Learning Strategies for Success

Now, what is a SMART goal?

From setting New Year’s resolutions to hoping for an A in a class, we make goals for ourselves with little planning all the time. In the beginning, we may feel motivated to achieve it but overwhelmed with where to start. As time passes, our spontaneity leaves us unsure of what comes next and how to proceed. Does this sound familiar?

A strategy that can help us focus on the process and make our goals work for us is making SMART goals. “The SMART in SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound,”(Boogaard). SMART goals have us consider what exactly we want to achieve in the end and how we will achieve it. Even after we set the goal, we continue to reflect on our final result and the measures we are taking. It is perfectly normal for a piece of our goal to not go according to plan. In that situation, we adjust to what would work better.

When it comes to SMART goals, you must keep the five characteristics in mind:

1. Specific

Keeping our task specific keeps our end result of the goal clear and focused.

In the example video, rather than saying “I want to improve my Spanish,” the goal was made specific by expressing what aspects I wanted to improve like listening skills, following the storyline, and identifying keywords. Without the clarification, the goal is too broad and vague.

2. Measurable

We are able to track our progress when the goal is measurable. It is much easier to know what we have to complete and when it will be completed.

If we simply put that we will watch a kid’s show, it is unclear how long we expect to watch the kid’s show. Will we watch five minutes of one episode? Will we watch 15 episodes in full? By stating we will watch two 20-minute long episodes, we have a clear understanding how how much we will be watching. Additionally, once we have finished watching two episodes, we know that we have completed this task.

3. Achievable

Now, what is achievable in the SMART acronym varies from person to person. What is achievable for you?

One person may only be able to watch one episode each day, some may be able to watch three. The complexity of the speech could be simple to one person based on their previous experience, but it could be too far above another person’s understanding.

4. Relevant

We need to be sure our plan is relevant to our end goal.

Watching and listening to something in Spanish at our level will help us practice and improve our listening skills. It would not make sense to watch it in English with Spanish subtitles since we are not listening to anything in Spanish in that case.

5. Time-bound

For time-bound, we make it even more specific and give it a time frame. We want to think about how long we will need to do this task to achieve our goal. It also allows a timeline for ourselves.

For example, “I will watch two episodes every day for two weeks.” If we did a shorter amount of time, we may not see any improvements, and if we did longer, it may feel too repetitive and ineffective. If we didn’t specify, we could be watching a kid’s show for much longer than necessary or not long enough.