- Hello everyone and welcome back to English With Lucy.

I probably look a little bit different today

and that is because I think I live in the hottest flat

in England,

or at least in Cambridge.

Oh my God.

Right, so it's around 27, 28 degrees outside

which for England is really, really hot

but inside my flat, it's like a damn rainforest.

It's humid, muggy, that's a really good word,

muggy is when it's like heavy, hot, sticky air, humidity

and I have a whole wall of windows,

which is great,

because it lets in loads of light

but it also contributes to a greenhouse effect in my flat

and so I'm absolutely boiling.

So I couldn't bring myself to do my hair

'cause it would just,

I'd put it in and then it would fall out again

and also no turtlenecks today.

We've got my Coca Cola tee shirt instead

which not sponsored,

wish it was sponsored,

imagine having Coca Cola sponsor you, awesome.

So today, it's a really, really, really important video.

Today, I'm going to give you some advice

on how to stop translating into your native language

because a lot of people have this problem.

I've asked lots of English learners

and learners of other languages

and they say,

"I would be able to speak so much more fluently

"if I could stop translating."

Now, most of you probably already know this.

If you're new to this channel,

then I speak fluent Spanish

and I'm actively learning Italian

and I remember at the beginning

of my Spanish learning journey

I really found it hard not to translate.

And translating between English and Spanish

can be really, really difficult and annoying

because the word order is so different.

I'm now learning Italian actively

and I'm managing to do so

without translating into Spanish or English.

So speaking from my own experience as a language learner

and speaking from my experience

as an English language teacher

I'm going to give you some advice

and hopefully help you get over this massive, massive hurdle

that's preventing you from improving.

Firstly, before we get started,

I'd just like to thank the sponsor of today's video,

Lingoda.

This is a company I've been working with for awhile.

I really, really believe in what they have on offer.

They are an online language academy.

They teach English, French, Spanish and German

and you sign up on a monthly basis

and you get a combination of group and private lessons

taught via video chat.

They have really, really great materials

taught to you and delivered to you

by real native qualified teachers

and if you look at the prices,

it's actually very, very reasonable.

It's often much more affordable to study with Lingoda

than it is to go to an in person language school.

They've given me a discount for you.

You can get 50 euros or dollars

off your first month subscription at Lingoda

by clicking on the link in the description box

and using the discount code ENGLUCY6, ENGLUCY6.

All the information is down there.

Right, right, let's get started with the video.

My God, it is so hot.

I bet all of you are in your country,

actually, let's do something fun.

Tell me where you live

and what temperature it is where you are right now

'cause I bet some of you are in like 40 degree heat.

I know my friends in Seville are really suffering

with the heat

and I'm here with 27 degrees dying.

I'm very sensitive.

Okay, so I've been thinking about this question

for a long time

and I have actually made some notes on my phone

just because I want to get in the right order for you.

So bear with me.

So, how to avoid translating into a native language.

Well, the first tip I can give you

and this will not apply to everyone

is don't start in the first place.

If you're at like a beginner level of English,

some translation is inevitable,

you're going to do it.

The way we learn in school is amarillo, yellow,

naranja, orange.

We learn through translation.

However, think back to when you were a baby.

How did you acquire your first ever language,

your mother tongue?

You learnt through observing, seeing, watching, hearing,

smelling, tasting, watching actions.

You didn't learn through translation

because you had nothing to base your translation on

because you had no mother tongue.

So babies are capable of learning a language

without any other language as reference,

yet we find it incredibly difficult.

So what you need to think is simplification.

Babies start small

and then over years and years and years,

they build their vocabulary.

And you need to apply this to yourself as well.

It's much more effective to learn vocabulary

by observing and taking things in

than it is to just look at something in the dictionary.

And that brings me onto my next point.

Oh my God, I'm so hot.

And that brings me onto my next point

which is grab your bilingual dictionary

and throw it out of the window.

