Create a Language Goal

In this lesson, we're going to be discussing goals. You might have a vague idea of why you want to learn English, but you'll need something more concrete, something well thought out.

There are two purposes for creating a language-learning goal:

1. To tell you which aspects of English to focus on
2. To help you when your motivation fades

Let's talk about each of these points in turn.

Focus—If you want to learn English to get an English-speaking job, you'll have very different requirements from someone who needs English for their university courses. The tasks you'll do are different, and the durations of study will be different. A university student will need more Reading, for example.

Motivation—As we discussed in the Fixing Mindset Problems lesson, you need to have a strong reason for studying because studying can get hard or boring at times. When you start to lose motivation to learn English, it's time to revisit your goal so you can get back on track.

Find Your Persona

To start building your goal, we're first going to figure out your learning "persona". At English Tea Break, a persona is how we group people with similar English goals and requirements. You'll want to remember which persona is yours because I'll be referring to them throughout the roadmap, especially when for Action Plans.

I've created a table below with each persona, their goal, and the CEFR level required to reach that goal.

If you haven't heard of CEFR before, it's a standard for determining someone's English abilities. The order of levels is: A1 (absolute beginner), A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 (advanced). The Council of Europe website has a page that shows the definitions for each CEFR level.

You can use this table to get an idea of the English skill levels needed to reach your goals. It's okay if your goals are slightly different than the ones in the table. For example, maybe you don't want to study at an English-speaking university, but you have to take some English classes at your local university. You should still use the Student persona to get an idea of the CEFR requirements for your situation.

Goal Misalignments

Goal misalignments are the cause of disappointment and discouragement during language learning. That's not good, so let's talk about how to prevent these misalignments to keep you on track to reach your English goals. There are two main types of goal misalignments.

1. The Goal is Misaligned with Expectations

We talked about this a bit in the How Long Does It Take to Learn English lesson. When we're learning a new language, we often have inaccurate expectations for how long it will take to become fluent.

The table on that page shows how long it takes native speakers of different languages to learn English. But what does "learn" mean? What CEFR level is that? I would say those durations take you to the C1-C2 level. You'd have advanced English at that point.

But if you don't need C-level abilities for your specific goal, then good news! You will reach your goal even faster.

It's hard to say how long it will take to reach each CEFR level, but I can give you some estimations. Based on my experience as a language learner and teacher, here’s roughly how long it takes to reach each level as a percentage of your total study time:

• A1 - 5%
• A2 - 10%
• B1 - 20%
• B2 - 30%
• C1 - 20%
• C2 - 15%

Using the table from How Long Does It Take to Learn English, find your total duration. Then, multiply that number by the percentages to see how long it will take you to reach each level.

For example, it takes Korean speakers approximately 264 weeks to learn English at the C1-C2 level. So if your goal only requires B2, we can do a little math...

5% + 10% + 20% + 30% = 65%

65% x 264 = 171.6 weeks to reach B2

If some of your skill requirements are different, like A2 for Reading and B2 for listening, you'll use the highest requirement (B2 in this case) to determine durations.

2. The Goal is Misaligned with Desires

Many people choose a goal, but the goal doesn't match what they really want out of the language. When I was studying French, I could have said, "I want to visit France, so I choose the Traveler persona", which has A2 requirements. But really, I wanted to see if I could live in France permanently! I wanted to see if the culture was a good match for me. I wanted to know if I could make friends there, and the Friend persona requires greater skill levels; at least B1-B2 for every skill!

If I had tricked myself into believing that I only needed beginner-level French, I would have stopped studying earlier. My French wouldn't have been good enough to form relationships with my French friends.

So it's important to have a clear idea of the level that you really need.

Maybe you want to study at a university in America, but then what? Will you want to get a job here after you graduate? If so, you might need a better Speaking level.

On the other hand, maybe you think you want to become fluent in English, but really, you only plan on using it to understand English memes online. In that case, you could consider yourself a Reader persona. You won't need to spend time practicing Listening and Speaking if you just want to understand memes!

By being honest with yourself about your reasons for wanting to learn English, you can spend the right amount of time studying the language.

Make It Feel Real

We've talked about choosing a persona, understanding the CEFR level requirements, aligning your expectations to your goal, and aligning your goal to your true desires.

You should now have a really strong understanding of your goal. It's not an ambiguous thing like "I want to work in America" anymore. You know exactly what is required and how long it will take.

Now it's time to make the goal real.

I want you to write down your goal, either digitally or on a piece of paper that you'll be able to see often.

You can use this formula:

When you start to lose motivation, look back at your written goal and answer the following questions to remember why you started learning English in the first place:

• What does your goal mean? Pretend to explain it to someone.
• What will your life look like after you reach your English goal?
• What will you be able to do that you can't do right now?
• What emotions will you feel?

Conclusion

Having a solid, concrete goal gives you a North Star; something to guide your journey as you learn English. It tells you what to focus on—where to spend your study time—as well as giving you your strongest source of motivation to keep making progress. It's a powerful tool.

In the next lesson, we're going to talk about some basic English grammar! Regardless of the persona that you've chosen for yourself, you'll need to understand the basics of grammar. We're just going to be creating some empty folders for grammar topics so you can read through this stuff quickly. Familiarize, don't memorize.