I’m going to plagiarize, in just a few seconds. Yesterday, my wife and I where talking about how to use “in” vs. “on”. Yes, we were. That’s what it’s like to be married to an English teacher. 🙂 Carmen is a native Spanish speaker but her grammar results on the ESL placement test are at the C1 — or Advanced level. However, like many many non-native speakers of any language, she sometimes reverts to translation, rather than naturally speaking like a native. Of course, nearly all of us do that, depending on our level of fluency in our second language. It is, in my opinion, because of how we acquire foreign languages. Anyway, today, I received an email from another English teacher. I’m going to paste most of Drew’s message, bellow:
Most of the people I help are only a step away from fluency.
They can read, write and understand a lot of English, but they don’t feel like they have enough time when they speak.
They can’t respond automatically because they’re trying hard to listen to the other person while thinking about grammar rules, and wondering what to say next.
So how do you take that final step to fluency?
You must learn to think like a native, not like a student…
Students learn through their native language, and this is why they translate in their head before they speak.
But natives learn to connect words with meanings and situations directly.
Here’s a perfect example:
Yesterday, I was reading a book to my daughter while my Japanese mother-in-law was listening.
When I read, “The bears were sitting in picnic chairs,” my mother-in-law asked why they were in the chairs.
“I learned in school that it’s always on for chairs,” she said.
She was applying a rule, and many rules work most of the time…
But had she thought about the scene directly, like a native, she would have understood why in was used.
In this case, the chairs had armrests, which made the seating area more like a container.
So, the bears were sitting in the chairs.
But it goes deeper than this…
Natives actually have two different ideas in their heads when they think about sitting, and this is why people can use in or on and be “correct” either way.
Sitting in something refers to being inside a 3D space (length, width and height) on an object, even for chairs that have no back or arm rests.
Natives imagine someone sitting in an invisible box that’s on a chair.
But they can also see someone sitting on a 2D space (length and width) that is the top of the chair.
In this way, natives understand the meaning of the situations directly, rather than trying to translate from some other language.
From THIS way of thinking about situations and words, a native’s “sense of correctness” develops.
If you need to improve your fluency, in English, please contact me for a FREE, no obligation, English Placement Test. If you are ready to schedule a private, one-to-one lesson, use the following link: