More Good and Bad Examples of SMART Goals

Using the Get Speaking English Accountability Group

In the previous article, I mentioned how passing an exam was not a good SMART goal. This is because we never want to set goals that other people have power over. 

A bad example of a goal: 

"I'm going to pass the B2 First exam." - This is a bad goal because you are unable to control the outcome of your exam.

Setting a better goal:

A better example of this goal would be something you have 100% control over. For example: "I'm going to spend one month preparing for the B2 First Exam" is a bit better because you have complete control over whether you study or not.

We can make it even better though, by breaking down the goal into smaller, achievable goals, or SMART goals. For example, this exam tests 4 skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), so you should work on improving those skills, especially in areas where you struggle. You should also focus on improving your grammar and vocabulary as needed.

Therefore, we can break this big task down into smaller sub-tasks to give us a better idea of specific things to do while studying. For example:

• I'm going to spend 20 minutes a day reviewing vocabulary flashcards

• I'm going to have one conversation a week with a language partner. If I cannot find a partner, I will read out loud and at the end of every paragraph, I will summarize what I read out loud.

• I'm going to take lessons twice a week with a language tutor or teacher to work on my grammar and writing.

• I'm going to listen to an English podcast during my morning commute.

• I'm going to spend 20 minutes, 3 times a week working on my listening skills. During that time, I'll listen to something, answer questions about it, and then review the transcript so I can learn from my mistakes

All of these ideas are better because they are specific (there's no question about what you'll do) and you have complete control over whether or not you do them. They also are all activities relevant to improving English for an exam.

Remember, you cannot control how successful you might be at these things - some people need more time to improve listening or writing, for example. How successful we are at learning new things depends on our brains, and we cannot control how well we process and retain new information. However, we can control how often we show up and work towards our goals.

For more ideas of other tasks which could make good SMART goals, see this post here: SMART Goals: More Ideas.

How to get involved

To make this happen, I've made a new section of the Get Speaking English Discord server. Information about how to join is shared in the closed Telegram groups. You can also email me for a link at axl@getspeakingenglish.com .

If you think this sounds like a great initiative, consider becoming a supporter or buying me a coffee to help out.