This afternoon I let my elementary level class in on my language learning secret: practice thinking in the target language throughout the day. I told them I used to do it all the time when I was a student. (Still do, actually, but by habit, not as a conscious act.) I recommended they don't do it aloud, unless they want people to think they're nuts, but I swear it works.
They're just learning how to form very simple sentences, but they know some vocab now and can identify stuff and say if it's this or that or who it belongs to. They all laughed when I told them it's a great way to practice, but I hope they give it a try.
1 comment:
Actually, that's pretty similar to the techniques they teach for getting better at other things. For example, many guitar teachers recommend visualizing yourself playing a difficult passage when you're away from the guitar. The idea is basically that the visualization is still training your brain even when your fingers aren't performing the action.
I'd think that the same brain-training works with languages or pretty much anything else one might want to learn.
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