Language Learning Goals – How to Set Goals and Achieve Them
Want to successfully learn Spanish? The first step to accomplish your learning objective is to set your language learning goals based on your exact circumstances.
Everyone starts by looking for the best, fastest, easiest way to learn Spanish. Life is busy, money is tight, and learning a language is hard. The best way to begin learning Spanish is with language learning goals in place. Language learning goals make it possible to accomplish your objectives faster and easier.
Most learners often feel overwhelmed and burn out quick just because they haven’t answered some essential questions from the start. They wing it and assume they are the same as every other language learner on the planet. You are different and your task list should be too.
I’m here to help you get off to a good start with my Skill Building framework designed to make getting started easier and building your Spanish language skills faster then ever before.
Setting Goals for Language Learning
What are language learning goals?
The first step to begin learning Spanish lays a basic foundation for your learning plan. It will include setting goals, assesing your language skills, and the specific tasks you will accomplish.
Lets look at some helpful tools to get started.
Goal Setting Supplies List
For your planning session, you’ll need a few basic supplies for setting and tracking goals.
The Spanish Skills Booster planner helps you set your Spanish skills goals — to listen, speak, read, and write Spanish — as part of your practice routine and track your progress. Look inside.
Download the Spanish Skills Booster.
Writing your ideas on sticky notes makes it really easy to categorize and organize your thoughts.
Color coding is a helpful learning strategy for many language learners. For example, the parts of speech can each have their own color when labeling sentences. They are ideal for tracking the totals over the year.
Writing down your plans and scheduling your study time makes it three times more likely you’ll accomplish your goals. Pick a calendar in Spanish as another learning opportunity.
Language Learning Goals – Your Big Purpose
We have all learned one language, our native language. If you are anything like me, you love language and you want more than one. I wanted to be able to talk to my mother-in-law, now ex-mother-in-law. For me, connection and relationship were what I wanted. Your reasons will be different from mine. But the overall objective is the same.
Benefits of Learning Spanish
What is it that lights your Spanish fire? Here are some of the most common reasons people want to learn a second language.
- Personal / “I love how Spanish sounds”
- Career / “Communicating in English and Spanish pays better”
- Cultural / “Don Quijote is hilarious”
- Travel / “I need directions”
- Relationship / “I want to talk to you in Spanish”
- Heritage / “I can spell hay right”
- Health / “I need to exercise my brain”
Your reasons why are really important. These are the benefits you expect to enjoy in the future. They keep you motivated through the thick and thin of language learning.
What is the goal of learning a language?
For any language learning goal, the main objective is to be able to communicate in that language. This includes speech and or print.
Language Learning Goals Examples
This main goal to communicate in Spanish gets broken down into different skills goals. These are measurable and time driven. The important thing is to keep track of your progress.
Setting Spanish Skills Goals
There are four language skills:
Listening / understanding spoken Spanish
Reading / understanding Spanish in print
Speaking / expressing yourself in spoken Spanish
Writing / expressing yourself in Spanish in print
Each skill needs a minimum of 15 minutes of practice time daily.
To get a measure of your current skills experience, take the beginners’ skill assessment. This will help you see where you are at with each skill. The assessment provides milestones to bring each skill to the basic level. You can use this to track your progress and know exactly what’s next.
Skill building begins with exposure and reaches fluency at the end of the learning process.
How much time do you need to practice?
The skills require practice to develop. The amount of practice time varies based on your personal experience and learning abilities.
The amount of time you dedicate to practice will directly affect how quickly your abilities increase. For faster results, spend at least 15 minutes on the most important skill each day. The more the better.
There are a lot of different ways you can practice the skills on your own.
How to accomplish your Spanish skills goals.
Setting Spanish Vocabulary Goals
Everything in language learning comes down to words. Learning Spanish vocabulary is how well you understand and express words from memory. This is measured with a word count.
How many words do you need in your Spanish vocabulary?
For your vocabulary goal over the next year, you need:
Beginner / 500 words
Conversational / 1,000 words
Advanced / 3,000 words
Fluent / 5,000 words
Native / 10,000+ words
How to accomplish your Spanish vocabulary goals.
Setting Spanish Grammar Goals
The next level of Spanish learning comes down to how you put the words together.
How many words, phrases, and sentences do you need to analyze?
For your grammar goal over the next year, you need:
- 250 words (5 per week)
- 100 phrases (2 per week)
- 50 sentences (1 per week)
Download the Ultimate Spanish Study System to set all your Spanish learning goals and achieve them.
Again, a focused plan will accomplish your goals much faster than a one size fits all approach. You’ll make quick progress by having specific goals for each skill area. No need to waste your time and energy on free but empty promises. You got this!
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