This is Jack From To Fluency and welcome to the To Fluency
Podcast. Now, today is a very important
lesson because we're going to talk about how to think in
English using a method that I also use when I learn new
languages. Now let's define what it means
to naturally thinking English when you are having a
conversation with someone. I like to define this as when
you are not translating from your native language into
English before speaking, and also when you're not worrying or
thinking about grammar rules, or which tense to use instead, you
are flowing with the language. Phrases and sentences are coming
out automatically and it's also effortless when you are
speaking. So it comes out naturally when
you speak in English. And this is a stage to get to,
which just feels really good, it feels great when you get to this
stage because this is when things just flow and you can
enjoy the conversations. Now, there's always going to be
times when you are thinking: what word is that?
I can't remember this word. You are pausing a little bit,
but the key to this is that you are improving this area where
things are just coming out naturally for you.
And like I say, this is a great stage to reach.
Unfortunately, most learners never reach this stage.
So they study for years. They memorize vocabulary and
they even understand grammar rules.
They've learned grammar rules, and they've done lots of
practice with this. But when it's time to speak,
they're translating. They're thinking about these
rules. And it doesn't feel good.
And the problem is that most learners that I come across
aren't currently doing the things that will get them to
this stage. I wanna focus on what you can do
independently, and you can start today to help you improve this
area because. The key point here is that
grammar and vocabulary and the way things sound in English have
to be internalized. Now by internalized, this means
where it just feels right, where you're not thinking about the
rules. Instead, you're producing and
you're speaking the language, and you get a feeling that this
is right. And when you hear grammar being
used wrong, it just feels wrong. It doesn't feel good in a way to
have that. So that's what it means to
internalize grammar, and this is a big part of being able to just
think in English and to be able to flow when you are speaking.
So today you're gonna learn this simple method that you can start
using right now. To train your brain to think in
English, and you might have heard me talk about this a lot
in the past where I talk about the sentence method, repeating
sentences, and I use this method too when I learn new languages,
and this has helped me so much. I used to think that I was a
terrible language learner, that I could never learn a language
until I started to use this method.
And this, when I'm learning languages is basically what I
focus on the most. I do this sometimes 10 minutes a
day, sometimes two hours a day, and I've adapted this method
over the years where I now call it something like the
personalized sentence method. and New technology has allowed
us to do this now because in the past it was more or less
impossible to create sentences with audio as we're going to
talk about later. Without needing somebody to
record it. So by the end of this podcast
episode, you're going to understand why this method
works, how to do this step by step, and how to do this
consistently over time. So you're gonna learn how your
brain will start recognizing patterns automatically, how to
absorb English, which means how to take in English instead of
thinking about rules and thinking about how to translate
words and phrases. And this is when you're going to
get to a stage where things just come out automatically.
And this is a fantastic stage to be at, a stage that I'm sure you
would love to be at. To help me just explain this,
think about the verb to be the verb to be.
Is an irregular verb, and if I say I am happy and also say you
are happy, and also say, are you happy?
That is something that if you have a decent level of English
and intermediate, even a beginner level of English that
just sounds natural to you. Now.
You're not thinking about to be conjugations, you're not
thinking about word order for questions.
Instead, it's just coming out naturally and it sounds right to
you, and that's not because you studied that rule the most.
It's because you got lots of repetition with those types of
sentences. And this brings us onto our
first step, which is all about sentences.
Now, you can think of this as phrases as well.
It doesn't have to be so strict as a full sentence.
It could be a very simple phrase, too, but the first step
is to find or create sentences that are specific to you, your
level of English and what you like to talk about.
Because if I were to use a language app to learn Italian
before I went to Italy, I might learn sentences like Paul's
brother is taller than him. Now, that's not to say that that
sentence is completely worthless, but when I went to
Italy, that wasn't a sentence I wanted to focus on.
Because it wasn't a sentence that I was going to use when I
was in Italy. And just a quick story about
that. I went to Italy just for a few
days, and I had three weeks to study Italian before I went.
And I used this method that we're going to talk about right
now in order to have decent conversations with people.
Where I could ask for things in specific places.
I could understand what people were saying.
I could order food and drinks. I could ask about things in
shops. I could give my opinion, I could
talk about my life. And that's because I did lots of
repetition of these key sentences.
So to go back to this. Step one is to find or create
these sentences that reflect your world, that reflect who you
are, where you are in terms of learning language, and also your
hobbies, your relationships, , your work.
Because when you speak in English, you're gonna be
speaking about yourself. You're gonna be talking about
facts about yourself, your past, your goals, your desires, your
likes, your dislikes, your hobbies.
But it could also be for specific reasons.
So let's say you travel for work and you need to use English in
business settings, then learn sentences as well.
Get sentences that are specific to those situations.
Now, in order to create these sentences or to find them, you
can use AI, something like ChatGPT in order to help you
with this. Now, if you are looking for a
glossary of these words that I'm using right now, then be sure to
check the description. Of this podcast episode because
I'll leave instructions there and I'll also have a transcript
for this podcast. But the tool I use is Anki in
order to get repetition, which we'll talk about later.
But step one is to create these sentences using AI or using a
teacher, writing them down, and then using something to help you
understand what it means. I personally like to have the
translation of the sentence as well, so that I can fully
understand what it is. After some time, I don't need
this translation. Instead, I just use the word in
the language that I want to learn.
And I'll also leave a link to a YouTube video where I show you
how to do this step by step in terms of creating the right type
of sentences. But you can also think about
having sentences that are going to help you learn difficult
areas of English that you don't quite understand.
So going back to grammar, let's say that you find it very
difficult to use the present perfect.
You can create sentences that are specific to you in the
present perfect. For example, it might be, I've
been to England a couple of times.
