcement forcé de approcher le chose en bias, pour ne pas disrupter le chose. Les phrases el les mots tourboilloner en ma tete, sans direction aucune. On ne peut pas directioner le train de penser, on est forcé de suivre les pensees lui-meme. Est-que vous me suivres? Lire en un language est penser en este language, et

[switching me mind to English]

(This was the first time I wrote something in French since school, and I didn’t study French much in school: I never paid attention and quit it after three years of two hours a week.)

to read in a language is to think in the language, that effect lasts for a while, just like when you’ve played chess for a while you keep imagining moves, when you’ve been swimming in the sea, you keep feeling the waves after you’re out of the water.

I’ll est donc forcement possible de penser en un language!

(second time I wrote anything in French since school.)

The reason, I think, for the silent period in children is that they are doing what I’m doing, and when they start talking they say what ‘sounds right’ to them: ‘merci beacoup, oh merci, vouz-etes un messieur si agradable, si charmant, et si intelligente, que j’ai du mal a le croire!’

Ahummm, or rather, ‘merci, messieur!’

They don’t attempt something out of their leage, like maybe: -‘la raison de l’entrechocement des elements stellair es que en tous les choses reside un sorte de puissance, o un ‘force’ meilleur dit, qui les force de acter ainsi.’ -‘I’ll est vraiment null, nuuuull!!! Je vous suppliez!’

Mmm, that didn’t quite work, I mean: they don’t attempt grammatical structures they haven’t mastered yet, like maybe ‘the added ‘s to make a plural.’

When you force them to do use those grammatical structures they haven’t mastered yet in your language class, they will surely make mistakes. When you don’t force them to use them, grammar and vocabulary will come naturally to them. When it sounds right to them to start using the grammar of the language, when they start thinking in the way that they’re supposed to write or speak, they’ll not make many faults in the language. Like I didn’t make TOO many faults in the little French I wrote, and only then when I had to get the meaning across and didn’t know the exact conjugations, and stuff.

When your students DON’T think in English, and have to translate what they want to say and add the grammar they’re supposed to learn, they will surely make many mistakes.

We’ll that’s the reason grammar has no use in your language class…

(Je suis certain, en outre, que ma loquacité Francaise est progressée enormement parce-que j’ai lu un certain nombre des livres en francais. Allez, c’est que je veux dire avec ce: ‘Sound Right,’ aujourd-hui je sais meilleur what ‘sounds right’ )

[Atréju]

Using the language is learning the language…

The faults in my last post, that I can see.

Those faults I’ll less likely make now, now I’ve seen them myself.


Le bave du crapaud atteint pas la blanche colombo [e] , parque [parce-que], parfois, on se sent un peu, je ne sais quo [quoi], on ne peut pas, come [?] se dit ‘think’ ? penser en un train de thought coherente, on est forcement forcé de approcher le chose en bias, pour ne pas disrupter le chose. Les phrases el [t] les mots tourboilloner [ ?] en ma tete, sans direction aucune. On ne peut pas directioner le train de penser, on est forcé de suivre les pensees lui-meme [isn't really what I wanted to say]. Est-que vous me suivres [?]? Lire en un language est penser en este [Spanish, ce ?] language, et



I’ll est donc forcement possible de penser en un language!


‘merci beacoup, oh merci, vouz-etes [?]un messieur [monsieur] si agradable, si charmant, et si intelligente, que j’ai du mal a le croire!’

‘merci, messieur [monsieur]!’

-‘la [ ?] raison de l’entrechoc(e?)ment des elements stellair[es ?] es que en tous les choses reside un sorte de puissance, o un ‘force’ meilleur dit, qui les force de acter ainsi.’ -‘I’ll est vraiment null, nuuuull!!! Je vous suppliez [ ?]!’




(Je suis certain, en outre, que ma loquacité Francaise [c, laziness] est progressée enormement parce-que j’ai lu un certain nombre des livres en francais. Allez, c’est que je veux dire avec ce: ‘Sound Right,’ aujourd-hui je sais meilleur what ‘sounds right’ )

Note how I still don’t use rules of grammar, maybe in this case they’d be useful, but I doubt it, I’d just have to read and write more, I think.

[Metamorfose]

We’ll that’s the reason grammar has no use in your language class…

But Grammar will be everywhere, even if it is learnt naturally as you exemplified, it is still Grammar. No native speaker of English (in normal mental conditions and in any regular communicative environment) will say * I am here since 1999, but (talking about my reality) that kind of utterance is quite common for Brazilians; so, even if I teach them the form and do not use terms like present perfect isn't it teaching Grammar?

Isn't to commit mistakes part of learning? Mainly adult learners, their mother tongue is long cemented in their minds. I sincerely think they would only grasp natural language in the environment of the target language adding the fact that they must be willing to achieve so., otherwise they will need the auxiliary of a logical system and contrast it with their language and surely, practise the new language through oral and written activities.

Even people who are bilingual have a preferred language when thinking or making out accounts; it's tiring for me to reason in English, but I believe I can speak and write some English quite easily and I am aware that Grammar has helped me a lot.

