Chapter 5 – Metacognition and Metacognitive Strategies
SMART Goals
Addy Orsi; Bibi Halima; and Keli Yerian
Preview Questions
- What is a SMART goal?
- What is the difference between indirect and direct learning strategies?
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?
What are SMART goals?
A metacognitive strategy that can help us focus on the process and make our goals work for us is turning them into SMART goals. ‘SMART’ stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (University of California SMART goals: A How to Guide [PDF]). 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 some part of our goal to not go according to plan. In that situation, we adjust to what would work better.
Does this remind of anything? Remember the previous section. What level of metacognitive learning is this? If you said ‘Reflective’, that’s right! SMART goals help us to reach a reflective level of learning. Let’s follow along with Addy in the video as they show their process of making SMART goal for their own language learning. Notice the five characteristics that makes a goal SMART.
Addy debriefs these 5 characteristics more below.
Specific
Keeping our task specific keeps our end result of the goal clear and focused.
In the example video, rather than generally 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.
Measurable
We are able to track our progress when the goal is measurable. This makes it much easier to know what we have to complete and when it will be completed.
If I simply put that I will watch a kid’s show, it is unclear how long I expect to watch it. Will I watch five minutes of one episode? Will I watch 15 episodes in full? By stating I will watch two 20-minute long episodes, I have a clear understanding how how much I will be watching. Additionally, once I have finished watching two episodes, I will know that I have completed this task.
Achievable
What is achievable 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. In my case, two episodes seems realistic in my life as a busy student. Also, Pocoyo is a show that has an accessible level of language for my current listening proficiency, so this choice will be achievable for me.
Relevant
We need to be sure our plan is relevant to our end goal and our own interests.
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. Also, I love the show Pocoyo, which makes it relevant to my own interests.
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 I did a shorter amount of time, I may not see any improvements, and if I did longer, it may feel too repetitive and ineffective. If I didn’t specify, I could be watching a kid’s show for much longer than necessary or not long enough.
More Smart Goal Examples in Language Learning
Here are some other SMART goals students in our LING 144 class have used to support their own language learning. Notice that they are very diverse and individualized, but still include the five characteristics listed above.
Example SMART Goals for Language Learning
- I will hold a conversation with a French speaker through Conversifi by Sunday night. Before that, I will talk to myself out loud about the topic to get more comfortable with speaking, without the interference of speaking anxiety.
- I will talk with my mom in Spanish (who speaks Spanish) once every two days this week to re-familiarize myself with the language, and check in with her to see where I am improving. I will ask clarifying questions in Spanish when I need to.
- I will teach my roommate 3-4 everyday ASL signs each day this week and repeat them back anytime the subject or topic is brought up in conversation.
- Each day this week I will look up the food items I eat in Arabic, so by the end of the week I will have learned at least 15 new food words in Arabic. I will repeat these words when I eat those items.
- I will record 5-minute video diaries every week this term in order to track my progress with presentational Japanese. I will review my diaries at the end of the term.
- By Saturday, I will write a fictional blog post in Swahili that is a paragraph in length, as if I was recounting when I went to a restaurant with my friend. I will first write the post using the words that I know, then look up any words I need after I’m finished.
- I will read two novice-level Spanish short stories generated by AI by Sunday night. If I don’t understand at least 90% of the words, I will ask AI to revise the level down. I will highlight the words I don’t know as I read and try to guess them from context. Only after I read will I look up any words that seem critical for me to know, then I will read again.
- I will read an article from a news site in French that is on a topic that I know about and interests me (the elections) and is above my intermediate-high level in order to practice learning new words in context.
- I will read a recipe in Spanish for a Mexican dish and attempt to make it this week with some help from the internet to make sure I understand correctly.
- I will send an email to my Spanish teacher tomorrow requesting an office hours appointment, using Spanish. Before I send it, I will ask my friend who is a more advanced learner to double-check that I am using polite greetings and pragmatic language.
Your Turn!
After looking at these examples, take a moment to think about what next steps you would like to take in your language learning journey. Maybe you want to speak up more often in class. Maybe you want to understand more of a famous movie. Maybe you want to be able to learn some new vocabulary words in context. How can you make these steps more focused and realistic? In other words, how can you make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound?
Recall and Reflect
Now think of a time you tried to achieve a language learning goal in the past. How did it go? If it went well, was it because some or all of the goal was SMART? If it didn’t go well, was it because it was missing any of these characteristics?
References
University of California. (2019). SMART goals: A how to guide. Retrieved June 20, 2024, from https://www.ucop.edu/local-human-resources/_files/performance-appraisal/How%20to%20write%20SMART%20Goals%20v2.pdf
Media Attributions
The original video on this page © Addy Orsi is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution NonCommercial) license.