have you ever been in a situation where you suddenly have to speak English but your brain is just wired to your native language this happened to me so many times when I was back in St Petersburg and I walked into my to full exam class I suddenly realized that I have to speak perfect English in order to score my perfect score or I have a meeting with an investor but I speak Russian to my family and suddenly I have to switch and be really confident and what I started to realize that the top of the top skills that you can acquire as a language learner is switching from your native language to English and once you master that it's going to become so much easier for you to interact have you ever seen people who lived in the US or in an english- speaking country for 10 plus years and when they speak their own language they start using American words it's not because they're trying to show off it's just really hard for our brain to make that switch now today the whole video is going to be dedicated to switching I'm going to start with my personal story when I was 14 and I went to study abroad it was my first morning in England and I wake up and an english- speaking family and I come down to the kitchen and they asked me what I wanted for breakfast but I just couldn't answer and I remember 10 seconds of Silence just because my brain thought in Russian my brain could not process English words at 700 a.m. in the morning and and this is when I realized I have to learn how to switch and there are three steps to this process the first step of course you need to learn English but we'll cover that in uh other videos the Second Step you need to start thinking in English like you need to create this mode in your brain where you start thinking in a foreign language and number three you need to practice switching so let's focus on the second and the third steps today how can you start thinking in English there is several exercises and habits that you can introduce to your daily life to make it easier for you and because you will be switching from your native language you will be practicing step number three at the same time the first task is to describe objects with two words and this is a very interesting task because it might sound easy like oh this is an empty table uh or that's that's a beautiful painting but try to make it a little bit more challenging for yourself try to come up with two or three adjectives when you think about something and I've recently had this situation when uh we're doing a campaign with a New York fashion brand and uh I'm doing my own collection with them and they asked me to describe every item with two or three adjectives and I'm looking at this pink dress I'm like beautiful dress fashionable dress I like normally we're not used to describing objects with two or three adjectives so practice that like try to come up with three adjectives for a pink dress try to come up with three adjectives for that beautiful painting and come up with different words make it a habit it really helps you practice new vocabulary it really helps you with uh remembering words in English another thing that I really like to do and I'm trying to practice that with my German we just came back from uh France and Germany so I had a chance to practice my uh my German as well but something that you can do is if you ask a question in your native langu language try to ask it again in your head in English or in a language that you're trying to learn that helps you think about your daily situations in English why is it raining again it's June what are you going to be wearing today who's your favorite YouTuber those types of questions daily questions when you practice switching from your language to another language like back and forth back and forth that will really help you with uh training your brain to do the switch of course attending a speaking club or some kind of English language Community is always a great idea if you're advanced in English take courses that are unrelated to language learning maybe you take a course for creators or you take course for engineers but make sure it has a community aspect where you have a WhatsApp group for example and you text each other and exchange news and thoughts on a particular subject if you're not there yet to be able to take a course in English take a course about English uh one of the courses that has been a bestseller on our platform called lingua trip is a course called from intermediate to Advanced where in 30 days we cover majority of the topics that you need to go over to become advanced in English we cover grammar we cover vocabulary we cover motivation aspect we have amazing teachers teaching that course I am also part of our course from intermediate to Advanced and it also has a speaking Club where you can practice English with students from all over the world if you choose the pro version of that course you will have four Zoom calls for speaking practice if you choose the standard version of that course you will be able to practice in chats and also with your buddy another student who we match you with based on your interests the next batch of the course starts very soon so please make sure to check out the link down in the description below and let's move on to other habits another thing that I really enjoy doing is called Mind mapping and there is an app called Miro where you can create all of your mind maps uh and I've recently met a Founder so I started using that but it basically helps you organize your thoughts and why not do it in English why not try and create a mind map of your next goal for example I am helping with some research at Stanford and I was organizing articles on AI influencers and it's just fascinating how you can create this dashboard where all of your thoughts are structured everything is linked to an article you can do the same if you're applying for a university in the US for example you can create a mind map of your process of the universities that provide financial aid you can create a mind map of your future career like it's just a great visualization tool so if you feel like you are a person who likes to learn language uh through seeing things and also likes organizing things try that I think it's really fascinating how different ways of organizing information work differently for different brains oh my God how many times did I say different here um but try that maybe this is a tool that's going to work great for you because it's working great for me I know everyone is different but this is something I've really enjoyed doing the next exercise is called explain it like I'm five my daughter is four years old she's going to be five soon and sometimes she asks me questions like Mom why are we traveling like why do we have to go somewhere or like why does Grandma live in Thailand and we live here she asks me very simple questions yet sometimes I struggle to answer them I'm like how do I answer that why why did I decide to move to the US uh it's a long answer also explaining something to a 5-year-old is a great way to check whether you understand the topic at all what's the difference between a checking and a savings account why people walk more in Europe why are there so many highways in the US try explaining that to a 5-year-old in English like there are two most challenging listening exercises in English the first exercise is try to understand Scottish accent and try to interact with someone from Scotland or maybe Cockney in London or any English-speaking kid it's so challenging for me because you know kids sometimes I don't understand kids in Russian because they come up with their own words uh they mispronounce words and you kind of have to guess the meaning by understanding context by understanding some sounds uh so if you ever find yourself next to a playground I was uh at the playground with my daughter and you know an American kid approach and asked me something I'm like okay she's holding this toy uh okay she probably means that and I answer like it's really hard really challenging and super cool to practice listening the next cool exercise is associating Advanced words with your daily habits for example if you have a coffee machine and let's do this exercise now you can go to Chad GPT and ask it Advanced words related to a coffee machine and Chad GPT is coming up with different words let's select frothing pitcher a container used for steaming and frothing milk do I have it yes I do okay frothing pitcher this is something I will be learning for the next 7 Days sometimes these words stick with me for the rest of my life whenever I see the object is my memory is mostly visual this is why I like videos on YouTube I'm a 100% visual person frothing picture what else grind size finess of coffee grounds so take two or three words associated with an object you can write them on a sticky note just remember that there are three words associated with this object that you're learning and if you're similar to me visual plus Association stuff these words are going to stick in your head and then remember another exercise that we touched upon in this video try to come up with a phrase add an adjective or maybe a verb just try to practice those words in context last but not least if you're practicing journaling or any kind of note taking try to switch to English that could also be very helpful that was it for me for today guys thank you so much for watching this video up to the very end I hope this advice was useful and you are taking something from this video back to your life and hopefully your English is going to become better this summer and I'm looking forward to seeing you in my next videos bye