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Thinking in a foreign language... | ||
Tags: Thinking | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5380 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 1 of 36 06 January 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry if there is another thread on this topic (I don't see one) but I was wondering,
in particular people that are using or have used Assimil, at what point did you start to think in the target language. Was it from from lesson 1 of the passive phase (albeit just a few sentences) or was it through the passive phase or did it all come together during the active wave. I am progressing well with Assimil but thinking in English when I should be thinking in Italian is a slight problem. Other than that I can remember words and phrases well, following pretty much Assimil's method, with a review of a few previous lessons before I start the new one each day. I am looking for tips and experiences. Any would be appreciated. Thanks... (p.s.) I am only on lesson 13 of Assimil Italian with Ease, having previously done the Michel Thomas courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5456 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 36 06 January 2010 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am going to confess something here. I never really understand what people mean by "think in a language". I am sure I am not thinking in English when I speak English. It is more like my brain has some urges (more like images than words) and then the relevant words come out in English. Same when I speak in Czech - I am not thinking in Czech (or in English) - the words just sort of come out.
Now with other languages it is a different story - I have to translate from Czech to Russian, or (to a lesser degree) from English to French, Mandarin, etc. So, it isn't so much that I am thinking in a language, but that my command of one language is better than another so that when an impulse or image comes to my mind, the relevant words I want to say fill my head in the stronger language and I then translate them to the weaker language. I don't know any short cuts around this other than a lot of exposure to listening and speaking in the language, until its use becomes habitual. Quite literally, you can use the language without thinking. There isn't a magic moment where all of sudden you are doing this, though, it comes gradually. So that you pretty soon find yourself saying "hello", "thanks", and so on automatically, and the range of words and phrases you can do that with just increases a tiny bit every day over a long time. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5380 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 3 of 36 06 January 2010 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the reply. What you say makes perfect sense and clarifies what I was actually asking with regards to translating, I suppose, as oppose to 'thinking' in a language (whatever that may be). I suppose what I was therefore asking was how to reach the level where there is no translation process between thinking what you want to say in your naitive language and then actually saying it in the target language. Again you answered this. I suppose the next question then it whether Assimil with ease is capable of taking you to that point where what you say is instantaneous, that is to say, without translation via some thought process. If it is a gradual process - which I can understand it being - then are people who have used Assimil with success begun the passive phase by listening to the audio and looking at the text etc and understanding what is being said in the target language, but processing, reinterpreting, translating or whatever you want to call it back into your naitive language. I believe adopting the correct technique from the start may be a crucial factor to one's success and would be interested to hear your thoughts. Tom Edited by magictom123 on 06 January 2010 at 10:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5798 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 36 06 January 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm personally of the opinion that production (especially speaking) is the key to learning a language.
As Splog says, you don't think in language. What is language? To put in a weird sci-fi way, language is a technology for transferral of thought. In order to learn a language, you have to build associations in the brain between the thought and the word, phrase or structure that the language uses to encode it. So why do I think speaking is so much better than listening? Because to associate things in your brain, you need to activate them in your brain. If I'm thinking about a table, the thought is active. If I hear the word "table", I start thinking about a table, the thought and the word are active. But if I hear a foreign word for table that I only sort-of know, it starts me thinking about maybe-a-table (and a lot of other "well-it-could-be"s), and so the thought of a table is only partly active. On top of that, the word isn't familiar, so the word form in my head is only partly active. Weak activation leads to weak association, and stronger associations mean quicker learning. But if I'm going to say something about a table, then I've got that thought of a table in my head, very actively. Even if I stumble over the word (= weak activation), the strong activation of the thought means the association between word and thought is stronger, so learning is quicker. ...except that someone far more qualified than me mondria.pdf+mondria+1996&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid= ADGEESgy0H8yREjxJi9Ggc1i6laBUV7XMXJ2ik_YsHzpHw5yzstLaq5iSQzl wbTHmWssSdnXdkU5XCm1bj Bzxuljb-6Ljgk70xAW8KBKF-ilsnVBWF-RLhJBGlv8oVvBvtphif6izOBh&s ig=AHIEtbRRdeFPP8qToRvkFy3bP5ckZvIBOA"> disagrees with me and has statistics supporting his claim ("Myth 6"), so feel free to ignore everything I've just said. However, while I can't see the original research, from past experience (and the descriptions of other experiments mentioned), I suspect that the test was simple prompt-response vocabulary techniques (teacher says "brood", student says "pain" vs teachers says "pain", student says "brood" -- "bread" in French and Dutch). Does a decontextualised word really express a thought? There is an argument that it doesn't, and personally when I talk about practising speaking, I'm on about saying things that mean something -- not just parroting words. Edited by Iversen on 07 January 2010 at 12:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6490 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 36 07 January 2010 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I recently read a number of articles about thinking and commented on them in my log (links in that thread). The authors had attached a beeper to some persons, and whenever the thing beeped they should report exactly what they were thinking. Later a team member interviewed the persons about the background for their spontaneous comments. Of course this adds a systematic source of errors, but this technique is still better than any other I have heard about. And the conclusion was clear: there is not just one way of thinking, but at least three: some people mostly thought in words (a sort of inner conversation), while others thought in imagery, including sound and smells and tactile sensations. But the most controversial find was that much thought is "unsymbolized thinking":
"Unsymbolized thinking—the experience of an explicit, differentiated thought that does not include the experience of words, images, or any other symbols—is a frequently occurring yet little known phenomenon. Unsymbolized thinking is a distinct phenomenon, not merely, for example, an incompletely formed inner speech or a vague image, and is one of the five most common features of inner experience (the other four: inner speech, inner seeing, feelings, and sensory awareness)." (quote Hurlburt and Akhter) It is fairly easy to see how a constant inner stream af words can be directed towards a target language, but less easy to see how this is done if your thoughts mainly are sensory or 'unsymbolized' as defined above. Nevertheless I do think that we all have felt one situation where this last kind of thought is represented, namely when we are searching in our mind for an adequate word for something. We can use linguistic or 'sensory' associations in an attempt to find a suitable term or expression, but ultimately the thing we are searching for is represented in our mind as a big empty hole that only can be filled with one single word or expression - as if it had a very peculiar shape. I have discussed some practical aspects of luring yourself to think in another language in part 5 of my language guide, and the question has also been discussed in a few old threads (including those about learner types), but the subject has not really got the attention it deserves. PS: OldAccountBroke's extremely long link broke the formatting of this page so I had to insert some line breaks, - but here it is, - choose 'view as plain HTML' if you can't see the text. Edited by Iversen on 07 January 2010 at 1:55am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6369 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 36 07 January 2010 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wait, are you guys saying that you CAN'T make words in your mind without saying them out loud? I'm assuming you're not. Thus, you can certainly think in another language by making up sentences commenting about what you're doing, what you plan to do and so on. The fact that you don't normally do it in your mother tongue doesn't impact your ability to do it in a foreign tongue, does it? This is what I mean when I say "thinking in a foreign language". I start to have little monologues in my head about things I'm doing. Sometimes even dialogues.
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| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5380 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 7 of 36 07 January 2010 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, contrary to my earlier message, I am also curious about constructing sentences in my mind. Say I
want to say the door is open in Italian. In my head I might very quickly think oh the door, that's la porta and errr is open in Italian is è aperta, before spouting la porta è aperta. So far it seems that the concenus seems to be in order to bypass the English and just think of the sentence and say it in Italian, all that is required is alot of practise to be point where it becomes autonomous. My original post was concerning assimil and whether those who have been successful with this course have managed to reach this stage of oral/mental abilty? Sorry for any poor typing, I'm on my phone. Edited by magictom123 on 07 January 2010 at 1:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5798 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 36 07 January 2010 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
No, of course not. All I'm saying is that this is language, not thought. I'm interested in what Iversen has to say, but I think it unlikely that the people noted in the study as having linguistic thought or image-based thought were thinking in a fundamentally different way from the unsymbolised thinkers -- rather I'd suggest that all thought is fundamentally nonsymbolic* and that any symbolisation is merely a way of consciously controlling thought. To me the idea of unsymbolised thought is totally intuitive. When I go to a door I don't picture me opening it before I do it, or formulate the sentence "I will open this door" -- no, I know I want to do it, and I do it. It's only once we get into abstract intellectual tasks that we need language to impose a logic. The whole notion that thought was symbolic came out of logic, but logic is a poor way to model human experience. Any unspoken sentences in my head are produced the same way as the things I say out loud. Edit: * this incorrectly said "symbolic", and the sentence made no sense. I meant nonsymbolic originally. Edited by OldAccountBroke on 16 January 2010 at 2:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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