How To Stop Translating In Your Head
In this post, I’m going to show you how to stop translating in your head as it’s not the best strategy for understanding conversations in English.
Maybe that works when you’re reading and you can see the words on the page, but spoken English is of course very different. And you can use these differences to help you understand without translating in your head.
How To Stop Translating In Your Head Thanks To 4 Features Of Spontaneous Speech
When people speak, especially in informal conversation, they haven’t planned what they’re going to say. They’re doing everything live and spontaneously.
This creates the following four features (the fancy name is disfluency features) which you will hear mostly in conversation because it is unplanned and informal. You can even learn to use them yourself to sound more natural in English.
The next time you listen to some spontaneous speech (not a TED talk or another type of lecture-these are planned in advance and are not so spontaneous or natural) try to filter out these features and concentrate on the words and expressions that are important to the meaning.
Noticing these features is also an opportunity to reflect on what the speaker has said.
#1 Repetitions
These could be repetitions of words and expressions or of ideas. Obviously, repetitions of words are easy to identify.
It’s a little more difficult to know when a speaker is repeating an idea. You need to know that every new utterance (this is a spoken sentence) does not necessarily include a new idea. So you don’t need to worry about trying to translate these repeated ideas.
In the extract below, I repeat the auxiliary “is”. I pronounce the second ‘is’ in a very reduced way, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t catch it.
"why English is is difficult to listen to...sometimes"
#2 Hesitation
Like I said, conversations aren’t planned, so of course, the person you’re speaking to will hesitate. In English, hesitations could simply be a pause or they could be sounds like ‘umm’ or ‘err’.
They could also involve hesitating on a particular word. The ‘err’ hesitation sounds a bit like the article ‘a’, which can be confusing when you listen.
You can use these hesitation sounds when you speak to give yourself more time to think and plan what you want to say. You will sound more natural and fluent than if you use the sounds that exist in your own language, which may be very different.
You can hear me making these sounds below.
Eerrrmm
Uuuummmmmmmmm
In this example, I make the ‘I’ much longer than I would normally in speech because I’m giving myself time to think. Just after, I pronounce the ‘I’ in ‘I’m’ in a very reduced way that’s difficult to hear.
Prepositions like ‘I’ are often very difficult to perceive in fast, natural English. There is also another ‘erm’ sound towards the end.
"I... I’m not speaking either at 100% full speed like I would speak with other natives or my friends erm but"
#3 False Starts
Very often in conversation, a speaker will start an utterance and then change their mind.
You can hear me do this in my podcast. As you can hear, I begin by saying “I’m going to be speaking”, then I pause, say ‘erm’ to hesitate, and finish by saying “or I am speaking in fast English”.
Generally, speakers will do the same thing as me – start an utterance, pause, and then start again! It’s a consequence of speaking spontaneously.
"I’m going to be speaking erm or I am speaking in fast English"
#4 Filler Phrases
These expressions give speakers time to think and plan their speech. They don’t contribute anything to the meaning of the conversation, so you can filter them out.
They include words and expressions such as:
- well
- I mean
- you know
- do you know what I mean?
- like
In the clip below, you can hear me using the fillers “well”, “kind of” and “like”.
"And well it’s just going to be me doing kind of like a monologue like this erm talking about different topics, stories, anecdotes"
Some of these expressions also have a social function. When a speaker asks ‘do you know what I mean?’, they’re not checking your understanding. They expect that you do know because you are friends and you share the same ideas or knowledge. It would be inappropriate to respond ‘no’ in this case!
Native speakers will often pronounce this type of expression in a very fast, squeezed way. Listen to me pronouncing ‘do you know what I mean’ increasingly quickly.
Do you know whatta mean? - D'ye know whatta mean? - Know whatta mean?
How To Stop Translating In Your Head – Time To Test It Out
Now you know about these four features of spoken English, hopefully you can concentrate better on the meaning of what you’re listening to, and stop translating in your head.
Practise listening for these features in conversation, so you can learn to filter them out. When your conversation partner uses them, take the opportunity to make sense of what you’ve heard so far. And why not try using them yourself. Happy listening!
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Thanks for sharing.
One concept I find in some blogs is “speaking, listening like a native speaker”: I wonder if it is possible first, and is it even required?
I prefer the concept you talked about in your post: listening in a natural way.
I notice, for eg., in conversations in my native language, I don’t worry a lot if I don’t catch sth., especially if the conversation subject is sth. out of my interest, speciality,…sometimes I just listen and have nothing to tell about the topic.
But, when it comes to conversations in foreign language, I stress myself out for every word, every utterance…If I have nothing to say about a topic…I just keep thinking: I should learn more, practice more,…and may be that’s exactly the unnatural way to learn a foreign language.
Hi Abderrafie. Thanks for your comment. Yes, the point of the post was to show that you don’t need everything. And, yes, it’s true that in our native languages we choose to concentrate on certain things we hear more than others – that’s something we do naturally. That would be a good topic for a blog post actually – how to listen and not get stressed out about what you don’t understand. And no, no-one is expecting you to have the same level as a native, because most of the time it’s both unrealistic and unnecessary.
I like such lessons about the secrets of understanding conversation in English.
I tought new secrets today.
Thank you very much Mrs. Jennifer
Hi Somoud. I’m glad the post was useful for you and that you learned something new. But I’m Mrs Cara, not Mrs Jennifer! It’s thanks to Jennifer sharing the post that you’re here.