如何用英语思考11 Thinking Exercises

In the last lesson and the short clip, we focused on listening and the importance of listening.

If you don't have a sharp ear, how can you understand others? How can you communicate with others?

But also, doing listening practice, sharpening our ear, can force us to think in English

because we have to think about what could this person be saying, right? What might they be saying?

Forces us to think in English. Very, very useful. Okay.

In this lesson, we're going to be talking about pure thinking in English.

And above anything else, this needs to become a habit.

The other things are exercises that you sit down and you decide to do,

and you spend five or ten minutes doing regularly to improve.

Great. Awesome. You should and need to do those things.

But now I would like to share something with you about thinking in English purely.

That is not necessarily an exercise that you sit down and decide to do suddenly,

but something that you need to get in the habit of doing anytime, usually, often, whenever.

Okay. Now, habits make or break us, right?

If you have bad eating habits, you become unhealthy.

If you have good eating habits, you become healthy.

If you're in the habit of going out for a run every day, you're likely to be more healthy.

If you're in the habit of packing a very healthy lunch to bring to work

rather than buying McDonald's or something, then you're likely to be more healthy.

So, if you have the habit of doing what I'm going to tell you in this lesson,

you're likely to be better at thinking in English.

You're likely to be better at communicating in English.

You're likely to be more comfortable with English. Pretty simple.

Okay. So, I would like to describe and talk about with you what you can do.

It's really simple.

You find yourself in a situation with, I don't know, nothing to think about,

nothing to do, nothing going on, right?

Let's say you're in your office, sitting down in your chair.

Your computer is here, looking out the window.

Well, why not start to describe the stuff, the things that are going on outside of the window?

Why not start trying to describe these things in detail?

Not only describing exactly what you see, but describing how you feel about what you see,

what might happen next, why this person is here, what's going on in the background, right?

All of these things, these connections, these visual images that we see,

all of these things can basically be described.

Now, we could write these things down, but we can also think these things.

Thinking thoughts in English.

It's not all that different from writing down your ideas in English.

Yeah, it's a little different because you can write something down and check it

and say, "Oh, that's not right," or, "That's right," or, "That's good," and look at it, right?

So, yeah, but thinking in English does force English words to go through your mind.

I mean, when I look over there on the table, I see a cup, and the word "cup" comes into my mind.

The word "cup" comes into my mind, even if I don't say out loud the word "cup."

There it is. The word "cup" is there. I can see it in my mind.

And the word "brown" comes into my mind because the cup is brown.

And "teabag" because there's a teabag in the cup.

All of these things come into my mind whether or not I speak them,

whether or not I actually say the words.

So one thing that you can do is just describe your environment in English in your mind.

And if you find it very easy--there's a cup--if you find it very, very easy, so challenge yourself.

Add more detail, make up stories, be creative.

And if you get into the habit of doing this on a regular basis,

you will find that you're always thinking in English.

Constantly having English in your mind is really, really good.

I always have English in my mind. I always have.

Because of that, my English is pretty good, right?

Most native speakers, pretty good English, right? Why?

English is always in their minds. English is all around them.

They're surrounded by English. English, English, English.

Okay, so they speak English naturally.

You maybe speak a language naturally, too. Why?

You think in that language, always.

When you were a baby, you learned that language very early.

You connected things with that language very early, right?

All around you. You have to do the same thing with English.

You have to do the same thing. You can't just say,

"I'm going to learn some words from a book. A, B, C, D."

This isn't how you learn language. This isn't how it works.

This isn't how you learn your language.

Why do you expect to get good at another language,

doing it with a list of words? Of course not.

I'm not saying a list of words is bad. Sometimes it's useful.

But having these thoughts in English, describing things,

is a key, a key tool for you. So, let's do this.

Now, I haven't planned this. I haven't decided what I'm going to say.

It's going to be pure natural. Okay?

I'm going to be speaking this because it would be pretty boring for you

if I were just doing this for the next few minutes, right?

You can guess what I'm saying.

But that would be pretty boring for you and not very useful.

I'm going to be speaking. I'm going to be saying what I'm thinking.

To show you how you can do this. And you can do this.

Okay? So, let's start very simply.

Out the window. Alright. Looking out the window.

