La ce te gândește Samantha?

The title means “what are you thinking Samantha” in Romanian. This article is about recording your thoughts as a means of gaining a greater understanding of your target language. I will tell you both why its great to consider and how to do it reasonably well.

You want a not only a greater understanding of the language you are learning but also wish to be able to have a fair understanding of how to say the things you would need to say in your everyday life. The regularly used vocabulary of each person will differ according to their hobbies, job, social life etc. No two people are alike and this method will tailor itself to each persons needs.

To record phrases you use in your daily life that you would like to know how to say in the language you are learning. For this I recommend keeping a pen and paper close by so you can capture such phrases as you go throughout the day for later translation. I personally aim for about 5 new sentences a day. A record book for keeping the translated sentences is required for not only keeping a vast record over the coming weeks and months but also to provide a neatly kept means of storing these sentences thoughts and to track your progress to allow you to see how far you have come. I’d highly recommend that these books contain no English in order to aid in remembering
what these phrases mean without having to constantly keep referring back to it.

If you’ve had anything you wanted to say to a language exchange partner, look it up. Whether big or small any form of the language can be recorded from “I really admire Roy Valen in Dark Avengers” to interjections like “oh my word”, anything you are likely to want to say regularly is great for this. Putting yourself in the perspective of someone you are taking to could also provide more phrases should you ever run short of ideas.

If you are using internet translators then its best to not only try one sentence at a time but also be prepared to be corrected by a native speaker at a later point or discover flaws in that translation as your proficiency grows and you get the feeling something isn’t right. At this stage you can analyse this and even correct the internet translations.

Samantha Eaton

La Reina Razonable