Reading, Writing & Reflecting

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

I need some brain-power! Plenty of it. With such a low English proficiency, I have to read all these English texts, write in English and even sometime have to think in English! I wonder how to think in another language if my readings and writing are in English, I think my brain gets confused if I do it in another language, funny! My mother tongue is Hakka, it's only to communicate with my family & relatives. My first language is Mandarin, it's only useful for Mandarin classes and speaking to Chinese-speaking friends, or read Chinese newspaper or doing maths in my head, especially when it comes to time, money and doing time table or division. My second language is Malay, which is my country's official language, use it a lot especially in academy because that is the official language in my secondary school and university in Malaysia. So, did my degree in Malay though sometimes I did read some papers and books in English. My third language is English, that's why it's not the best. Not really using it a lot until I further my study in Cambridge. Everything is in English, from the most formal to the most informal event in my life here, they are all in English. Hence my mind is always reflecting in English. I wonder when I am out of the vocabulary needed to think of an act or a thing, what language am I using in my head or it's just an image without a word for it?

By the way, this is metacognition (my research topic), thinking about thinking. I am thinking about my own thinking. By doing so, we can learn and work better because we can actually come to a clearer sense of how our brains is working, how can we work better, learn better, what style suit us more and speed up the cognitive processes, etc. The above account is just one very simple and probably not the best example but enough to make you aware that sometimes we need to sit down and think how we think so that we are not doing what we are doing for the sake of just completing something in our lives. Have I baffled you?

ALLAH makes us different from the animals because of the ability to think and reflect. If we choose to abandon it, we need to review our status on this Earth. Can we still claim the status of a khalifah on the Earth?

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.