This lesson is for learners of English who speak too slowly. This frustrating problem is often caused by slow verbal processing speed, meaning it takes longer to understand information and respond to it. The effect is much more noticeable in a foreign language like English. In this lesson, I’ll show you how to think faster in English so you can respond more quickly and speak with greater confidence.
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What Is Slow Processing Speed?
Slow processing speed can be defined as having a ‘delayed response’ when speaking or answering questions. It happens to people who need a little bit of extra thinking time to form their words.
A simple example of slow processing speed in a conversation:
Person 1: What’s your name?
Person 2: [3+ second response time] My name is Jade.
If you have slow processing speed in English, the problem will also affect you in your native language. However, years of conversational experience in your native language mean that you do not notice the problem as much because your response times have got much faster. The faster response time that you have in your native language means that you are better at answering questions and thinking on the spot.
How Slow Processing Speed Affects Your Confidence
The ‘delayed response’ issue occurs when you’re having a conversation in a language that you’re inexperienced in. Although it may only be a few seconds, the silent pause can seem really long. This can make you feel awkward because it took you such a long time to answer. The long pauses can also make you lose confidence in social situations.
Slow thinking time in English places extra pressure on social situations, especially if the conversation involves more than one person. This is because the conversation may move along very quickly. If you’re struggling to keep up, joining in is almost impossible because there never seems to be the right moment. Joining a fast-moving conversation would require you to be very assertive; often it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
‘I prefer writing to speaking because I have enough time to think’
When writing an email, you have a lot more time to think about what you’re saying and you can answer any question sufficiently. Having a conversation is very different because you have to find your words quickly. Not being able to find your words promptly causes heightened anxiety and embarrassment. Once this negative feedback loop begins, the delayed response time gets worse, due to the extra pressure.
Students Don’t Understand the Problem
Students who think and speak slowly in English tend to think the problem is caused by having a small/limited English vocabulary. They believe that they just need to learn more words. In my opinion, it’s not about the size of your vocabulary. People with much smaller vocabularies can often answer questions quickly and find the language in their heads much more easily.
A key point to remember is that slow audio processing does not mean you are stupid or rubbish at English. It simply means it takes you longer than most people to find the words in your head. You can think of language in your mind like a filing system. If that system is not very efficient, or is in the wrong place, it takes longer to find what you want. So instead of going straight there, you have to go around through all these alleyways. You do find the right words in the end, but sometimes it is too late to use them.
How to Improve Thinking Speed in English
It is possible to improve your thinking speed in English, but there is no quick fix. You will have to practise simple phrases many times to build up the pathways in your mind. The deeper the pathway that is created in your brain, the easier it is to find that phrase or word when you need it.
To think faster in English, you need to burn deeper pathways in your memory.
You have faced the problem of slow thinking speed in your native language, but you have largely learned how to overcome it. This is because most of the phrases that we use in our daily lives are according to a script, with very small variations. Without realising it, you developed faster audio processing speed because of all this repetition.
To improve your verbal processing speed when speaking English, you have to complete the same process – repeating the most useful language and phrases over and over again. Eventually, you’ll be able to find your words much more quickly. When this happens, you will feel as if you are thinking much faster in English!
During conversation, most people do not have time to consciously build sentences using grammar. Speech happens automatically and very quickly. Some students can build sentences while speaking, but they usually do not have slow processing speed. If your processing speed is slow, your mind may go blank for a few seconds before the language appears. When this happens, you cannot build sentences consciously as you speak.
Importantly, the problem of slow processing speed is not solved by memorising even more words. Instead, you must repeat and reuse the words you already have stored in your brain. The point of doing this is to make it easier and faster for your brain to locate useful words and phrases. This is where doing lots of repeat-after-me practice comes in…
The ‘repeat-after-me’ method is highly effective at improving reaction times in a foreign language. This is because the method allows you to repeat the same phrases multiple times, without the pressure and stress of being in a real-life conversation. Furthermore, the ‘fill in the blank’ part of the audio pushes you to respond quickly. The more practice you have with this method, the faster your reaction times will become.
Do You Speak English too Slowly? Take the English Jade Course
The English Jade course I created will help to speed up your processing speed in English. It’s a repeat-after-me course that you can follow along with to train faster thinking and quicker responses in real conversation. View my courses here.
Extend Your Learning
▶︎ Does your mind go blank when speaking English? Learn more about mind blanks in English.
▶︎ Learn how perfectionism makes freezing in conversation and mind blanks worse.
▶︎ Watch my lesson on How to Expand Your Vocabulary.
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