Or I've never been in a sauna, whatever it may be, make it
specific to you so that you can understand when this tense is
used so you can use the grammar that you're struggling with,
create sentences, and then over time, as we're gonna talk about
soon, you can learn these sentences too.
So, let's say you now have 50 sentences to begin with.
They're very personal to you. They are specific to what you
want to learn. The next step is to add audio.
I think this is such a big step. For me, it is critical.
It's everything for me to have the audio for these sentences.
Because you're not just learning what to say, but you're learning
how it sounds naturally too. And in addition to this, when it
comes to using the tool we're going to talk about later, you
can repeat these sentences so that you can start learning the
correct pronunciation over time, which is such a big part of
being able to produce natural English.
Now there are a few ways to do this.
Firstly, you can ask someone to do this for you.
You can use sentences that have already been created but are
specific to you and they have the audio.
But what I like to do is to use the tool that we're going to
talk about. Again, I'll leave full
directions in the description and have that tool create audio
using ai. A few years ago, I wouldn't
recommend this as much, but as AI audio and text to speech
tools have got so much better, I think this is now a very
powerful way to get audio for your sentences.
And the goal here is to hear the rhythm intonation and
pronunciation exactly as it should be.
Now, there's always going to be variance here because obviously
there's no standardized English and pronunciation can be
different in the US parts of the uk and also obviously with
foreign accents. But you can also get specific
with this by choosing the right type of text to speech tool that
is specific for you as well. And then you're gonna start
noticing patterns. You're gonna start noticing
things with the pronunciation and consistently get better over
time. So you're gonna learn how things
are pronounced, how things are said naturally in English, and
you can do this with AI audio these days.
So let's say now you have. 50 sentences with audio.
What do you do with this now? Well, this is the part where you
are going to use repetition and a method that is really
powerful. Again, this is the method that I
have used to learn languages. And it's really powerful.
So the two apps that you might use are Anki or something like
memorize. Again, don't worry too much
about the technical part of this because you can learn this after
the podcast. I'll leave that link in the
description. But spaced repetition means that
you see each sentence and you practice this sentence just
before you're about to forget it.
So it gives you repetition, which you know is important, but
it does it efficiently because we don't want to keep repeating
sentences that we already know. And that we already flow with.
Instead, we want to be very efficient with this so you don't
waste time reviewing what you already know.
You don't waste time reviewing sentences that you already have
internalized. And the things to do with these
sentences that I think are really important are to listen
to the audio. So listen and read at the same
time. You see a sentence and you hear
a sentence, then repeat it out loud, trying to match the sound
exactly like the audio. You can even add more intonation
here. You can add more stress.
You can make it stronger, but the key is to try and match that
audio and to understand what it means every time you say it.
So let's just say the audio sentence is, I've never had
sushi before. I've never had sushi before.
And you repeat this two times today, then tomorrow, then in
four days, then in eight days, what's gonna happen is if you
picture this in your head too, and I think this is a such an
important part where you have this feeling of it.
So when you are saying this, you can picture yourself in a
situation saying this word. If the sentence was.
Is there a table outside? Then you can picture yourself
asking this question at the front of a restaurant.
This is a big part of using this system, but the key is that
you're going to get these sentences and repeat them.
You're gonna repeat them out loud, and you're gonna get the
repetition you need in order to internalize this.
And over time these sentences are just going to be
internalized. But what's more is that you're
going to be able to be flexible with it too.
So let's say I've never had sushi before.
I've never had sushi before. You repeat this, then you will
start just naturally saying. She's never had pasta before.
Because you are learning lots of
different sentences where you'll notice these patterns.
And you'll be able to use them in a flexible way.
So let's now say you have this and you're using this system,
and you have this system set up. Step four is to do your best, do
your very best to make it a daily habit.
To make it a daily habit because this method works best when you
do it every day. Every day, even if it's only
four, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, because some days
you might do an hour, some days you might do two hours, but also
you're going to have a day where you feel really tired.
You don't have motivation to learn English.
You are really busy. You are traveling.
On those days, say to yourself, I'll just do five minutes.
I'll just do 10 minutes, and make it a habit to do that
because over time you'll start noticing something incredible
that you'll begin to think in English.
You'll begin to use English naturally and automatically
without translating, without thinking about grammar rules.
And you'll start speaking more smoothly without that fear or
that hesitation. And that is when English starts
to become much more internalized.
And as you progress, you'll keep adding new sentences that match
your life in English. So you might have a situation
where you couldn't express your opinion about a specific topic.
You can then go create those sentences using AI, finding them
online, wherever it may be. Add in the audio, getting the
repetition, and then you'll start internalizing those
sentences again. So this is always going to
change. It's always going to evolve, and
the type of sentences that you put into the system are going to
change too. But every sentence you repeat
and every sentence you internalize, the audio, the
rhythm, the sentence becomes part of your brain's automatic
system where you can just use this more flexibly next time
when you are having conversations.
So the next step for this. Is to click the link in the
description to watch that video on YouTube, where I just show
you in a technical way how to do this from finding the sentences,
adding the audio, getting the software you need, and then how
to use the app too. And just like anything, what
might work for someone might not work for someone else, so try
this out and see how it works for you.
The key, though is to know that it takes time to get that
repetition. So maybe give it 30 days, 60
days, and then as these sentences come up.
And you start to recognize them straight away and you can repeat
them straight away and your pronunciation improves, then
you'll have more confidence in the method to then use it over
the long term and to even spend more time using this method.
So let me know if you have any comments about this.
Just leave them below. Go to the description to get
more information about this and share this podcast episode with
a friend. Thank you so much for being
here, and I'll speak to you soon.
Bye for now.