In the first instalment of this article, Marcin Lewandowski discusses the importance of setting goals in the English language classroom and how they are the tools driving motivation behind both teaching and student learning.
Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
Napoleon Hill
“I want to express my views clearly when I go to a school meeting”
“If I go to a job interview, I want to give my best there!”
“I want to be able to help my child with her homework.”
These are some of the goals that my learners set at the start of a recent course I was teaching. Each of these goals is different, each is personal. Our goals are what drive us and make us commit to a course of action. They give us focus and direction, so why not introduce goal setting to EFL students? This is precisely what I thought I’d do.
Eyes on the prize
In the classes that I teach I’ve started asking learners to state and write down three things that they would like to be able to do better at the end of the course. These three goals are deliberately long-term; they’re supposed to help learners keep their eyes on the prize – a reminder of why they’re there. Alan McLean – the author of ‘The Motivated School’ (2003) – has argued that the brain motivates us by carrying an image of where we want to go and how we will feel when we get there.
Setting a goal, he continues, demonstrates an intention to achieve and triggers learning . (…) It offers an opportunity to experience success. So, if in order to set a goal you have to consider your future self, the goals my learners set at the start of their learning should, in theory, motivate them by forcing them to do just that: picture themselves performing these things in the future.
To make the recording of goals as smooth a process as possible, I’ve devised a simple booklet where learners can record and reflect on their goals. The benefit of having a booklet with all goals in one place is that learners can monitor and review their progress against them as often as they wish. Another advantage of setting course goals at the start of the course is that, in addition to helping learners stay on track, it can also be very rewarding for them to see the distance travelled when they review these goals at the end of their course.
Break it up
But long term goals may, in some cases, be too broad and too distant to maintain motivation and thus difficult to stick to. This means that longer-term goals may need to be supported by shorter-term, more immediate, more perceptibly achievable goals.
This is why – in addition to the course goals – I ask learners to set weekly targets linked to their course goals. These are three things that they will do every week that will allow them to practise their language skills outside of the classroom. It is important that these weekly goals operate outside the remit of tasks learners would normally do or be required to do by the teacher, things that will ‘stretch’ them. So doing English homework set by me doesn’t count, whilst reading an English book for one hour in addition to that homework does.
Easier said than done
Setting goals, however, is a skill in itself and, in my experience, learners do initially struggle with this. Devoting a portion of the first lesson to discussing and setting goals will allow them to become more comfortable with this process. In my classes, for example, we might compare our learning habits and discuss the importance of self-study in language learning. We also list things that we do, or can do, to practise English daily, weekly etc. and discuss what goals should look like in order to be effective. To this end, we consider SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timebound) and elicit examples.
For instance, a learner might say “This week I will find and read two interesting articles in the education section on the BBC news website”. As this goal enables the learner to determine whether or not it’s been achieved (“I have read two articles this week”), it meets the SMART goal criteria.
These three goals don’t have to be completely unrelated, i.e. three different things. In fact, it may sometimes be useful or easier to set goals which are interlinked.. The goal above, for example, could also in theory generate two other SMART goals, such as “I will identify and learn 5 new words in each of these articles” and “I will talk about the article with my friend and use the new words in the conversation.”
Whatever the goals, defining them clearly makes it easier for us to stay on track by focusing our attention and helping us resist distractions.
Click here to read part two of this article.
References
Deci, E. L., and Flaste, R. (1995). Why we do what we do: Understanding self-motivation. New York: Penguin.
Locke, E. and Latham, G (2002). Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation. American Psychologist, Vol. 57, No. 9, 705–717
McLean, A. (2003) The motivated school. London: Paul Chapman Publishing
Webb, C. (2016). How to have a good day. Macmillan