Thoughts Sharing: Default thinking Laguage

There are too many difficulties in writing in my university classes, especially in class of EG1471. If I address on all the difficulties I’ve ever met, the 300 to 400 words limit would be obviously not enough. Here, I want to share my thought regarding to the difficulties in English writing, which, from my point of view, is the essential of all the other difficulties I’ve encountered.

English is my second language and mandarin is my mother tongue, which suggests that mandarin is my default thinking language. Having been through a lot of trial and errors, I attribute my difficulties in academic writing to the incomplete process of switching default language, which, in my case, is from Chinese to English. And I try to distinguish the process into three stages.

Stage One: Mother Tongue is the default language
In this stage, we can automatically think deeply, often concern and comment on governmental decisions, international situation and some other social issues. The practical way of express the same idea is translation, with the help of dictionaries and online interpretation service. Ideas generated in this way are insightful, and can represent the maturity and thinking ability of a student. However, the translated expression may not be accepted or fully understood by native English speakers.

Stage Two: No Default Language
Trying to think and write directly in English while the default thinking style is still following the Chinese way. — It’s a necessary process in which no language is dominating; every non-English educated student would face this stage when writing in English. Limited by the vocabulary, thoughts generated in this stage would be less insightful and the phrases used tend to be less advanced. Writings in this period seem to be more like a primary student trying to present serious social issue with primary-level vocabulary. This is the most difficult stage to get through that thinking ability compromises with limited language skills, which is the stage I am now in.

Stage Three:
The default language transformation is complete. Tough time in struggling between Chinese and English is forever gone. Once the process is finished, we are able to generate ideas in English as we were using Chinese in stage one. This allows us to be thoughtful and more importantly, allows us to accurately express our thoughts as if we were using our mother tongue. Though, the way of achieving this process is even tougher.

Now I’m struggling in the second stage, which means, I can think neither totally in Chinese nor in English. Sometimes, when I’m tittering in thinking and writing out a sentence without the assistance of Chinese, it always turned out that my sentence structure follows the Chinese structure, which is frustrating. Consequently, my mind gets blanked when generating ideas in university classes.
For me, try to immerge in the English society as soon as possible is the most efficient way. For instance, enlarge the vocabulary; study the logical thinking modes of native English speakers etc. I'm trying towards that.