Have you been learning English for years and years, but you still think in your native language before you speak? Do you need to translate from your native language? This creates pauses and hesitations.
It makes you speak more slowly and you feel more stressed, anxious, and less confident. So today, let's fix that. You're going to learn how to train your brain to think and speak in English.
You'll learn 4 proven ways that you can start using today, and you'll see results by the end of this week. And at the end, I'll share some bonus tips as well #1 think during everyday activities. Think of all the things that you do in your everyday life that either are very routine, don't require a lot of conscious thought, or are pretty boring.
For me, it would be getting showered in the morning, doing my makeup, doing my hair. And for a lot of people, it might be commuting to work. And then think of all the chores you do, doing the dishes, making your bed, all those various things that don't require conscious thought.
Well, why don't you use that time to think in English? Now you might be saying or thinking in your native language perhaps. Well, Jennifer, what should I think about?
What can I think about? And here's the best part. In order to practice thinking in English, you just need to make very simple statements, very simple observations.
You don't need to make it overly complex. You don't need to focus on certain grammar structures or vocabulary. Just look around and observe the room you're in and make a simple statement.
Let's say you're brushing your teeth as you go through that process. Now remember, you don't have to say this out loud. You can simply think in your head, but think in English as you pick up the toothpaste.
Think about that. I'm picking up the toothpaste. I'm taking off the cap.
I'm putting toothpaste on my toothbrush. My toothbrush is very old. I should buy a new toothbrush.
The toothpaste smells minty. I never noticed the color of the toothpaste before. Now think of how boring this conversation is.
In your everyday life, you would never talk so much about toothpaste, your toothbrush, or brushing your teeth, right? But you are doing this in your head to practice thinking in English. And that's just one very simple thing that you do every day, two times a day, maybe three or more times a day.
Think of all the other things and how you can simply make observations about that situation or about what you see around you, and you're going to make those observations in your head in English. As a tip, you can start with simple statements, my toothbrush is old, and then take that statement and try to make it more complex. Can you change the verb tense?
Can you ask a question? Can you add an adjective so you can purposely think of ways to make it more complex as an additional exercise? But start simple and then add on.
So if you're committed to trying this exercise, put toothpaste. Put toothpaste in the comments. Why not #2 speak out loud when you think in your head.
That is very beneficial to train your brain to start thinking in English, to start processing sentence structure, grammar, vocab in English. But thinking something in your head is not the same as opening your mouth and saying the words. Once you open your mouth and say the words, it's a different activity.
You're practicing your speaking skills now. You might be thinking to yourself, well, Jennifer, of course I want to speak. This is the one thing I want to do in English, but I don't have anyone to speak with.
I live in a country where there are no native speakers. That's OK because there are easy ways that you can practice speaking on your own. My favorite way and native speakers use this activity as well to practice their speaking skills.
My favorite way is a website called Random Question Generator. All you need to Google is Random Question Generator and there are many different websites. I will leave my favorite websites in the description.
Now what you can do with these websites is all you do is you click the button that generates a random question. Now what you need to do is as soon as you see that question, I want you to open your mouth and start speaking. Don't think about grammar, don't think about vocabulary, don't think about pronunciation.
Open your mouth and start speaking. Make it your goal to speak for one minute on on that topic. You can record yourself speaking.
You can just use the voice recorder app on your phone. You can also set a timer for one minute if you'd like, so when that timer goes off then you know you've spoken for that amount of time. You don't need to do that.
It's just an option. Now, after you can listen to that recording and you can think about your pronunciation, grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, and you can think of areas to improve. However, as you're doing the exercise, you're not thinking about your English, you're just speaking.
But here's the best part, because you have already taken the time to think in English every single day. Maybe you get 510, even 20 minutes of practice where you're thinking, you're observing, you're making simple observations more complex. All of that practice that you just did will help you open your mouth and get the words out.
Give this activity one week, then two weeks, then 30 days. I promise you, if you do this three times a day for just two to three minutes, three times a day in 30 days, you are going to be be so impressed with your results. So if you're committed to trying this exercise, put let's go, put, let's go in the comments #3 describe images.
