(Re)moving targets - Do we always need to set ourselves learning goals?

At this time of year, many of us are thinking about making (or, God forbid, breaking) our new years’ resolutions. Language learners are no exception and early January typically sees a stampede of new students, eager to learn a language or improve their skills.

I’ve always believed in the importance of objectives to achieving success. The need for clear, specific goals was drummed into me throughout my career. One of my bosses would repeat, mantra-like, “what gets measured gets done”. The value of goals has stuck with me and, now as a teacher, I try to help my students frame their learning objectives to produce measurable improvement. But does the goal become a millstone, detracting from the enjoyment of the activity? Many of my students are simply looking to practice their spoken English. For them the one hour that we spend together is an opportunity to have a 1-2-1 conversation in a safe space. The session is structured, with appropriate discussion topics (one of which is “new year’s resolutions”) and they are able to spend a (relatively) relaxed 60 minutes honing their English skills. Why add objectives? If learning is to be fun, do we sometimes need to remove the hard metrics? I’m certain my students would agree that they are learning even though we can’t easily measure their progress. We simply have a good conversation, explore some new vocabulary, identify challenging grammar and work on pronunciation.

Given the trials of the last two years and the impact of COVID on our mental wellbeing shouldn't we aim to be kinder to ourselves? Maybe our goal for 2022 should simply be to enjoy what we’re doing?