Goal Setting Information -
Step 1: Decide

Let's start with some basic goal setting information. Before each learning session, plan what you want to learn.

This is a subset of the larger plan you made when you established your language learning goals. Draw on those goals in deciding what to learn on a daily basis. This is not a one-time affair. It comes whenever you start a new dialog.

Ask yourself, what do I want to learn for this session (or series of sessions)?

• Think about school, home, work, or social situations you encounter; what would you like to say that you cannot say now?
• Can you buy basic necessities, food, clothes, etc?
• Can you use local transportation: train, bus, or metro?
• Can you change your money to the local currency? (In the target language, by asking the teller the exchange rate, telling her how much you want to exchange, and then understanding when she replies. No fair shoving your money through the window, then waiting for a wad of foreign bills and coins to come back.)
• Can you order in a restaurant in the target language?
• Can you engage in social chit-chat?

Our friend, Simon Harris, loves football. An Englishman, he decided that the weather in Spain is much better than the weather in Great Britain so he relocated to Spain. His interest in football drove the process as he formed goal setting information. Now he follows his favorite teams in a beautiful and temperate setting. See how he used his interest in sports to start learning Spanish.

Be specific about your goal setting information, and make your short-term objective narrow enough to be achievable within a week or two. For example, if you want to learn how to shop for food, you might focus on buying vegetables at the market, or meat at the butcher shop, or bread at the bakery. Tackle these one at a time, rather than trying to learn everything about food shopping at once.

You may want to make detailed plans, or just take a few notes about what you want to learn. Respect your own learning style. Better yet, download the Walkabout Language Learning Action Guide. It will help you discover you language learning dreams and make them a realitiy. Use the blank spaces provided in this action guide to write down your own goals.

Continued: Language - An Exchange of Ideas -- Step 2: Prepare