How To Think In Spanish

I have a friend in Colombia who speaks English fluently and she has never traveled to an English speaking country. I am very impressed with her vocabulary.

Every time I try to challenge her with an English word thinking that she won’t understand the definition of the word she surprises me and fully understands the meaning.

So I asked her “what’s your secret?

” “How do you know so many English words and you have never traveled out of Colombia?

”

“Patrick,” she replied “I have two techniques that are responsible for my extensive English vocabulary.”

“One, as I have already told you before I have probably watched just as many movies in English as you have watched in English, usually more than once, first with the English subtitles turned on and then with out.”

“But there’s another technique that I have used and I am going to share with you . . . ”

“Patrick, I don’t use Spanish-English dictionaries to translate English words that I don’t understand. I use either a Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary or an Oxford English Dictionary to look up the meaning of English words that I don’t know.”

So that’s the technique that will help you improve your Spanish. Instead of using an English-Spanish dictionary, use a Spanish-only dictionary. Using a Spanish-only dictionary, will also help you to stop translating the Spanish words in your head and help you to start thinking in Spanish.