Thinking in Spanish: How can someone truly achieve this
Ok so here is where i am at: I can understand Spanish movies and TV shows. My friends say that I am close to fluent in that I have the majority of the words that are used, the problem is just a slight one of context. Check this out. Confiar: confia de mi, confia de ti, NOT confia por mi or confiame (which is the one you might pick) also there is fiarse which I believe is me fio, te fias, no fias A ese hombre VS no confias DE ese hombre (maybe). My question is this: Many of you (Heidita, Gekkosan, CarlosF, Benz) have learned English to the point where you can speak it and understand with pretty much no problems. However, the Grand majority of us learners, even us that spend many hours each day, are still not getting there. What is wrong? I will tell what is wrong with me. Idioms. I think almost exclusivly in them. Maria says ESL courses, first thing, say think in English. I want to say "well I need a bite to eat" not " I am hungry" ....... "I gotta take of care that"........ "that's some BS"......... "This is not gonna work"........"this can't be done"........."It's a black day"............"the world weeps"........."Our time is over" I don't know how to say any of these in Spanish. This is how I talk. Imagine my accent is half Chicago/half British even though I am American. (I don't know why, my mom is Russian, dad is Italian, stepmom is Greek). I want to learn. More than anything. I want to learn, more than I want to love. Because I love Spanish more than I could ever love a woman. A Spanish woman? A man can dream. But seriously, how did you guys DO it? How can I think in Spanish when my thoughts are so crazy and all over? How did you, Gekkosan, Benz, Heidita, anyone, manage it? Please, tell us.
10 Answers
I found that after a couple of beers I could speak and understand better.
So then, a picture of what a future language lab will look like? Man without beer and with sullen look is the translator that realizes his services will no longer be needed.
Jeezzle, I think that as adults, we expect too much of ourselves at times. I have been watching my friends' little boy who was adopted from the Philippines a year ago. In the beginning, he struggled to just say "mom", "dad" and the names of his brothers and sisters.
Very quickly, he learned the basic survival words needed in any family..."Me do."; "I want." "Give me." This is similar to any other one or two year old. Over the months his sentences have become progressively more developed. He has learned expressions and idioms just from imitation. Certain expressions he was taught just because it amused his sisters and brother to hear him say it. He enjoyed the laughter and encouragement and kept learning because of that.
Everyone thinks that it is easier to learn a language as a child, but I have read many articles that go against that theory. I think the advantage that children have over adults is that they "just don't care". They really don't care what others think of their language skills. As long as they get their point across and their needs are met, they are happy. They enjoy when people laugh at their mistakes and they basically have no time frame in mind for how long learning a language should take. Have you ever heard of a three year old planning to be completely fluent by the time he reaches kindergarten? They just don't care.
We on the other hand, set up these unreasonable expectations of ourselves. When we finally do have the opportunity to converse with someone in Spanish, we become all nervous and flustered, searching for the perfect words that we know are in our heads somewhere. We set goals and deadlines, because that is the way adults operate. I think (and I'm including myself) if we just learn to relax and enjoy the process, we would reach our goals in a shorter period of time.
Immersion really is important. I had Spanish speaking friends stay at my house this week. Several times they said things that I had never heard before. Of course they were idiomatic expressions. I never would have learned this from a book. There is nothing that replaces one on one conversation, including all of the questions and answers.
Hang in there Jeezzle!!! I think you are much further along then you give yourself credit for. 
It's because of the way most of us learn a foreign language. We study grammar. We learn vocabulary words. We conjugate verbs. We translate from one language to the other and back. That's not the way you learned your first language. We're always translating in our heads. This is really not the way to become fluent in a language.
I did this for a few years and got quite good at it. Then I moved to Venezuela. It took me 6 months before I was comfortable in a conversation. Immersion is the key. And it's all about thinking in the language. I can't tell you how to do it, other than to try to stop thinking about what you're hearing and saying. Don't translate. Just listen and respond. Shoot from the hip. I found that after a couple of beers I could speak and understand better. Maybe it lowered my inhibitions. Not that I'd recommend drinking alcohol as a way to learn a language, but I can recommend trying to stop thinking about what you're hearing and saying. It's kind of a zen thing.
