Texting and e-mailing have become a key part of how we communicate in our lives, so much that it’s fundamentally changing language and communication. According to linguist (语言学家) McCulloch. it’s making us better writers, speakers, and communicators.

“Language is humanity’s most impressive open-source project.” writes McCulloch, who studies and analyzes the patterns of Internet language. “Just as we find things on the Internet by following links from one place to another, language spreads through our conversations and interactions.”

From words and acronyms (like AIDS) to emojis and GIFs, people today have a wide range of ways to express online what they’re thinking and feeling, which can be more effective than pure words. If you’re meeting a friend for happy hour, sending a GIF of Betty White swirling (旋转) a glass of wine can often show your excitement better than words can. Hate Mondays? Posting a meme of Grumpy Cat can instantly convey your mood. Those fluent in Internet-speak can also play with punctuation, capitalization, even spacing to convey emotional state and tone of voice. Words can now be altogether replaced with emblems and icons, which helps explain the popularity of emojis and GIFs in our online conversations.

All of this helps make our social interactions more interesting, and the fluidity (不稳定性) of language is actually its biggest strength. “I mean, fashion can change, why can’t language?” asks McCulloch. “ In fact, language has changed and is always changing. Linguists are generally very positive about language evolution. There’s not one right way to communicate. We don’t speak the way Shakespeare did, and Shakespeare didn’t speak the way Chaucer did. But it’s unfortunate that this message hasn’t been conveyed to broader society as much because we’re still dealing with a history of people worshipping Latin.”

If you live in a place where most people speak the language you are learning, you may use the language for several hours each day. But you may not have these chances to practice English. You may even be self-taught. The good news is that thinking in English can bring you a huge step closer to fluency! 【小题1】, but it does take effort and practice.

Think in single words.

【小题2】. In your head, try to name each object in your surroundings. As you continue with this, it becomes more of a habit, so things are going to pop up into your head-computer, telephone, chair, and desk. Whatever it is, wherever you are. You can also do this at home when you wake up and before you go to sleep.

【小题3】.

Another exercise is describing in your mind objects you don’t know the words for. An example would be if you couldn’t think of the word “garage”,   Hinshaw says. “ 【小题4】, but you can’t think of the name in English. You can say, ‘The place inside where I put my car.’”

Think in sentences.

The next exercise is thinking in simple sentences. For example, 【小题5】, you can tell yourself things like, “It’s such a beautiful day” and “People are playing sports with their friends.” Once this becomes easy, you can move on to more difficult sentences.

Describe your day.

Another exercise experts suggest is to describe your daily activities. You can mentally make plans in the morning when you wake up. This would require future verb tenses. So the skill level is a little higher.