Building spontaneous thinking/speaking in Chinese

 

How to build spontaneous thinking/speaking in Chinese?

Here is my advice

For beginners, listening to CDs, conversations few more times, then repeat after that many times.
Of course, if there's any sentence you find helpful, you should write it down.

for example, if you are listening to this conversation:

A: 你昨天买了什么？ (what did you buy yesterday?)
B : 我昨天什么都没买！（ I didn't buy anything yesterday)

in this conversation, 什么都没+ V  means "not at all"
so 我 昨天 什么都没  买 literally means ( I didn't buy anything at all yesterday)

It's a useful one to learn!
If I were learning Mandarin, I would definitly write this pattern down.
Say few more times until I'm very fluent with it.
Then I try to paraphrase.

我什么都没 吃。 I didn't eat anything at all.
我什么都没 做。 I didn't do anything at all.
我什么都没 说。 I didn't say anything at all

repeat your new sentences few more times and picture different situations where you can use those sentences.
Then next time, when you come acroos the scenario you need to use those patterns, the sentence
will just pop up to your head then you can say it with no thinking.