Here's another beer-related English-learning joke. Don't get surprised (or even insulted) by the "Over 7 - Danger Zone" though, it comes from a "How to be British" postcard collection 
(which I have at home - and it is excellent - if you like British humour).
I think that whatever I could offer as "advice" has already been very well said by all the posts above. While the process of full-fluency certainly wasn't a thing of one day to the next for me, the one factor that did make the critical difference was being in an environment where I had no choice but to immerse myself in the language, learn and let go.
This happened when I went to college in upstate NY. I already had some basic English from my regular school classes, but I started with an intensive English course for one Summer, and in that time I avoided Spanish speakers as much as possible. I had to speak and fend for myself in English for everything I needed to do in town.
Before being admitted to the university where I obtained my degree, I spend a year at a community college where nobody spoke Spanish. I continued with college-level English classes, at the same time that my regular life took place 99% in English. I watched TV in English, I listened to the radio in English, and I read (both for school and for entertainment) in English.
I am an avid reader, and I credit a lot of the books I have read (including The Lord of the Rings, the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and many of PG Wodehouse's Jeeves storied) for helping me build a solid vocabulary.
Eventually - probably after some three or four years of living in these conditions, I simply started thinking in English. That is how I function now. When I am in English mode, I think in English, and when I am in Spanish mode, I think in Spanish. I switch from one language to the other on the fly, I don't need to translate - which is a time-consuming and more difficult exercise. The fact is that I can often think of "the perfect" word in one language or the other, but I need to look it up in the dictionary in order to translate it! I understand the concept, I know exactly what the word means, but I sometimes find myself unable to find the equivalent word in the other language.
That is one of the ways in which participating in the Forum helps me, personally - because I am often forced to think of the best way to say something that sounds equally good in both languages!
I spent a year learning Japanese and my teacher told us to drink a few beers before conversing, get rid of the anxiety. - jeezzle
It's somewhat ironic that it should have been a Japanese that offered this advice (although I agree with the intended meaning). During part of the time that I was living/studying in Japan, I taught "conversational" English to a group of company employees (just outside of Tokyo). In all of my language experience, I have never encountered a group of people who were more inhibited by their fear of making mistakes. When faced with a question/statement that required a response, one could practically "see" the the mental wheels/gears turning (as they reviewed their vocabulary choices and grammatical options). A real conversation was practically impossible because they wanted several minutes to plan their responses.
There are, of course, exceptions and there are, of course, Japanese who are well aware of this problem/cultural tendency and try to combat it. On the whole, a "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" is the best approach (assuming that one is willing to learn from one's mistakes).
So who do you get to converse with Jeezzle? The message, loud and clear is, immersion and you can't have that on your own.
I started by working in an Argentinian office where I tried from day 1 to talk Spanish to my colleagues and have them answer in English. That way I got lots more useful help than by sticking only with Spanish. After that, it was just "in the deep end" and paddle hard (I can't swim so I have to paddle). The only other thing I can say is practice in your head. If you're going to talk Spanish to someone about something, then invent your conversation in advance, work out what you'll say and how you'll say it and imagine what they are going to ask you, tell you, talk to you about. This is a first step to that "thinking in Spanish" that you want to achieve.
PS I don't know if dreaming in Spanish is more or less significant but I used to do that quite regularly at one time. Good luck
I thank everyone for their insightful answers and I have thoroughly read them all. Yes I have loved before, but I could never love a woman as much I as love Spanish, or languages in general because languages are riddles that can be solved with love and attention, with women it's not so easy. But seriously, I wish Gekkosan or Heidiita would reply with how they learned, but I know the answer will be that they didn't learn in a couple of years but more like a decade. And here I was planning to learn 5 languages before I kick the bucket. I'm pretty sure you only get to know the languages you already learned in Heaven and if don't learn them then that pretty Spanish angel will never give you the time of day! (not to mention the Japanese one) Chinese here I come!!!!!!!
Because I love Spanish more than I could ever love a woman.
Actually, there's nothing strange in it. I think that we statistically fall in love every ... years (4? 7? 10? 2?). I suppose that's why I fell in love with Spanish... it was about time. Falling in love with another guy would have definitely mess up my life, so here I am 
enamorada como loca de español!
Because I love Spanish more than I could ever love a woman.
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