Reflecting On Our Call Experience

In our final meeting, we'll start reflecting on our CALL language learning journey and thinking about what we might discuss in our May 6th roundtable discussion/workshop. Elissa has emailed you a reflection sheet as well as sample reflection responses to help guide you in this process.

Learning and goals

Howard's explanation of what is meant by 'goal-setting' at the meeting last week helped me to recognize how I do indeed set goals. As he noted, the first few times I went on-line the goal was to find and familiarize myself with what's out there. Setting language goals is very frustrating if our resources don't supply what we need to meet our goals. Hence, at the beginning I basically allowed the program that I was working with to set the goal. Now that I've become familiar with a few programs, and as I become more aware of the language itself and my strengths and weaknesses, I find myself coming to the computer with a more specific goal in mind. For example, I had wanted to practice listening to something above my level, and in the process, to try strategies for making difficult material easier. I've been able to do that with Lingq. When I try to do the writing exercises for Spanishl2, I'm quickly made aware of grammar and vocabulary needs. The Lingq flashcards are helpful for vocabulary. I googled "spanish grammar review" and found a website - www.studyspanish.com - where I can access a lesson on a specific grammar point. I'm more motivated to continue when I can meet some of my goals, and each 'lesson' raises new points of interest to pursue.

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.