Teachers talk to students at all levels about the dangers of trying to learn English by ¨translation¨. In its simplest form this ¨translation¨ process can be misleading and confusing. For example, in Spanish the word ¨compromise¨ means commitment. “Compromiso” is also “appointment”. In English it means you reach an agreement with another person or group in which you both give up something that you originally wanted.

Spanish presents some special difficulties for people learning English. Two particularly difficult areas are the different uses of the verb ending in ¨ing¨ and verb and preposition combinations.

The following example illustrates the different uses of the verb ending in ¨ing¨.

Alejandro is speaking:
I am working now.
Working until late is hard for me.
The working class demands an extra bonus for night shifts.
I enjoy working in the garden

In Spanish the only form of the ¨ing¨ (endo/ando) is in the present continuous tense while in English ¨ing¨ is not necessarily the present continuous tense.
Prepositions in English and Spanish are used to identify positions in space. In Spanish you can visualize their meaning and there is an exact translation. The complexity in English is that by combining a verb and a preposition you create a ¨new¨ word which is the combination of the two words (verb and preposition). The usual meaning of the preposition has no application to the ¨new¨ word. For example, ¨up¨ means toward a higher place or in a higher place. However, if ¨I clean up the mess on the table¨, the items on the table will not necessarily go to a higher place. They may go to the sink, drawer or garbage bin which is usually lower than the table!

In English there is a phrase ¨do you want the bad news or the good news¨. The difference in the structure of the two languages highlighted here probably makes this ¨bad news¨ reading for a Spanish speaker working to master English as a second language.
There is ¨good news¨.

In Spanish we need to know whether the noun is feminine or masculine to be able to place an adjective by it. No problem if we are talking about people, or even animals, but how do we know if a torch is male or female?
In Spanish, adjectives are also singular and plural.
Well, all this never happens in English. You can be talking about any gender or number, the adjective never changes.

But there is also more ¨bad news¨!
The most effective way to stop translating and start thinking in English is apply yourself to self-learning. There is usually just not enough class time (unless you have little to do and an unlimited budget) to get the repetition and reinforcement you need to start thinking in English. Most teachers will tell you the students who learn quickly and effectively are the student ts who undertake self-learning time.