My Spanish learning goals

In my previous post, I shared some ideas on setting language goals and building a study routine, and after learning from all of those videos, it is time for me to set my own goals.
My idea is to have an iterative approach, where once a month, I will review my progress and adjust my learning system. And for me, building this system is even more important than setting those goals because it will support me when I lack the motivation to study. More about my system in the next post, but let’s stick to the goals for now.

Time-bound

One essential thing defining SMART goals is the last T that stands from time-bound, which means we need to have a deadline for our goals.
In my case, I will set it as a six-month goal, and it will start on November 15th, 2021, and end on March 15th, 2021.

Long term goals (six months)

In six months, my goal is to interact with Spanish speakers talking only in Spanish and without using any other language such as Portuguese or English as a helper.
To make it a little bit easier to measure, I will break it down into some points:

• Hold a conversation only in Spanish with a teacher
• Feel comfortable enough to hold a conversation only in Spanish with a native
• Spend one week in a Spanish speaking country talking only in Spanish
• During this week there I want to attend a meetup and feel comfortable talking to people

To be a little bit more specific about the “hold a conversation” goal, I will mark it as done after having conversations about:
And to be even more specific, I will use the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and this way, I will know the topics that I need to learn:

1. 1. The individual
   2. Partnership
   3. Family
   4. Place of living
   5. Traveling/transport
   6. Shopping/shops
   7. Communication/keeping in contact
   8. Services
   9. Culture/entertainment
   10. Time/weather
   11. Health/illnesses

I thought about taking the DELE exam because it would be a more accurate way to measure my process, but it costs €160 for the B1 test, and I will use this money to have more classes. But anyway, the B1 level is what I want to achieve by the end of these six months.

Medium-term goals (one month)

As mentioned before, each month, I will define a goal and how I want to achieve it, and it means that I will describe a list of the apps and tools that I will use throughout the month. 
To hold myself accountable, I will write a monthly post about each of those goals.

Short term goals (one week)

Usually, I make weekly goals for my activities, and it will be the same for learning Spanish, in which I will break down the monthly goals into weekly activities.

Final thoughts

When I think about this six months goal, I must confess that it doesn’t seem challenging because Portuguese has some similarities with Spanish, but my struggle here is how to fit it into my current schedule:

• I have other personal obligations, and they are always my top priorities
• English has higher priority than Spanish now because of my work and trips (and for this reason, I am posting it in English as well)
• I have to learn things for my work
• And I am producing a podcast, which is taking much more time than I expected

When I look at all of that, right now, this six months goal seems challenging for me because I will not be able to study for more than 30min-1hour a day, but at the same time, I am pretty excited to learn Spanish, and I want to give it a try.
In the next post, I will share my goals for the first month.