This is a more guided method because when you describe an image, you can think in your mind, which is absolutely beneficial. I've already mentioned why. Or you can practice speaking out loud and instead of using a random question generator you are going to use an image.
How are you going to find an image? You can simply go to Google images and put a random word in like cat or dog and choose any image. Or you can go to a website that shares free images like pixels, which I'll put in the description as well, and just choose one of the first images on the homepage.
This is an exercise that I do with my students and they absolutely love it. And the conversations that we have, the examples that they share are so interesting as well. Now, this is an activity that I do with my students for free on YouTube.
So make sure you subscribe so you know the next time that I'm hosting a speaking class. So here's an image that I used in my last speaking class, and the students shared such interesting examples. Now all you have to do is describe this image.
You can make observations about how the people look, they're clothing the background, or you can make statements about what they're doing. So in this image you might say the man wearing an orange shirt is kneeling or you might say there's an umbrella next to the man. And again you can make simple statements more complex.
There's a bright multi colored umbrella next to the man. You can even have fun with this and try to guess what is happening in this image. So this is what my students did.
Some of them said that the man is proposing to the woman. Other people had funny things like the woman is helping the man because he fell. So it was really interesting the different observations that students made.
So you can take any image and use this to both speak in your head. Maybe on the way to work. If you're on the bus or train, you can do this activity in your head, think in your head, or you can practice speaking out loud.
So are you going to practice this activity if you are put. I'm committed but I'm I'm committed because I want to know that you're committed to practicing this activity and I want you to be committed because I know the results that you're going to get are going to make you so confident so happy and so proud. Number 4A daily summary.
Now this is an activity that you should start doing regardless because preparing a daily summary is a great way to reflect on the day and ask yourself, what areas am I very proud of? What areas could I improve on? And this is just a great thing to do for your overall personal development.
But we'll focus on how this activity can help you train your brain to think and speak in English. Well, the same thing that we talked about before. You can think these activities in your head and if you are in a public place, this is a great time to just think the activities.
If you are in a more private place, then you can say it out loud. And always remember the option is there to record yourself speaking. And with your daily summary, of course, you can summarize your day.
You can talk about the best part of your day, the worst part of your day, three things you're grateful for, three things you're proud of, three things you want to improve. And the best part is you don't need to summarize your whole day. So you don't need to do this at night.
Maybe your nights are very busy getting your kids ready for school or preparing for work the next day. So you could do this activity every day at noon, at lunchtime. And you can summarize your morning.
So the daily summary doesn't have to be your entire day. You could summarize your morning, you could summarize a meeting at work, you could summarize your evening. Or you can do this multiple times a day.
So you could summarize your morning and then summarize your evening so you have the opportunity to do this twice a day. Whatever works best for you. The more you practice, the faster you'll get results.
I have two bonus tips for you. Bonus tip #1 Surround yourself in English as much as you can. Ask yourself, what can I do to make my environment more English?
Can you change the settings on your phone or your computer? Can you start listening to English music? Can you start watching English TV shows?
What can you do that's easy for you to do to make your environment more English? Can you put labels on all the items in a room or your entire house and their English labels? So think about one thing, one thing that you can do to make your environment more English.
Because of course, the more you surround yourself with the language, the more that your brain will absorb that language. And bonus tip #2 the most important is be patient. This is not going to dramatically change your English overnight.
But in seven days, you will see some results. In 14 days, you will see some results. In 30 days, you will see some results.
But if you take those results from the seven days, 14 days, and 30 days, guess what? The result is a lot bigger than you may realize. And that's only 30 days.
Imagine you do these four. Very simple, free activities that only take a few minutes and you do these activities every day for 90 days. Imagine the results that are possible.
So be patient. Can you do that for me? Can you be patient?
Well, if you can put yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, put yes, yes, yes, yes in the comments. Now I have an entire video to help you prepare to speak in English, so make sure you watch it right now.
