Thinking in English

In my last blog, ‘best age’, I finished by saying that an immersion course is the best way of learning a language. I decided that I ought to explain why, and tell you what happens on our immersion courses [stages d’immersion].

There’s so much to say that I’ve decided to say it in individual steps; each a different blog.
Perhaps the most important step in improving your English is when you start thinking in English. Imagine what is happening if you use your French to speak English:

1.    You hear something in English
2.    You translate that into French
3.    You consider your response in French
4.    You translate that into English
5.    You reply in English

How would that be different if your conversation were in French? Simpler and faster; you don’t need to translate anything. Now imagine that you could do the same with an English conversation, not only would it be simpler and faster, but you would also avoid two big dangers.

If you can’t reply fast enough in a group of people speaking English, a danger is that the topic of conversation will have moved on, and your reply would not be pertinent.
The second problem is that if you compose your comment in French and then quickly translate it, perhaps word by word, you are in great danger of imposing the grammar, the word order, the vocabulary and the pronunciation of one language onto another. French and English are similar in many ways, but they are not the same, and if you want to improve your English …

So, we accept that it is essential to start thinking in English when using English, fortunately this is not as difficult as it might seem. Any person’s brain [cerveau] can work in more than one language, and of changing to the correct language when needed.
Watching films in English, perhaps with subtitles in English will help, listening to the radio in English will help, even if you don’t understand what you’re hearing, and reading will help. However, these take time and perseverance.

For people who come here for a course [stage], long or short, we include tricks [astuces] and training. The results are very satisfying, for both students and their hosts, particularly when a student comes downstairs in the morning with a big smile [sourire] on their face and saying: ‘Last night I dreamt in English!’