Teacher Reboot Camp

Goal-Setting with English Language Learners

Part of any curriculum should involve goal-setting. Ideally goal-setting should occur at the beginning of the year and be a collaborative effort between students and teachers. Each year, I look for a better approach to getting students to really ponder their language learning goals. I finally came up with a lesson I enjoyed that you could use in January!

Student Motivation

Before students begin goal-setting, they should reflect upon their reasons for learning English. I used to just simply ask students to discuss their reasons for learning English. However, this time I introduced the topic by showing Lindsay Clandfield’s video! My students really enjoyed listening to the reasons why different learners feel learning English is important. The video is extremely useful in that students from various countries with different accents were interviewed. Additionally, the video includes word art of the responses so that students can read the responses while listening to them! My adult students and I really enjoyed the authenticity of the interviews, which is rare to find.

After watching the video, I asked each of my students to tell me which reason they thought was the most important for them to learn English. We had a round table discussion and the students were very responsive to the video. I was excited to see so much discussion on the first day with a pre-intermediate group of adult learners.

Ways to Study

Successful student goal-setting must translate into action. Therefore, I had the students work in pairs and read Berni Wall’s article, An A to Z of Effective Language Practice. The student pairs chose 5 of 26 tips to discuss. Each pair chose 2 language practicing activities they would most likely do or have accomplished. Each pair also chose 2 activities they could not picture themselves doing. Finally, they chose a tip they did not understand. Once again we had a very interactive discussion with each of the student pairs sharing their responses with the other student pairs. The least likely activity was karaoke. Most students admitted they were too shy to sing karaoke. Most decided they would practice their vocabulary, categorized under words.

Goal-setting Statements

The last step of the lesson was having students work on their goal statements. However, I first asked each student how to accomplish the chosen practice. For example, one student committed to increasing their vocabulary by doing word searches at least two times a week then looking up the words in a dictionary. This student’s goal statement looked like this:

I will improve my English vocabulary by doing word searches in the morning at least two times a week and writing down the definitions.

Another student chose to increase their vocabulary by reading an English newspaper and another by reading English news online. Others committed to singing English songs while driving and a few decided to listen to podcasts. I stressed to the students that I wanted them to establish manageable goals that fit in with their schedule. So far the students have stayed dedicated to their goals!

Challenge:

Have your students create learning goals. First, have them reflect on why learning the material is important. Then have the students collaborate in determining what actions they can take to accomplish the goal. Finally, have the students write down the goals and commit themselves to following through with these goals!

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Tags: EFL, English, ESL, ESOL, goal-setting, TEFL