Hey guys! It has been a while

Welcome back to Ray's English channel. Let's have fun learning English together

First I would like to apologize, because the last episode came out last June

and I postponed the second half till now

It's actually not that long, right? It's only been a half year, six months, 180 days, or 4320 hours. Yep

Now I'm finally here. I'll first go over the important points from last episode

then complete the whole content, to show my sincerity

Today we will cover three parts of thinking in English

Single word reflex, chunking, and substitution drill

First I want to say that, thinking in English is not that difficult

Of course, to express a thorough and complex meaning is not easy

However, you only need to know a single word to start thinking in English

So first, we're going to talk about single word reflex

The correspond English word immediately pops up in your mind when you see something

For example, in this room: a table, a computer, my sister, my new camera

this messy room（what are you talking about）

This is my sister's room, if you know what I mean

Whenever you see a thing, you can quickly respond with its English name

What if you see something that you don't know the English name of? Very simple

Take out your phone and look it up, you will learn it immediately

When doing this kind of practice, you can try making it a complete sentence

Such as, that's a dog, there's a dog, it's a dot, etc

Other than names, that is, nouns

You can also think about movements, or verbs.

So you can think about what you or others are doing

Like, I'm talking, she's filming,

you're watching, you're learning,

you're starting to fall in love with Ray. (Uh, no they're not)

I know you are.

After that, you can try adjectives, to describe situations or emotions

For example, I'm happy, it's funny, she's pretty, (uh huh)

I'm lying (Hey! That's not even an adjective!) That's not an adjective

By reflecting English words like this and doing more practice

It's going to be unbelievably fluent when you actually use them

The second one is chunking

It's mentioned in linguistics, which means putting words in chunks

In other words, "meaning" is now the basic unit of English, not "word"

For example, "as a matter of fact" is a unit of meaning

instead of five separate words

I don't think of the meanings of every single word when I use them. They have a meaning as a group

Thus when I want to say "事實上", I will naturally say "as a matter of fact"

Here's another example, "make yourself at home". If we analyze the phrase grammatically

"make" is a causative verb, left out the subject "you", "yourself" is a reflexive pronoun, "at home" is an adverb phrase

You get it? I'm not going to explain it again

However, we don't think about the complex grammar structure when we talk

Because "make yourself at home" is a meaning chunk

Which means "不用客氣、不用拘束", so we use them intuitively

Therefore, use chunks instead of memorizing word by word

So when you hear a common usage next time, try learning them as a whole

While phrasal chunks may sound like a great idea, there are still drawbacks

First, when you only know the Chinese words, you can't figure out the corresponding English chunk

Second, even if you find it, the chunk can only express one meaning

instead of flexibly create other meanings

So the third one is, substitution drill

Which is substituting different content after understanding the basic grammar structure

to create different meanings

English has a clear part of speech, and its positions often follow the same pattern

As a result, understand the basic grammar structure lets you extend a sentence

or create new sentences by substitution

One simple example is that "I want to" plus a verb

This is called infinitives in grammar, but you don't need to know that

So for example, I want to talk to you, I want to teach you English, I want to make you improve, etc

Except for substituting words, you can also substitute clauses

For example, "how to think in English" is a clause as a noun, so it can be put in any objective's position

Now look at this, "I need to learn this" can be substituted as "I need to learn how to think in English"

You can even try using conjunctions to link two complete sentences together

For example, "I'm already thinking in English, but I'll need to work on it more"

This is the most flexible way to create different meanings

but some basic knowledge of grammar structures are needed beforehand

So the point is, after knowing grammar structures, substitute the appropriate words or phrases

These are the three ways of how to think in English

First, single word reflex. Second, chunking. Third, substitutional drill

However, what it all comes down to is that whether you want to spend time thinking in English or not

There no one but yourself can help you think

So, after all this, start thinking in English today

Just do it

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Here are more videos, and this is my website, go take a look if you are interested

And that is a wrap for today, thank you guys for watching as always, watching as always, and I’ll catch you guys next time! See ya! (See ya~)

bluhbluhbluh...bluhbluhbluh...

Because "make yourself at home" is a fi...

fi~~~sh，it's a fish

Do it! (Do it!) Think in English!

THINK! IN! ENGLISH!