Thinking in English 英語脳？

When speaking English, I always think about everything in Japanese first. Because of this, my responses to others are quite slow and sometimes take long purses in the middle of conversations. In addition, I have replied in Japanese to my friend who doesn't speak it, though it made me and him/her so funny.

This became a topic of dinner table talk. My sister in NZ, who is from Netherland but speak English like a native speaker, said she has a reverse situation, that is, she have often uttered English words when she was not supposed to speak her own language. In this point of view, it is possible to say if I want to speak as she does, I need to think in English.

But how? Am I able to get an English brain? Considering for a while after dinner, I found three solutions. One is to give images to each word. For example, as for the word "accompany", I draw a picture of a person accompanied by a dog and attached the sentence "a dog accompanies a person". This would be helpful to shorten the time of translating English into Japanese.

Second resolution is looking up by English-English dictionary words I've seen but don't know the meaning exactly. This is for overcoming the limit of understanding of English in Japanese. Although I 100% agree with the effectiveness of using an English-English dictionary, it takes a lot of time to look up. Therefore, I am going to use it occasionally. The main dictionary is English - Japanese one but in order to search words with a lot of definition or vague meanings for me, English - English one is better, I guess.

Finally, having more chances to think in English must be helpful to acquire the English thinking. For example, saying something to myself would be effective as the editor of Japan Times said. An on-the-spot broadcasting is also expected to improve my English circulation in my mind. 

If I became a fluent speaker, it would be super cool but I can't unfortunately. I don't expect myself to be native but try to get as close to native speakers as possible. I have heard from an article that what is essential to master a language is to set a goal of learning. Therefore, I will aimed to become an international journalist.

KOTARO