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"I want to learn X in Y months" - useful? | ||
Tags: Measuring Progress | Goals | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 17 of 23 09 October 2014 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Awesome posts, thanks people. I would just add one more thing.
Shortterm goals tend to be easier to plan and achieve while the longterm ones are more likely to be affected even by things out of your control. You never know whether you're not gonna get ill in a month, whether you're not going to have more trouble with your exams at university, whether you won't be required to give more time and efforts to your job or whether your family won't have extra need of you for one reason or another. That's why haveing a general longterm plan, despite it being useful to have a general idea where you are headed, is a very risky thing which can easily lead to failure to keep up and attain your goals and therefore a blast to your motivation, ego and therefore efficiency. And another point: It is useful to know where you are headed and more or less what pace you should keep to get there "in time". But too detailed long term goals (... On 1st March, I am gonna complete 9th unit of TY Swedish and hold my first conversation with a native...) are: 1.fragile because of the reason above (if you're sure you are not going to get ill and sleep through half of January and that you won't be required to hand in several more projects, I want your foretelling tools too) 2.fragile because you might need more time for some pieces you're gonna study (who knows whether you won't need more time to assimilate some of the chapters before) 3.Such detailed planning devours too much TIME you are going to need for your learning. Really, I know far too many people who spend hours on planning instead of studying and it is in vain because their detailed plans are too easy to fail, often due to external causes as much as their own "faults". 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 18 of 23 09 October 2014 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh I agree, and I agree with Ari that it is sometimes good to have a break, even a long one. Another thing I believe, but didn't mention in the post is that habit trumps willpower and motivation! I learned this when marathon training. I didn't want to go for a 12 mile run on a Sunday, but Sunday was "long run day" and it was a habit. There are lots of other things that will keep you going, like for example when I was running I had a rule that no matter what I would run for 5 minutes, if I still didn't feel like running I could quit. But the thing is once you're stuck in and doing it you keep going. I used the think after 5 minutes, well I'm already out here and I'm already sweating might as well go on. And the few times I really did still want to quit it was my body telling me that I was sick and needed time off. So for the short term motivation you can try things like: gamification, racing the egg timer, or just doing it for 5 minutes. Or like you said, just do something so you can "sign it off" for the day. If you what to reach your goals, make the desire intrinsic, and then make it a habit. One of the tips I give people is that when you first start something you're bursting with energy and enthusiasm, use that time to design your program of work, and the daily weekly targets. Schedule your calendar, etc. Start slow and build up. Oh and on the subject of motivation. I found a "scrapbook of desire" helped. Let's take the example of wanting to learn Italian. Cut out pictures of Lake Garda, Rome, Milan, etc. Pictures of Italian Cafes and fashion and cars and all the stuff you associate with Italy. Then when you are demotivated, spend your study hour looking through the scrapbook and imagine yourself on a boat in Lake Garda chatting with Italian friends, or having a coffee in Rome and chatting with the waitress in Italian. Or exploring the Milan and shopping at the designer outlets, speaking to the staff in Italian about this years fashions, etc. etc. It will not improve your Italian per-se but it will boost your motivation endlessly! One thing however to increase motivation you have to imagine your current state, e.g. stuck in rainy London speaking only English with this vision of the future. It gives you a kick up the backside to go back to your studies. :) This is why I've already begun to gather pictures of Singapore and Taiwan for my Mandarin motivation scrapbook. @Cavesa - That is true, and when people plan they have a tendency to overestimate what they can do and underestimate the amount work required. This is why project managers tend to schedule in a "fudge factor" when doing projects because there will always be unforeseen delays. Edited by rdearman on 09 October 2014 at 4:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 23 09 October 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In the past I've tried various goals like "B2 at the end of the year" or "C1 by next June", and while they turned out to be rather unrealistic, they did motivate me. However, I already have more than enough motivation, and I've found that a more "free" approach based on doing what I feel like at the time and doing short-term bursts of working on aspects that I feel need particular attention is just as productive and less stressful. And avoiding stress is important when you're just doing this for fun!
I think this is particularly relevant for studying multiple languages. Stelle mentioned that motivation waxes and wanes, and I'd add that for different languages it does so at different times and rates. Opportunities to use each language also come and go, which is partly what guides my motivation. If I'm in more of an Italian mood than a French mood then I'll just go along with it. In the end it either balances out or you realise that you'd rather focus on one than another. Edited by garyb on 09 October 2014 at 4:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 20 of 23 09 October 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
My problem with those goals is while they sound specific, they aren't really measurable unless you are going to take the exam. I prefer goals like the Super Challenge, 100 books & 100 films by Dec 2015. Also you have to have a cookie cutter measure, like I'll work 1 hour per day. Or a quantitative measure like X books, or Y chapters in a set time. Some of these targets can be sort of vague. I had a goal of speaking to an Italian on the subject of their choice for 10 minutes without hesitation or miscommunication. I measure this by just trying it on my conversation partner during language exchanges until I did it a couple of times, then extended the time limit to 20 minutes. I do agree that being flexible with your program is a good thing. You should be able to drop a course you don't like, or stop reading a book if you don't like it. You should schedule in time off. I have already stated a goal like that, Mandarin in 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months and 2 years. But I've tried to be more specific by saying which courses I'll use and what methods I'll employee. I'm 2 months into the program now and already I've switched up my methods 4-5 times based on feedback from others and where I think I'm going wrong or becoming demotivated. So flexibility and fudge factor come in a lot in the planning, but without motivation you get nowhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 21 of 23 11 October 2014 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can see this being very true, especially for people learning multiple languages. I'm not learning multiple languages, though. I learn specific languages to use them, not because I want to learn lots of languages. I think I'm different from many people on this forum, because I don't have language wanderlust, nor do I have a goal of learning X languages in my life. For me to "take a break" from Tagalog would be taking a break from language learning - and I really like language learning! I'm not miserable working on my Tagalog - I'm just going through a (short, let's hope) phase where it's a little bit less fun than it used to be. So I scaled back. But the routine that I've built over the past year and a half - of working on learning a language at least a little bit every day - is important to me. That's a kind of motivation right there, maintaining the momentum even if it means standing still for a little while. (Stopping right now wouldn't be standing still, it would mean sliding backwards). Anyway, sorry about the thread highjack! I'm really enjoying reading everyone's thoughts about motivation and goal-setting! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 22 of 23 11 October 2014 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
This made me laugh out loud! A few months into learning Spanish, I realized that I was putting a lot of time into creating detailed study plans - time that would have been much better spent actually studying Spanish. I'm all for simplifying routines. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4574 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 23 of 23 12 October 2014 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I found that I put more effort into creating a study plan rather than actually studying. I'm glad that other people have the same issue as me! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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