How to set Language Goals in 2024 [that you’ll actually achieve and feel good about]
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Table of Contents
The types of goals to avoid
Set goals like this = guaranteed success
Stop setting 1-year goals!
How do you know it’s the right goal for you?
Not having a goal is sometimes the best thing
Conclusion
The beginning of the year is a time when we like to set new goals for the coming year.
Setting ambitious New Year’s resolutions with every intention of fulfilling them.
Only to fall off the wagon a month later.
Wouldn’t it be great if a year from now you would instead of feeling disappointed feel happy and proud of yourself?
Of what you achieved this past year.
The best predictor of whether you’ll succeed is how you set goals.
We often do it wrong.
Let’s talk about how you can not only set goals you feel good about, but ones you can achieve.
Goals that will for sure bring you closer to fluency in your target language.
There are many pitfalls when it comes to setting goals.
Which I’ll show you how to avoid.
We will also talk about different types of goals.
So you can choose works works best for you and your current life situation.
The types of goals to avoid
One of the biggest mistakes is setting completely unrealistic goals.
(I’ve done it more times than I can count!)
We often do this when we’re in the middle of our excitement.
We set these super ambitious goals based on the emotion of the moment.
Only to fail them.
It doesn’t mean that excitement is bad.
It’s what gets us started in the first place.
It’s like falling in love.
You have all this magnetic pull towards learning this new language.
But just like the initial romance stages of a relationship, it doesn’t last.
What types of goals should you avoid?
Here’s a good example:
“Reach fluency in German in 2024!”
Why is this a bad goal?
Because it’s too vague.
The ever-elusive “fluency” is quite hard to define.
Plus:
It doesn’t tell you what to do to reach fluency (we will talk about that in a bit).
Another type of goal to avoid is setting the bar way too high from the beginning:
“I’ll learn Brazilian Portuguese for two hours every day!”
Unless you’re a highly disciplined person, chances are you’ll do this for a few days and then give up and quit.
I suggest to start smaller and then eventually build up to 2 hours.
Set goals like this = guaranteed success
Goals should be consistent actions that are measurable.
You should be able to easily…
…know when you’ve achieved it.
…measure where you are every step of the way to achieving it.
The 2nd one is especially helpful when discouragement sets in.
When you feel discouraged it’s so important to be able to clearly see:
“I’ve come this far, I only have this far left to go.”
That way you’re encouraged to keep going. Even when motivation is low and tiredness or boredom kicks in.
While it’s fine to have the overall goal of “reaching fluency” in a language, it needs to be broken down into small steps that you can achieve on a daily basis.
Set goals that are based on things you can control. Such as time spent. Rather than a certain level of proficiency.
What’s a measurable goal that you can control?
Here’s one:
“Learn Spanish for 30 minutes every day.”
However, I would make it even more concrete:
“Listen to Spanish for 30 minutes every day.”
That way you’re specifying a certain activity in learning the language.
Instead of just “learning Spanish”, which might make you jump between different things (and be less effective). Plus, you’d have to spend time every day thinking of:
“What do I do today?”
Which is a time waste and makes it harder for you to get started.
By listening to Spanish for 30 minutes a day you should get to around 182 or so hours of listening in a year.
That’s not enough to reach fluency, but it’s a great start.
There are several tools that can help you keep track of, not only how much time you’ve spent that day, but in total (I’ll share some of the best ones in a bit).
Seeing where your actions have taken you so far will motivate you to keep going.
It’s a very important part of sticking to your goals.
What activites should your goals be focused on?
I always suggest to focus on input as the main language learning activity.
In other words:
Listening and reading.
It’s what, without a shadow of a doubt, is going to move the needle most when it comes to your language level.
You’re probably learning a language to be able to speak it with other people.
And that fact is that we can only say what we’re able to understand.
That’s why the priority should always be on input and understanding the language first.
I would split listening and reading into two separate goals, for example:
“Listen to Spanish 30 for minutes”
And:
“Read 500 words in LingQ every day.”
Or:
“Read for 10 mins every day”.
Listening goals you can typically set higher than reading goals.
Because they are much easier to get done since you can do it while doing other things (commuting, cooking, cleaning, etc.)
I prefer doing a combination of both reading and listening.
Because reading makes listening even easier. Reading primes your listening by giving you a level of familiarity with the vocabulary.
