Welcome to the Forums, Reporter,

First of all, I have to explain something regarding thinking and language.

TeacherBrian, this is not my own opinion, actually it is still a debate among language philosophers wheather we can think without the language. You are right, we think about concepts, sometimes visualize them when they are not abstract (though they can be visualized in the latter case as well somehow), but we usually talk to ourselves, in our minds, to analyse the situation, to convince ourselves of doing something, to arrange our thoughts, ... before talking to someone else or taking any actions, if necessary. Just think of scheduling your day, it's not only the concepts of taking a shower, having breakfast, getting ready, ... that comes to mind, you actually use the language, usually your first one, to put them in order: First I'm gonna take a shower and then have forbreakfast, egg is good, then I have to get ready, what to wear? .... Though some of the sentences could be ungrammatical, but we use the language to think.

And now back to you Reporter, if you got what I tried to say in the last paragraph, then you have a clue on how to think in English. Try to tell yourself in English what your plans are, what you want to do, where you want to go, .... It's not easy at first, but after practising it for some time, you'll be able to communicate with yourself(! ) and others in English.  And of course, you have to read and listen in English as much as you can. Good luck.

PS. Some second language learners translate the sentences from the foreign language to their native one, try to avoid that, no translation! 

Read, read, read. Speake, speak, speak. Listen, listen, listen. Write, write, write!

If you read enough while paying attention to the vocab and grammar, you'll recognise your own mistakes. And when you speak or talk, you'll notice your weak points, write them down and try to work on them more! You can start your reading with simple texts (Longman has a good collection of simplified stories, I'm sure you can find another books as well.)