José

[Atréju]

I don't know what to say, José.

Though...

There are those that say you shouldn't let students do active things before they have a reasonable grounding in their passive skills; not let them talk and write on their very first day but after, say, six months. If you do that the chance's bigger they think in the target language and so make less mistakes. If they then start talking, you could correct them, maybe.

But letting them first talk and then correct them is different from first, at length, teach a grammar rule and then let them practise using the grammar rule, like what is often done now. Besides the inefficiency of that, teaching and learning grammar is boring, much less so than your correcting your students once in a while.

Like I said, after I've read in French, my mind is a whirlwind of French words and phrases, what I then say may not be entirely correct, but it will be much more so than when I'm just thinking in Dutch and translating, using rules of grammar. When I'm thinking in French my French writing and speaking also comes much easier than when I'm thinking in Dutch. It might be, then, a consideration for you not to torment your beginning students to speak and write haltingly and with great difficulty, but let them do that, less haltingly and with less difficulty, when they've advanced a bit.

Your saying this and that is wrong, and that is right, in the compositions of your students, may be allright, but you shouldn't devote 15 minute of class time to explaining the second past participle of the future tense, I think, because they'll just forget it, and if they do remember it, the first three weeks after you've taught it, they'll use it wrong, maybe.

But what do I know, I'm just a silly inventor!

See my thread on 'sandwich stories' for that ...

Heu...

How do you like this for a theory:

Statement: the productive knowledge of a language is always less than the passive knowledge of a language.

Statement: as the productive knowledge of a language is always less than the passive knowledge, practising productive knowledge will never result in the productive knowledge growing greater than the passive knowledge.

Statement: the extra linguistic input that practising productive knowledge garners is non-existent, or very small, it serves merely to strengthen and bring back to memory passive knowledge already in the mind. ( Or, differently put: you don't learn, or hardly, new words from talking with your classmate or writing something, knowledge already present only gets strengthend. )

Hypothesis: for productive knowledge to grow (quickly), you will have to raise its plateau - receptive knowledge.

Hypothesis: the best way to let passive knowledge grow is using either reading, with the dictionary handy, or reading 'sandwich stories', when the knowledge of the student is not yet so great to be able to read children's books in the language. Watching television or listening to the radio is not productive in building your vocabulary because in speech normally only the 2000 most frequent words are used, and you don't have the time to check for the meaning of words.

( For an argument for the efficiency of reading in building vocabulary, see my thread on 'sandwich stories.' )

[Metamorfose]

Atréju...

There are those that say you shouldn't let students do active things before they have a reasonable grounding in their passive skills; not let them talk and write on their very first day but after, say, six months. If you do that the chance's bigger they think in the target language and so make less mistakes. If they then start talking, you could correct them, maybe.

Yes, that would be a nice idea, providing the pupils with the language and only afterwards would they produce some language, but I think the problem here is time and immediate results; people want to produce something straight after they learn a bit of language, they want to practise it and master it so that they feel they are improving in their learning, I believe it would take a very willing person to this theory work out, what do you say?

But letting them first talk and then correct them is different from first, at length, teach a grammar rule and then let them practise using the grammar rule, like what is often done now. Besides the inefficiency of that, teaching and learning grammar is boring, much less so than your correcting your students once in a while.

But the talking activity could be done with a determined piece of Grammar; for example I have to work with a very traditional grammar-translation book in which one finds sentences like If we tie they will tie to translate, so I have to make up for it; one good example is the present simple where people can talk about habits and routines and again, it is healthy to commit mistakes, it means that they are trying, and once in a while I come across rather complex language (for them) that they utter, as everything in life we learn language by practising it, when we first ride a bike we will surely fall many times before find the balance, and we will have several injuries during the process; the natural learning works for youngsters, and they have to be in contact with real language, but I have to agree with you, if I used different methodology or approach I would never teach them the difference between as and like so early in their course.

Like I said, after I've read in French, my mind is a whirlwind of French words and phrases, what I then say may not be entirely correct, but it will be much more so than when I'm just thinking in Dutch and translating, using rules of grammar.

That’s the point, you are talking about grammar and translation, and the problem is that language sometimes is shown with lots of exceptions and mystical rules, which only the initiates and their masters have access to. Lewis says that we should emphasise the regularities rather than the irregularities, we should compare English with English whenever we can; that demands someone who really knows English, its musicality (pronunciation is the first casualty in classroom) and its pragmatics (what is really a pain for non-natives) and how it works (grammar). Unfortunately, most teachers graduate in English, start teaching it without a major knowledge of it, God knows how terrible was learning English at public school for me! It’s a domino effect, bad English is taught throughout the years and it is always overlooked.

Your saying this and that is wrong, and that is right, in the compositions of your students, may be allright, but you shouldn't devote 15 minute of class time to explaining the second past participle of the future tense, I think, because they'll just forget it, and if they do remember it, the first three weeks after you've taught it, they'll use it wrong, maybe.

Yes, I read somewhere that teachers love to talk about language, and students want to learn the language, not theorise about it, I totally agree with you here.

No time now for the theories, but later I will read them carefully and comment something on them.
José