Setting clear goals for yourself is one of the best ways to achieve English
fluency and I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it right now
I'm Deirdre Nicholas from palm tree teaching TV your personal language coach
this video is step two in my new series how to speak English confidently and
fluently in six months in this video I'm going to help you create powerful goals
so powerful that you'll be excited to leap out of bed every morning to get
started so why do you need goals knowing where you're going in your English
learning and how you're going to get there is so important for success and to
know where you're going you need to set yourself clear measurable goals yes if
you don't have goals it's like getting into a car and just driving and with no
idea where you're going no map and no idea where you'll end up it's totally
random and you could just be driving around in circles and that's what would
happen to your English learning if you don't have clear directions and clear
goals so that you have a map for your English fluency so if your dream is to
get fluent in English you need some shape to that dream and a plan otherwise
it'll just remain a dream and never become reality okay so what kind of
goals do you need to set and how do you do it you need to find goals that
motivate you with passion some want to get fluent in English goals that you
feel so passionate about you can't wait to get out of bed every morning to start
working on them if you have goals like this you'll be guaranteed success and
nothing will stop you okay now one thing that you need to do before you start
setting your goals is to know what your level is in English this will give you a
starting point now I'll put a link below for you to take a free English test and
this will give you some idea of your level but there are loads online now to
think about your goals referre
back to your sheet of paper that you prepared with motivation for learning
English now if you remember that was in my step one video so you must watch this
use this as your starting point the answer to why you want to be fluent now
you can ask yourself what do you want to achieve when do you want to achieve it
by do you have a deadline and how much time do you have to study for fluency so
let's break it down in terms of that great acronym smart which will really
help you to achieve your English fluency within six months your goals should be
specific measurable achievable relevant and timely so number one specific the
first thing that you must do is make sure that your goal is specific what do
I mean by that well here's to English language goals one is specific with a
lot of detail so you know what you're going to be doing and the other one is
not what I want to be fluent in English number two I will learn 20 new phrases
and 20 new English words and practice using them for one hour every day so
which one is more likely to be successful easier to follow well the
second one of course because that way you know you will have achieved it so if
your goal is to become fluent in English that's great but you must break it down
into smaller parts so that you can see that you're achieving it let me show you
a great way of doing this break down your goals into what you have
to do each week and here's how one week from now I would have learned 20 new
English idioms to help me to sound more fluent 2 weeks from now I will have
listened to five new podcasts to help me if kabhi come familiar with the rhythm
of spoken English one month from now I will have learned 200 new vocabulary
words and practice speaking them to myself in the mirror and so on up to six
months and this will really help you to be much more specific in your goals
remember for fluency in English as I've said in my previous video you only need
to know three thousand words that you can use fairly easily so use this as
your guide great so the next thing your goals need
to be are measurable so really will you know when you've achieved it you need to
see the evidence from yourself when you've achieved your goal
so saying you want to be fluent in English is not a measurable goal how do
you know when you've achieved this sort of goal here's an example of a
measurable goal I want to be able to talk easily to my
friends on Facebook and whatsapp about my family and my job now with this sort
of goal you will know when you've achieved it because you will have had
that conversation number three achievable if you set
yourself a goal that's too high it's not really achievable now here's an example
of a very bad unachievable goal I want to be fluent in Chinese in six months
even though I don't know any Chinese at all clearly not very realistic or
achievable and this is where it's so important to know what your own level is
before you start so that you know where you are and how far you have to go if
you have and for example a new baby two young children a husband a job and a big
family that you have to see quite often the chances of you being able to use two
hours a day for your English is not very high so you must be realistic with
yourself your goals must excite you and they must keep you going you need to
have a vision of how much your life will improve once you are fluent in English
number four relevant oh before I get to how you can make your goals relevant
don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell so you don't miss out on
any of my videos and lessons also if you'd like me to coach you one-to-one
just email me on deirdre at palm tree teaching comm and
I'd love to help you so it's really important to make your goals relevant to
your life of course this is also linked to your
motivation and the reasons why you want to be fluent maybe you wrote on your
motivation sheet from the step one video that you want to talk to friends and and
get to know new people from all over the world of Skype or through social media
so a relevant goal for you would be that you want to get to know people on social
media through your English okay number five timely you should set a specific
date for achieving your goals let me give you an example I'm going to achieve
my goals by the 31st of July 2019 which basically gives you about six months to
get fluent then break down what you have to do each week and each month so that
you can reach that goal by that date as I showed you before in the video making
a deadline will be incredibly motivational you'll really want to reach
your goal if it's all written down and you can see the day's ticking away there
we are follow these steps to get really
powerful goals that will motivate you and keep you going to get fluent in six
months break them down into little steps as I've done with you in this video
you'll be much more likely to achieve them so work on these over the next week
until I see you again and like and subscribe to this amazing channel where
you will be able to improve your fluency and build your English so enjoy your
English over the next few days and I'll see you next time bye
you