There's a big window here.

I'm not going to say that in my mind. Big window.

There is one, but I'm looking out the window. Okay.

One. Mountain. Mountain. Alright.

Well, there are a lot of different mountains.

Is it Mount Everest? Does it have snow on top?

Is it like a desert? Is it dry? Is it brown? Is it green? Trees? What?

A large mountain. Okay. With two peaks.

One. Two. A large mountain with two peaks.

Has trees on it.

A large tree-covered mountain with two peaks.

And some people doing exercise on the peak of the mountain.

I can see them out the window. Okay.

So, some people doing exercise on the top of a mountain with two peaks.

On the top of a forest-covered mountain with two peaks.

Tree-covered mountain with two peaks.

Alright. Fair enough.

Blue sky. Blue sky with puffy white clouds.

A blue sky with puffy white clouds.

And a few pigeons flying around in the sky.

Okay. That's pretty simple. That's pretty easy. Right?

Okay. You've got English going around in your brain.

Alright. Let's see what else we can see.

Over there. Some tall, grey buildings.

What kind of buildings?

Some tall, grey apartment buildings.

Interesting. Okay.

Nine tall, grey apartment buildings in an apartment complex.

Complex is a group of buildings that go together.

Nine tall, grey, boring apartment buildings in a large apartment complex

surrounded by some green trees.

Better.

Nine tall, depressing-looking, grey apartment buildings

in an apartment complex surrounded by green trees

near a tall mountain with two peaks

and there are some people doing exercise on the top of the mountain.

Alright. There we go.

I could have put that together probably a little better, but I'm thinking in English.

Okay. Looking down.

By the way, I live on the 20th floor, so I can see far down here.

A little girl.

Nope. That's a boy.

A boy with long hair.

A little boy with long hair wearing a striped polo shirt

riding wildly on his bicycle.

It looks like he just learned how to ride the bicycle

because he can't steer it very well and he looks very uncomfortable on the bicycle.

But because he's pedaling so fast,

it seems like he's really, really excited

to be able to finally ride a bicycle by himself.

Right? And so he doesn't care that maybe he's not very good yet.

He just wants to ride as fast as he can.

And the little boy is riding along the sidewalk

and his mother is trying to run after him to catch him

because maybe she's afraid that he's going to hurt himself.

Okay? The mother is wearing a purple blouse

and a long skirt with flowers and sandals.

She has brown hair. Okay?

Beside them, there is an old man

with a white t-shirt, very dark skin,

light gray hair, smoking a cigarette,

and it looks like he's talking to himself.

He might be talking to himself because he's deciding what he's going to do tomorrow.

Or maybe something difficult happened today

and he's talking about what he can do to solve the problem.

Why is he talking about it out loud to himself?

Well, I don't know. Maybe he feels lonely.

Maybe he has nobody to talk to. Maybe he doesn't care what other people think.

Okay, now, I've said a lot of things.

I'm just sort of going on and on and on about things that I see.

I'm not really thinking carefully. I'm not planning anything.

I'm not too worried about making everything perfect.

I could make the description of the mountain and the apartment complex better if I worked harder.

But the point is, I've just got thoughts going on in my mind.

I've got things happening in my head in English.

And this is what you can do every day, all the time.

Make it a habit. Get used to it.

You might think it's weird at first. "This is weird. I don't want to think in English. That's very strange."

English is something that you study. English is something that you learn when you read.

Not only. Not only. Okay?

Start thinking in English. Do it or don't do it.

Better if you do it. If you do, you'll see results. It's that simple.

So, next time you're by yourself, you've got nothing to do, you're bored, just try this.

Look around you. What do you see? Describe it.

Go deeper and deeper. Give more and more detail.

Wonder about things. Ask questions to yourself about, "Why is he talking to himself?"

Ask questions to yourself. Guess. Make assumptions.

Assumptions is where you guess something, but you don't know if you're right or wrong.

Who cares? It's in your mind. Nobody knows if it's right or wrong. Right?

Alright. So, practice this. Do it.

And in the next lesson, we're going to go on and we're going to talk about writing.

How we can use writing as a way to work on our English brain. On our thinking in English.

So, I'll see you in the next lesson.