(You’re often just learning to recognize words by listening that you’ve already read. Plus, reading is just a great activity in general since it gives you richer language. And there are so many interesting books to read and learn from).
If you were to only pick one of these two activities then go with listening.
It’s by far the most important language skill.
Lingopie (← get up to 73% off through Lingtuitive) is a great way to get listening in as it measures the time you have spent watching (listening). It uses a super fun Netflix binge-watching approach to language learning by watching different TV shows (it even integrates with Netflix).
LingQ also measures the minutes you’ve listened and breaks it down for each day. It also measures how many words you’ve read that day and overall. As well as keeping track of how many words you know. It’s one of the best language learning tools out there for tracking your goals and progress.
If you’re learning Spanish, then Dreaming Spanish has by far the best time-measuring system for listening (it’s free to sign up). My blog post Everything You Need to Know about Dreaming Spanish has more details on why it’s so good and how to use it.
“What about speaking? I’m an extrovert!”
Some of you need that face-to-face interaction with a human to feel motivated.
For you, I would set a goal of 1 (or more) lesson each week with a language tutor (for 30 or 60 minutes. I personally prefer 60 minutes.).
It’s a goal that is very easy to measure, as the goal is just to show up to the lesson each week.
Language lessons that are focused on conversation practice are also an amazing source of input. Because you will chat about topics that are highly relevant to your own life and learn vocabulary that are especially useful for you.
This is even more valuable when you record the lessons. Just make sure to ask the tutor for permission first!
It’s very motivating to keep learning during the week when you know you have a lesson booked.
It keeps you accountable and on track.
I recommend booking lessons on LanguaTalk. They are the best and most user-friendly platform for taking 1-on-1 language lessons The quality of the tutors is very high.
You can very easily book a free 30-minute trial lesson with many of the tutors (without even having to enter any credit card details).
For less common languages, iTalki is a good option.
“Goals should be consistent actions that are measurable.” - Christian Tapper
If you're starting a language from scratch
If you’re just starting a new language, Pimsleur is a good place to start.
The lessons are 30 minutes long, so your goal could be to do one Pimsleur lesson each day.
For the next 30, 60, or 90 days, for example.
That way you’re also not measuring your ability, but something you can actually control.
Some days you’ll feel more focused. Some days less. But the important thing is just that you show up and do them.
That takes the pressure off to perform in any kind of way.
Pimsleur lessons are very easy to do and take on the road since they are completely audio-based.
(See my post How to use Pimsleur for Best Results [and what to avoid at all costs] for more on Pimsleur)
Another goal you can have is to “go through x course in 90 days”.
If you’re looking for a very comprehensive, having all-your-bases-covered, kind of course then I recommend:
Storylearning’s Uncovered Courses (← click to start a 7-day free trial)
These are great for those of you who want a very thorough learning experience. One that will show you all the tools you need to learn a language from scratch.
It’s also great for those of you who want that interaction with others, as you’ll have access to a community of other learners who are going through the same course.
(To find out more, check out my comprehensive review of Spanish Uncovered)
Want to know how to learn a new language intuitively? Download my guide “Intuitive Language Secrets (currently available for free):
Stop setting 1-year goals!
One of the biggest mistakes is setting goals for an entire year.
That’s too long of a time frame.
A lot can and will happen during the course of a year.
Circumstances and seasons of life change.
It’s very difficult to predict what will happen even a few months from now (even though we’d like to think that we can).
So what I suggest is:
Set a goal for max 90 days.
At the end of 90 days, evaluate it.
You can then decide if you want to stick with the same goals or modify them.
Once you get used to a certain routine it’s easier to increase it.
If you’re just starting out, 30 minutes per day might be too big of a challenge.
If that’s the case, do 15 mins.
I guarantee that those 15 minutes will feel super easy in one or two months.
At that point, it makes more sense to increase the goal (if you want to see faster progress).
Goals according to your season
There’s something to be said for going with the ebb and flow of different seasons.
If you’re really going after it for the next 90 days, you might want to take it a bit more chill for a month or two afterward.
Feel it out to see what you need and are capable of in that particular season.
It’s important to rest.
Nobody can go at full speed at all times (at least not without burning out).
Just make sure you don’t completely abandon your language learning.
Just modify your goals to go at a more leisurely, although still consistent, pace. Then when it’s time to take it up a notch, it’s much easier to do.
Because you already have the daily habit of learning a language in place.
Backtrack from your big goal
My Spanish goal for last year wasn’t something I came up with until more than halfway through the year.
