Thinking in English

    We arecreatures of habit and we all know from our experience of life thatbad habits are the hardest to shake off. The only way to avoid badhabits is not to acquire them in the first place. It is far easierto resist getting into a bad habit that to re-educate your way outof one. Where learning English is concerned, on of the very worsthabits you can acquire is mental translation when you want to sayor write anything in English. Whenever you do this, you first thinkof what you want to say in your mother tongue and then attempt totranslate it into English. This immediately sets up a barrier tocommunication. Say, for example, you want to cancel an appointment.You first rehearse in your own language the phrase,‘I would like cancel myappointment’ and then you attempt to translate itdirectly into English. You are immediately tonguetied because youcan not recall or do not know the English for‘cancel’ and‘appointment’. If you hadacquired the habit of thinking in English, the problem would notarise because numerous other ways of expressing yourself would cometo mind. You might say, ‘I am sorry, I am notfree tomorrow’ or simply, ‘I amafraid I can not come tomorrow’. Very often thereare not exact equivalents between languages, ‘Ihave been invited to a party by John’ might provequite difficult or impossible to translate, whereas if you werethinking in English, you might say, ‘John wasinvited me to a party’ or ‘I amJohn’s guest at aparty.’