Thinking in a Foreign Language?

Automaticity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaticity
Basic English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_english
Maximum Basic English: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE_1500

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Thinking
• in
• a
• Foreign
• Language

[boabysands123]

Thanks for this. One quibble, you may have your mike level set too high. Occasionally in the video when you emphasize a word the audio is clipped i.e. distorted, as the volume level of your speech exceeds the limit of what your microphone can register (at its current setting). A way around this problem is to use recording software with auto level/peak control or one that shows a clear input level meter on screen so you can see when your vocal signal is too hot (all red bars).

[FluentCzech]

@boabysands123 Thank you. I just listened to the video, and you are right. I will be more careful with the recording levels from now on. Sorry about that.

[heloizyjhenifer]

Fine but what scares me, if anything does, is when I don't understand nearly everything I'm hearing in the language I'm learning. Therefore, acquiring massive vocabulary is necessary and it doesn't hurt my speaking automatisms, which are a separate thing anyway.

As a sidenote, my second language is currently my best language, so I'm speaking from experience too :).

I don't think what applies to simple English applies to every language. English is *often* used between non natives, special case.

[FluentCzech]

@heloizyjhenifer You make some great points, and I agree with you completely. The video is only talking about active vocabulary, which needs to be automatized. Passive vocabulary is always much much larger. As I mentioned in the video, my Czech passive vocabulary is tens of thousands of words, but my automatized active vocabulary is somewhere around 2000 words. Several earlier videos on my channel talk about increasing passive vocabulary.

[utubesqueeze]

I must have watched countless videos from all the main Youtube polyglots (lingosteve, poliglotta80, Torbyrne, loki2504, laoshu505000, ProfASAr) and none, other than a passing hint from Steve Kaufman, have ever talked about in detail this discrepancy between 2nd language learning compared to rest and the focus on core vocab or even the automaticity concept.

This is a really useful video - thank you very much!

[FluentCzech]

@ispeakczech Fantastic. I am really glad to hear my connectors are useful to you, and the videos to. It encourages me to make more of them.

[justar4]

man, i am trying to learn german and i find it tough.. i somehow knew that i dint have to master 1000s of words but never thought thru.. the way u explained it gives me hope.. thanks for taking the time to explain! may all ur dreams come true this year, every year!

[Redsparrow633]

Thank you very much, you informed me of alot of things that I wasn't aware of & was struggling! Thanks to this video you actually inspired me to go back & study every single words on these books that I bought & make progress, thank you thank you thank you thank you! :D :D :D

[Sievet]

You made some very good point with the 'automatics' thing. But to be honest, I think in all languages I know, completely unconsciously. And since every language changes somehow my attitude, my 'inner voice' is kind of unpredictable. And unlike me, my thoughts have flawless accents! :D Great videos, I'm starting to learn Czech this year. :)

[Luiseut59]

Futhermore, the way we learn a new language may has its influence, I mean, using grammar book, dictionaries, translating every single word we see...

[Luiseut59]

Well, I'm not a expert but I'll share my expirience with english... I think phonetics is also involved. I mean, the easier you brain pocesses the sounds the easier you will understand and the easier you will asociate sounds with meaning. That is to me, the main explanation to the problem of translating in your head when listening to a foreign language.

[alsuvi]

A really interesting video!! I completely agree with your advices. It's true that this idea of thinking in the other language is very popular and I must admit that I've also used this expression. But yeah, what you say about automaticity makes a lot of sense. You nailed it! Thank you for this great explanation!

[Esoparagon]

You just have to start doing it. I never had the problem.

[TheMick419]

excellent video