"THINKING IN ENGLISH": A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC REALITY OR A MYTH?

The widely circulated pedagogical recommendation that language learners should “think in English” has remained insufficiently examined from a psycholinguistic perspective. This article critically evaluates the validity of this concept by synthesizing research on inner speech, bilingual cognition, and second language processing. Drawing on established theoretical frameworks, the study argues that thinking in English is neither a myth nor a stable cognitive state, but a dynamic and proficiency-dependent process shaped by lexical automatization, conceptual restructuring, and cognitive load. The analysis further demonstrates that even advanced bilinguals rely on flexible language selection mechanisms rather than exclusive L2 thinking.

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