Goal Setting with English Learners?

Hello colleagues, Goal setting can be a strange concept to some of the English learners in our classrooms. I want to open up a discussion about how practitioners are supporting English learners to set goals and then begin working toward those goals, step-by-step. What are some of the common goals you see among the adults you work with? How do you create a map to help students to achieve their goals? How do learners see they are making progress toward their goals?

Please feel free to raise questions on this topic and to tell us about your experiences.

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, AELL CoP

Comments

Hi Susan and others,

This is an important topic.

Although I am sure there are many different effective approaches, and wisdom gained from working with a wide range of kinds and levels of students, here are a few of the things I have learned over the years:

1. For most of the students with whom I have worked the word "goal" interferes with their setting goals. Some know what "goal" means but find the idea of setting goals intimidating, mysterious, and not something they know how to do. They experience a "deer in headlights" freeze when they hear the word. For many students from other cultures setting individual goals is a foreign and distasteful concept. Setting group aims may be familiar, but setting individual goals, is culturally associated with arrogance, disrespect for others, or embarrassing self-promotion.

2. Yet, some of these learners will set goals or learning objectives if instead of being asked to "set goals" they are asked to respond to questions like these:

  • Why have you enrolled in this class? What do you hope to learn hear or to be able to do when you have finished the class?
  • What are some of the main reasons you would like to improve your English listening, speaking, reading, writing  or your computer skills?

        Provide learners with some choices to select or to order by priority, such as  learning English to:

  • Understand and talk with:
    • Neighbors,
    • People in stores,
    • Doctors or other medical people
    • My children's teachers
  • Read
    • Mail, especially to read important documents from the government, doctors, lawyers, schools, etc.
    • Email
    • Web pages
    • My children's homework in English
    • Work-related documents
  • Write to
    • My employer, supervisors or co-workers
    • My children's teachers
    • My own teachers or instructors
    • Apply for a job

3. Setting goals and learning objectives is a part of a formative assessment process that should take place over time, not just be done once at the beginning of the class or semester and then forgotten. Students should re-visit their goals weekly, monthly or quarterly. In these individual or group meetings the teacher could ask questions such as these:

  • Can you make the reasons you wrote down (a few weeks or months ago) for learning English more specific or detailed now?
  • Are there any reasons that should no longer be on your list because you now know that they are too much to try to accomplish for this (year, semester, class).
  • Before you take something off your list because it is too difficult, can you break it down into smaller parts, and could one or two parts be added to your list?
  • Can you check off for any of your reasons any of the following:
    • I have accomplished the learning I needed, at least for now
    • I am making good progress on this
    • I need help in learning this
    • I am not sure I understand what I meant when I wrote this

4.  Many of these and other good ideas have been considered by English language teachers and incorporated into specific documents or forms that students use in setting learning objectives and assessing their learning progress on them. It would be great if English language teachers engaged in this discussion could share their goal/learning objective-setting forms or perhaps even handbooks they have developed for other teachers to help them with this process. If these are already on the web, send us the web addresses for them here. If not, perhaps you could make a digital copy and upload it to a website or document storage site like Google docs, Google drive, dropbox, or other site where others could click the link you send us to see the form(s) -- and perhaps ask questions here about how you use them. If you need help in figuring out how to post these on the web, for example with Google Drive or with Dropbox, let me know.

 

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com