I studied German in college, and I have been studying Korean for almost 2 years and I would say you're spot on. The hardest thing about learning a new language

I studied German in college, and I have been studying Korean for almost 2 years and I would say you're spot on. The hardest thing about learning a new language is learning to think in that language, not 1. think in native language 2. transcode to target language. Not only is this quite slow, it leads to very unnatural language. English and Korean have different idioms and ways of structuring sentences. Since I've been studying Korean for a while now I have certain thoughts I can innately express in Korean and actually have difficulty directly mapping to English. --- However, one has to start somewhere. I can't really learn a concept in Korean without it being explained in English.. until I'm advanced enough to understand Korean grammar and word explanations in Korean.* One just has to remember that things don't map neatly although textbooks pretend like they do. Over time and exposure, you get a sense for how and when things are really used. So the real answer is you need to just use the target language as much as you can. The only way to innately grasp a concept is by seeing it and using it. * It's a bit like bootstrapping a compiler, isn't it?