How do you get past the problem of your mind constantly taking forever to translate into mother tongue as you read?
Example:
Ill read a sentence, and not understand it, but if i look at each word, translate the words individually in my head, then get
a better idea of the sentence… sometimes. because it doesnt always translate properly.
This happens with some words too. like Ill see the word
Lee, and not know it means read without translating it in my head as “read”.
I dont just “hear the meanings” like i do in my mother tongue.
Its hard to explain. like when I hear something like
The shirt is red.
I know EXACTLY what that is
but if i see
La camisa es roja…
I have to break it down piece by piece or its meaningless even though i know ever word in there, well.
When will i stop hearing the english. im trying to get away from my native tongue.
At first you have to keep looking it up, then you kind of remember what the word means but you need to double check. Then you know what it means but it takes a second or so to come to you.
Eventually you develop a direct recognition both of the visual form of the word and also its sound starting to remind you directly of what it means rather than being translated.
Something I do which I like to think helps this process is to try read a sentence I am familiar with and imagine the concepts coming into being as I read it. So I read the word for ‘person’ I imagine a person as I do so. Then I see they are running, so I imagine them running.
Whether this is beneficial, I dont know. I like to think it is.
Example:
Ill read a sentence, and not understand it, but if i look at each word, translate the words individually in my head, then get
a better idea of the sentence… sometimes. because it doesnt always translate properly.
OP, are you me? This is exactly what I do. Or maybe, it’s just a common phenomenon; that our brains don’t know, so it tries to resort to the easiest method.
More reading helps. I know it sounds like an old hat/annoying response, but genix79 is right. After a while, I notice I don’t need to think as much when reading.
What you describe is absolutely normal, at least IMHO, you just need a longer exposure to get used to it and getting the global meaning even you don’t understand each words.
I mean , when you’ll understand 30% or 50% of the text, your mind will be able to fill in the blank.
just carry on, according to your spanish counter, you’ve only red 30words
Thanks for all the replies; ill just keep at it then. I was just worried bad habits were forming.
Going to do that in mind cinema thing genix suggested too, i have a feeling thats powerful.
I agree with the previous comments. It’s a normal stage. It’s too soon for you to bypass the translation/explanation process. Just keep it up and eventually you’ll be able to grasp the meaning directly.
I agree with all these replies…and for years (before I found LingQ and dramatically improved my competency), I wondered about the same thing. I think it happens to EVERYONE learning ANY language.
You know how when you read in English you hear that little voice in your head? Well, it’s the same thing except your hearing that voice in Spanish, then English.
The process you are describing becomes particularly apparent when you are trying to listen to audio. It’s horrible. First you can barely pick out words, then barely build a sentence. When you do build a sentence, and have the words, chances are, you don’t know what several of those important words mean. And then, even when you have all the words, and would know their meanings, you think of the grammar. Then, you get to a stage when you have ALL of that down pat, but by the time you are finished with the “mental translation,” you’re now three sentences behind the audio, the speakers, etc.
It’s normal, and trust me, it passes.
This is what makes LingQ so great for this: 1) you have the fast electronic dictionaries; and 2) you have the audio AND the transcript.
Hope so, it drives me nutty.
When im listening to the audio for example, ill understand nothing, then
ill hear a familar word, the brain tells me hey, it means “this” or “that”
then when my brain starts to listen to the audio again its either done, or so far ahead the word
has become useless to me, contextually; but hey, i picked out that one word
Well, you’re not supposed to understand spoken Spanish. If you did, you’d already know the language, right?
Your goal when listening to audio is to improve. You do that precisely by picking up words at first, later on, it’ll be phrases, then sentences and ideas.
It works better when you know the gist of what’s been said. In the beginning you must find it out through external info: having read a transcript, images, gestures,…
I am about 110 hours worth of exposure into learning my target language, Korean.
I had a very inspiring experience recently.
I saw a ‘beginner test dialog’ which had audio. I had a listen. It happened to be one of my ‘on’ days when everything is making more sense than usual. I was able to follow the conversation as it happened with probably 90% understanding.
There was some internal translation but there was a bunch of it which I just understood. Its hard to describe what its like but it felt a little bit like how I understand spoken English.
Im very excited for you, congratulations!
I look forward to my moments like this in spanish
I was watching "Tony Motá Presenta¨yesterday and heard a single
word ring out in one of the skits ¨Pregunta¨. I had a smile so big it hurt.
That at least tells me my brain can tell when words change, which is step one.
Gotta keep at it!
Great to hear. If you subscribe to the NetFlix, you can watch the telenovelas (which can be hard like movies), and put on the Spanish subtitles. This way you can watch, hear, and read what they are saying in real time. You can do it with DVDs too if it has Spanish dubbing and other. I recommend “Reina del Sur.”
However, like Steve says, you would be better off watching such things as a reward or to otherwise gauge where you are/see what it’s like. Because, these media aren’t going to be chock full of new words like reading would be and they won’t be in LingQ to check on the definitions.
