Page 47 - How to Learn Smarter and Help Yourself to a New Language Faster!

Step 2: Set Achievable Goals

It is easy to get side-tracked and feel uninspired when learning a new language.
It is important to have a clear set of feasible goals that one must strive to meet to
maintain interest in learning and avoid losing focus. Avoid setting ambiguous
goals that fail to produce tangible results. More often than not, these types of
goals only end up demotivating a learner because they do not have a specific end
target in sight. This leads a person to feel as though they've failed and discourage
them to keep trying. Goals like "be fluent" or "be able to carry on a conversation
with a native" are examples of these. How fluent is fluent enough? What kind of
conversation does this person want to have? If questions like these arise, then
most likely the goal is not achievable. An example of a solid objective to have
would be something like "to be able to recite the Hail Mary prayer in Spanish".
Another one is "to be able to write my full name and address in the Korean
hangeul alphabet". These have concrete outputs and are easy to perform and
thus, they will motivate a learner to achieve them.