Setting Goals
I love setting goals and I think it’s so important to be clear on your goals in order to reach a level of success in your English learning and elsewhere in life. In this episode, I talk about the importance of setting goals, how to set good goals, and also look at some useful phrases. I also share some of my own current life goals at the end of the episode.
Why Goals are Important
If you don’t have a goal, it’s going to be very difficult to get where you want because it’s like aiming an arrow at a target.
If your eyes are closed, you have no goal. You’re unlikely to hit your targets. If you’re aiming at the target – at the bullseye – obviously, there’s a much higher chance that you’ll hit your target and your reach your goal. So setting goals is a really important thing.
“You should always set your goals beyond your reach, so you have something to live for.”
Do you agree or disagree with this quote?
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
This is a really important question to ask ourselves. Are we stopping ourselves from aiming at our goals due to fear of failure?
Setting SMART Goals
For any goal (specifically English learning), setting SMART goals will always help.
SMART is an acronym shown in the photo below.
A vague and bad goal would be: I want to improve my English
A SMART goal would be: I will have 1 conversation every Monday morning at 8am and read one chapter of a book at 5pm.
Mnemonics are tricks in which you create stories or reminders to help you remember new words.
The sillier you can be, the better.
In primary school, many children have a hard time spelling the word “because”, so we learnt a fun mnemonic in the form of an acronym.
BECAUSE: Big elephants can always understand small elephants.
You can also try to make the vocabulary personal and emotional. The brain remembers things that are personal and relevant to your life as well as times when your emotions are high.
Vocabulary
- To hype something up (5:02) – To create excitement about something
- Audacious (7:09) – Having a willingness to take a big risk
- Recipe for mediocrity (9:01) – Common phrase meaning something you can where the end result isn’t that good
- Dopamine (9:43) – The hormone released that causes happiness
- Ramp up (10:31) – To increase the amount or level of something
- Vague (14:01) – Unclear, unspecified, not specific
- No way, Jose (15:20) – A common phrase to decline something strongly (I will definitely not do that!)
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Thanks a lot for your great podcast I have been listening from two years ago I love it in fact it is a great method for English learning as well as in general life
A lovely girl, indeed! 😀 Thank you for the kind words about the podcast. You must have been with me from the start then? I really appreciate that.