If you listen closely to learners who have studied German for quite some time, one of the main obstacles that stops them from becoming fluent is that they keep translating everything in their head. They hear a sentence in English and they slowly transform it into a sentence in German. This is one of the reasons why speaking German can feel a bit unnatural.
The goal with these learners is to train them to stop translating and start thinking in German.
This might sound a little crazy at first. How could we possibly expect the brain to think in another language? How do we get someone to just start thinking and speaking German without translating?
The answer is we don’t. But we can get started thinking about things in German very simply by labeling things.
You can start small and just label the immediate world around you in German. der Tisch, das Fenster, die Tür, der Stuhl, die Lampe. Nothing more. No grammar, just label the things you see in German.
Another simple way to get started is to just start forming very simple sentences in your head. Instead of thinking about what you will have for dinner later on, just start thinking about it in German. Ich habe Hunger.
You can even do it with routine tasks. Whenever you are getting coffee, start thinking about how to say “I will make the coffee” in German. You already know the action, so you only need to find the words for the actions you are doing.
The more German you read and listen to, the more your brain will become adapted to the language. At some point it becomes easier for your brain to recognize and predict a sentence in German. The more you do this, the easier it is for your brain to think in German instead of translate.
The trick here is not to be too ambitious and try to speak in only German overnight. It is a gradual process. You start by understanding the words, then sentences, and eventually you start thinking without translating. It is more about consistency over time than it is about being intense all the time.
In GermanLangCore we have integrated this concept into the learning system. We want to take our students on this transition from translating to thinking in German using practical exercises.
It is not just knowing the German,
It is thinking in it.