Monday, April 21, 2008
More about goal-setting
I haven’t consciously been setting goals for myself each time I sit down to use the language-learning program. Maria mentioned at our last meeting that she was basically allowing the BBC program to dictate the goals to her, and I have been been approaching the whole learning experience in much the same way. Upon reflection, however, I realize that I have actually had goals, albeit subconscious ones. I am currently taking an Italian course and my main objective when using the software has been to try to understand as much of the recorded dialogues as possible. Initially, my aim was just to “test myself” to see if I could understand anything at all - just to know whether or not I was really learning anything in class. Thus, my goals have been to understand at least the gist of the conversations without having to look at the dialogues. All of the discussion about goal-setting got me to thinking about my own learning strategies, however, and I now realize that my learning strategies are much different from my teaching strategies. When I prepare a lesson for my own students, I always have clear objectives. When I study a language myself, however, I don’t always have very clear, explicit objectives. This got me to wondering how many language learners really do set those kinds of concrete goals for themselves. Am I unusual in that I do not? Do most people sit down to a lesson and say to themselves, “Today I will master the verb ‘avere’” or “This week I will learn to roll my r’s like a native?” Or is it more like, “I hope I can work through one or two lessons each week with a reasonable amount of retention?” It also makes me wonder if it might be useful to encourage students to think about their subconscious goals.
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2 comments:
When I first started the program, I, like Carol, didn't really pay much attention to articulating specific 'goals' - other than that I wanted just more exposure to the target language. A very broad goal in itself.
However, then I started to refine my goal setting and decided that I wanted to improve some specific skills - listening, vocabulary and pronunciation. This helped me to tailor my study to improve those areas. I decided to employ strategies such as turning off or covering up transcripts, repeated listenings, turning up the volume, repeating expressions aloud and writing them down to hopefully cement them in my mind.
My question is - will I remember what I've studied? A lot of this is review of language I've already studied in a class, so this should make it a little bit easier to retain, however, I'm wanting additional face to face practice. That's the benefit of using CALL activities with a class where the class follows up on what was studied in the computer lab. It also reminds me that it's important to schedule time/a debriefing in class to allow students to use some of that language they learned in the lab.
Carol raised the issue of whether to ask our students if they have goals...even if those goals are subconscious. I think that it would be an excellent idea to ask students these questions. I suspect that at least we would learn how many of them are focused on mastering aural/oral English and how many have a more academic focus for their language learning. That would give us insight into each student. I think that I will ask the students what their goals are in taking the class and see what happens. Thanks, Carol, for transferring the focus from us to the students for whom we are really doing this.
Maria
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