Useful Language Tips

10 Tips to help you speak and think in English

Thinking your ideas and thoughts in a foreign language makes your decisions better and more rational. Better decision-making is not the only benefit of thinking in English, though. When you think in English, you learn the language faster and have an easier time speaking out loud.

Here are our 10 tips to help you speak and think in English:

(1) Immersion:

Make English a part of your everyday life, by reading and listening to as much English as possible, to enable you to learn and hear more vocabulary and grammar that you can use when speaking in English.

(2) Don’t use a bilingual dictionary:

By using a bilingual dictionary you are improving your translation skills, not your ability to think in English. Use a monolingual dictionary to look up the definition of the words in English, to enable your brain to process this information in English. This will help you think in English in the future and avoid translating from your native language to English.

(3) Learn vocabulary in phrases, not single words:

This will help you think of these words faster when you have to speak in English and avoid misusing words. Pay attention to the whole phrase and think about that phrase. Is it a phrase that you could use when you have to speak in English in the future?

(4) Start using the vocabulary as soon as possible:

If you do not use the new vocabulary and phrases you have heard through immersion, you will not be able to remember this when you have to speak in English. Train your brain to think faster in English by constructing sentences with these new words. You can do this by writing sentences and also saying these sentences out loud. By using these new words, you will better think of them when speaking in English.

(5) Talk to yourself in English:

If you have no one to speak to, talking to yourself in English is a great way for you to start training your brain to think faster in English. You could do this by talking to yourself about your day, about what you did yesterday, what you will do on the weekend, your goals and dreams…. talk to yourself about anything you would like to talk about in the future.

(6) Talk about your day:

If you are really stuck for ideas, just talk about your day to yourself. This is the easiest way to start talking to yourself in English to make it easier for you to think faster in English when you do need to speak to other English speakers.

(7) Role-play conversations:

Create role-play situations you may find yourself in the future. You could talk about people you will meet during that day and try to think of all the questions they may ask you and how you may answer these questions. This will help you think faster in the future when you have to speak about these topics in everyday life.

(8) Get an English-speaking friend or partner:

One of the best ways to think faster and speak in English is to speak with real people. Find people to speak to on a regular basis to interact and practice what you have been practicing every day. This will give you the motivation to continue learning and improving, and see your results in your real life interactions with other English speakers.

(9) Sing Along to English Songs:

Singing to songs is a great way to move your mouth and actually speak in English. Singing to English songs will help you learn connected speech, slang, pronunciation, and intonation, which will help you speak more confident and think faster in natural conversations.

(10) Have fun:

Make your learning fun. Improving your speaking skills is hard in any language, let alone a foreign language. Make sure to be immersing yourself with materials that you genuinely love so that you are consistently applying these tips to motivate you to do these steps every single day for maximum results in the short term.

Important Notes:

If you use these tips on a regular basis, you will see your ability to think and speak in English improve over the next few months, provided that you are consistent! It is not enough to be using these tips once a week or once a month… use an apply these tips for 15-30 minutes a day, and you will see improvements over the next few months.

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