(Another reason why it’s good to not try to set 1-year goals).
I was just thinking:
“It would be nice to hit 20,000 known words on LingQ in Spanish before I hit my 2-year learning mark”.
Just to have something concrete to go after before I hit 2 years of learning Spanish.
So I made this into a goal that could be measured every single day.
Here’s what I did:
I took the words that I already knew (which was something like 14,000 or so at the time. LingQ keeps track of these.).
I then took the words I wanted to reach (20,000) and subtracted them with 14,000 = 6,000 words.
I then took the number of days that were left until my 2-year Spanish learning anniversary and divided them with 6,000 (Which ended up being 21,67899 or something like that).
So I just rounded up to the closest number upwards which was 22.
22 was then the number of words I needed to add to learn (add to “known words” in LingQ) every single day.
I knew this would be very doable since I could easily reach this number in 15-20 minutes of reading every day (when you’ve been reading for a while, the speed of learning new words increases rapidly).
Knowing 20,000 words doesn’t necessarily tell you what level you’re at.
But it’s like a mechanical rabbit to chase after to motivate you.
It helps to focus on something smaller, as you’re going towards your big goal.
Be flexible
There’s no failure whatsoever in modifying your goals mid-trip.
In fact, it might be a wise thing to do.
I noticed about a month or so ago that my Spanish reading goal (that I just told you about) was causing me stress.
Trying to hit 22 known words in Spanish every day started to feel like a chore (after all, I’m learning 2 other languages at the same time).
I had been reading the same book for a while. And as so often happens, the amount of new vocabulary that shows up the farther into the book you get - is a lot less.
I needed to read more than I felt comfortable with on some days to reach those 22 words.
So I decided to set my goal of reading 1,000 words per day instead.
Which was much more predictable since it would take around the same time each day to read a certain amount of words.
This removed my stress.
(Plus, I was already well on my way to hitting my goal in advance, so I knew I would get there anyway.)
Your goal should be challenging for you, but it shouldn’t cause you stress every day.
So if you’re experiencing that:
Modify it and tweak it just a little.
And by the same token, if it’s too easy, it might be time to increase the goal just a bit to challenge yourself.
How do you know it’s the right goal for you?
The right goal should feel doable but also challenging.
It’s really important to start small.
I cannot emphasize that enough.
But.
It’s also good to push ourselves just a little bit outside our comfort zone.
It needs to be at that sweet spot. Where it’s not so easy to where it’s boring and progress is too slow. But also not so difficult that it causes frustration and disappointment.
To figure out exactly where that is for you comes with experience.
The best way to know if it’s the right goal for you is to just “do it”.
Set a goal and try it.
See how it works for you.
Get started with something that you think you’re going to be able to do every day (or 5 days a week or whatever you decide), but that will also push you just a little bit.
Don’t overthink it.
Just get started and rather adjust things along the way when you need to.
Does it feel a bit too much?
Lower the goal.
Not learning as fast as you’d want to?
Increase the goal and time spent with the language.
Not having a goal is sometimes the best thing
Sometimes you just start learning something casually and then it develops into something more than you even thought.
This is exactly what happened for me with Spanish.
I didn’t really have a big goal at all.
I just wanted to learn as much as I could in two weeks before we went to Spain.
That was my only goal.
After spending time in the country and with the culture and language I just started enjoying it more and more.
So I decided to stick with it.
Here I am 2 years later at a level in the language where I can have meaningful conversations with native speakers (although still struggling with expressing myself well).
Having a goal for right now and the immediate future is much more important than having a big goal.
Many people have had a big goal for years without having even gotten started.
Because it feels too overwhelming.
By just focusing on the now and ignoring that big looming goal of being fluent, you will find that it will take you farther than you think!
Conclusion
There are many ways of setting language learning goals that will ensure your success.
Effective goals need to:
Feel exciting
Be easily measurable
Challenging
Be in line with the future that you want to create (i.e. the big goal you want to reach)
Start small and increase the goals when you feel ready to do so.
Set shorter-term goals and make little mini challenges for 30-90 days, instead of a full year.
Keep them flexible and adjust as you go, when needed.
But don’t let them go too easily.
The most important thing is to just get started.
See how it goes.
Modify things along the way.
A year goes by quickly.
I guarantee you won’t regret taking action and getting started.
What are your language learning goals for the next few months? Let me know in the comments!
