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Thinking in a second language

One thing tests like IELTS or TOEFL cannot assess is a student's ability to think in English when dealing with conceptually new material.

A longitudinal study conducted in New Zealand by Gillian Skyrme ( 2005) investigated among other things the extent to which mainland Chinese students used their L1 (first language or 'mother tongue') in their university studies in New Zealand. Skyrme found that for the first couple of months at least students felt they needed to be able to process their new learning in Chinese, because only through their native language could they relate the new material to their previous experience of life and learning.

We sometimes talk to the concepts, use Chinese, because use Chinese I have idea what is it and I relate to English, "Oh!" and I read the questions and I know what they are talking.
— Mike, 2nd interview
For the first time I will think about it in Chinese, because it is easy to understand the principle, the meaning of the principle, and maybe second time, third time I just try to remember the English because the text in English.
— Connor, 3rd interview
But I didn't use the English to remember. I use the Chinese, because that is my first language or something like that, is easy for me.
— May, 3rd interview
(from Skyrme 2005)

At the same time, these students recognised that there are two drawbacks to this strategy.

  1. The process of translating between two languages is slow and tiring.

  2. It can lead to inaccuracy and incomprehension. Word-for-word translation between any two languages is rarely if ever possible. In translating from L2 into L1, it is often possible to supplement one's L2 deficiencies quite effectively through informed guesswork based on life experience; but translating from L1 into comprehensible L2 requires a much greater knowledge, not just of the language, but of how it is used in the discourse of the subject under discussion.

I think personally before Week 7 I used the wrong way. I tried to read something in English and then use the Chinese, so quite tired for me. When I want to use I have to remember Chinese and translate to English again. That means I translate two times. But after Week 7 when I get used to use the English to think the English problem, so I think it is better than before, so I learning quite a lot after Week 7, sharp change.
— Scott, 3rd interview
(from Skyrme 2005)
But my friends told me it's not a good way because we think in Chinese and sometimes Chinese cannot directly translate to English, so when we direct translate it's maybe wrong, or other people can't understand.
— Mike, 3rd interview
[I tried translating into Chinese] because [a friend] said it really helps, you know. I would say it helps with some of the terminologies, but some of the words I just found it really hard to translate into Chinese. When I write it down in Chinese, you know, when I look at it I just think, what is this? It doesn't really make sense.
— Gemma, 3rd interview
(from Skyrme 2005)

Skyrme found that “as their level allowed it, the students were moving towards more exclusive reliance on L2 as an efficient strategy for learning, given that both the input and the output on which their success would be judged were in that language”. But it is worth noting that even for a student with relatively high ability in oral English, it took some seven weeks – half a semester – to get to the point of realising the advantages of studying in English alone rather than through Chinese, and deciding to act on the realisation. For other students it might take substantially longer to reach that point.

But, as Skyrme has observed,

[t]he metacognition involved in making this decision is of interest. At all times this decision seems to have arisen out of careful thinking about what would serve their learning purposes best at the time, initially recognising the need to supplement the limited resources of their English, and then gradually moving into more and more use of the language in which they were to be assessed.

“In the light of this process of development,” she notes, “we might question the instruction provided by at least one of the courses in their degree that they were not to use any language apart from English in class time.”

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