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Thinking in a foreign language... | ||
Tags: Thinking | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6363 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 17 of 36 18 January 2010 at 5:16am | IP Logged | |||||
But that's just a matter of definition (and defining "thought" is rather tricky, to boot). I expect that everyone saying "thinking in a foreign language" means "having your internal monologue in a foreign language". How does saying "that's not thought, it's language" help this thread? Just make the above substitution when reading and you should be able to enjoy this thread without problems. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 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 18 of 36 18 January 2010 at 11:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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On page 1 Cainntear wrote that he doesn't think in words if the task is to open a door. No, because this process has been automatized and doesn't need to be thought out in details. If the door had a slightly complicated lock then I might be thinking in images, but if I had a complicated sequence of subtasks to do to open the door I would probably formulate them in words (as steps on an instructions sheet). On page 2 arithmetic, cycling and scanning for words are mentioned as things that is better done without thinking in words. Maybe, insofar they have been automatized.
I don't say that non-symbolized thought doesn't exist, but I suggest that it is so to say the precursor for more formalized thoughts in words (with conscious thinking in imagery somewhere in between) - and on this point I disagree with the inventors of the notion, who apparently see this kind of thinking as just one out of three possible thought forms. Ironically I may on this point be more in accord with Cainntear, who sees imagery-thought and verbal thought as some kind of conscious processing of a more fundamental non-symbolic thinking. The big difference is the extent to which we take this extra step. And for language-learners it must be a practical thing already to have an inner verbal monologue running most of the time, because it fairly easily can be redirected to another language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6319 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 19 of 36 18 January 2010 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Speculating on the frontiers on the mind in regards to language learning requires more than just a cursory
understanding on second language acquisition, but, hey, why not? There are some areas such as logic and math that probably don't have the mind thinking in a language, but this doesn't mean that symbols are not being used. And what is this talk about non-symbolized thought? Is this in regards to something like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? Even pure reason can by symbolized. Every thought can be symbolized, whether it's in symbolic logic or in a language. In fact, semiosis is innate in all of us, so thinking without symbols is impossible. Edit: There are some thoughts such as non-contradiction and hunger that don't require symbols, although they can certainly be symbolized, but these thoughts also exist in animals. This is the curious thing about us humans: language. Without language or some kind of semiosis there would be no opportunity to think beyond the simple thoughts of non-contradiction and hunger. Edited by Kugel on 18 January 2010 at 7:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 20 of 36 18 January 2010 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe it is just a matter of definition, but if advice is to be any use, it should be unambiguous. The term comes up in a pretty uniform way, amd this quote picked at random from the internet is typical of how I usually hear the term used:
[from http://edition.englishclub.com/esl-magazine/how-to-think-in- English-senses/] This cannot refer to inner dialogue, as you can create an inner dialogue through translation if you are not yet fluent in the language. The standard line of "stop translating and thinking in X" seems to imply (to me and many others that because there is no conscious translation, that the nature of the speakers inner thoughts has changed. This doesn't appear to be the case -- instead it is merely the method of expressing those thoughts that has changed. To illustrate this, take a look at body language, which is as language-specific as words. I kiss my female friends from continental Europe when I meet them. I wave or nod at my female friends from the UK. I don't like my friends in different ways -- the underlying emotion is the same, the underlying desire to express my friendship is the same, it's just that the means of expressing it is different. Stopping translating isn't about "thinking in" the language, it's about automating the act of expression so that you don't have to consciously think about it at all, just like Iversen identifies with my example of opening a door. "Stop translating and start thinking" also fails to explain to the student how to do it -- it's like pointing at you and saying "fly". I've personally found that the "stopping translating" point (or "stopping thinking about" in the cases of arithmetic and cycling) was a matter of learning to trust my own ability. I got to the point where I started to feel that I knew how to say what I wanted to say, but I continued to think about it anyway (not necessarily "translate it", but consciously construct it from rules in one way or another). I felt I was slowing down my conversation by thinking about the language rather than just trust myself. However, even now there are some things that I do have to think consciously about (or "translate", if you like) -- when I learn a new feature in the language, I have to resort back to consciously constructing a sentence, or at least the part of the sentence that uses the feature. It's the third and fourth stages of Abraham Maslow's four stages of learning. You use a "conscious competence" to train the reflexes until the point where the skill comes unconsciously -- unconscious competence. So I feel "stop translating and start thinking in X" would be better replaced with "Don't worry! You know this already -- trust yourself. Don't think about it, just say it." Whichever way you put it, it should only be said once the student has developed the unconscious competence. All too often, I've seen teachers blaming students' failures on them continuing to translate, when the reason that they continue to "translate" is that they haven't actually been taught well enough to know it unconsciously. The big problem is that from the outside you can tell that a student is translating/relying on conscious competence, but you can't tell why. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6319 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 36 18 January 2010 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cainteer, if you accept that knowledge(the knowledge on the higher levels on Maslow's hierarchy) is socially given,
then you can't ignore the role of language. Because languages describe the world differently from each other, you can't avoid the fact that one can think differently by switching languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 22 of 36 18 January 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'll readily admit that I haven't read any of Maslow's writings directly -- the stages of learning was something that I was introduced to within AI as something to be modelled within self-training systems. (Most automated learning systems are just given input and a desired output, but some would be given the rules with the idea that they could "scaffold" their learning by presenting their own problems and solutions through declarative knowledge/conscious competence and using that to train their own procedural knowledge/unconscious competence.) So anyway, I'm not exactly sure what you're saying, but I'll say that the four stages of learning are pretty widely talked about beyond Maslow's own framework, so I don't think that accepting the stages assumes accepting any of Maslow's other theories. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5704 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 23 of 36 18 January 2010 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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'Thinking in a language' is a somewhat dubious term used a lot by teachers of languages and people wanting to sell language courses. I suggest that those who talk about thinking in a language are probably talking about NOT thinking and just speaking it naturally. I've heard teachers spout things like, 'You must think in x language from day 1!' What? How? I just started, I need more than 5 words.
You may have to think things out in your target language for a while until those processes become natural but I wouldn't call the result thinking in a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6363 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 24 of 36 18 January 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Cainntear, that post is well-written and clear. Thanks for explaining to me in a manner I can understand. I agree with you and I now think it's an important distinction to make. Using the four stages of learning to think and talk about the phenomenon is a lot more useful than calling it "translating", as that's not really what's going on. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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