Don't do that, okay,

it might land on somebody's head.

Just place it to one side very carefully

and then pick up your monolingual dictionary,

is that the word for it?

And then pick up the dictionary

in the language that you are learning,

in many of your cases, it will be English

and start letting the language define itself.

So with words like nouns and verbs

it can be a little difficult to understand

but that's where you need to learn through observation.

When you're looking at adjectives, adverbs

and other things like that,

try to understand the definition in that same language first

because what you're going to be doing

is training yourself to think in the language

that you're learning

which brings me on to my third point.

Oh my God, what a beautifully

well planned out video this is.

So my next two points

are about thinking and speaking to yourself

in that language.

Now, I actually recommend that you start

by speaking out loud to yourself in the other language.

I think I mentioned that in a video about conversation,

improving your conversation and communication.

If you're interested in that

then you can watch that video just up there.

However, speaking to yourself in that other language

is a really, really key factor

in learning to think in the language.

So for example with Spanish, I'll be driving

and I'll describe the movements

that I'm going to be making with the car.

I'll be like (speaking in foreign language).

Anyway, that is what I do

or I'll be puttering around my kitchen

cooking and talking to myself

about what I'm doing.

And you will start to notice your own errors,

especially when you hear yourself speaking out loud.

Once you're comfortable speaking out loud

to yourself in private in that additional language,

move on to starting to think.

Now, I think speaking should come before thinking

but that's just my opinion.

Everybody learns in different ways.

I personally think it's easier to spot errors

and get comfortable when you're speaking out loud.

Now the speaking out loud,

you should do in private

but the thinking,

I want you to do it everywhere,

on the bus, seeing what goes past.

It can relate to the video I made

on how to learn and remember vocabulary

which you can watch up here.

It's a useful method

where you observe everything around you

and you check to see if you know it in your chosen language.

The full explanation is in the video

and some people have found that really, really useful.

I know I found it useful.

See if you can apply using a monolingual dictionary

to that video.

I think I recommend using a bilingual one.

See if you can do it with an English dictionary.

Yeah, so by thinking in English

and I'm talking about describing people,

if you see someone walking,

think to yourself, that man is walking,

he is walking down the street

or just going through your motions.

I am getting off the bus.

I am going to go to the shops.

In your head,

you're just starting to immerse yourself in the language.

Ah, that beautiful word, immerse,

to immerse yourself,

brings me on to point number five

which is immersion.

And that's actually one of my favourite words.

I know I have a lot of favourite words

but immersion, immersion, mmm, that's nice,

that's a nice word.

So immersion is something that you should be doing

throughout your learning experience.

And it's something you can do whilst multitasking

which is one of my favourite things.

So, when I'm doing something

that doesn't require 100% concentration

like cooking or cleaning,

I always have something on in the background.

Cleaning, cooking, washing the car, gardening, whatever,

any task that allows you to listen to something else

at the same time as doing something else,

have something on in that language in the background.

I know I'm saying it as if it's revolutionary

but really, don't forget to do it.

I know you can waste so much time

and miss out on so much learning.

By having it on in the background

and not even listening,

you will be getting used to pronunciation and accents.

And by listening and concentrating on what they're saying,

you will be familiarising yourself

with certain grammar lexi,

different vocabulary,

but also, you will notice where you are lacking.

So, if you listen to a radio programme about,

I always say photography,

what can I say?

So if you listen to a radio programme about politics,

for example.

My last point is make it daily.

Focus on frequency and consistency.

I always say to my students

that 20 minutes a day of high quality,

not even studying,

just language acquisition,

language acquisition,

I sometimes surprise myself

with the words that come out of my mouth,

20 minutes a day of high quality English time,

there we are,

that sounds more like something Lucy would say,

is much, much, much more valuable

than 140 minutes all in one day.

So make the general immersion

and the thinking and the speaking to yourself

something that you do throughout your day.

Make it part of your routine.

Make it become automatic to you.