یاد بگیرید برای انگلیسی چگونه اهداف هوشمندانه ایجاد کنید

This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 29: Deep Thoughts Thursday.

Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you’ll finally get real, native English conversation. Now here are your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer’ and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,’ coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

In today’s episode, you’re gonna (going to) learn how to start taking action with your English today and how to set goals that are SMART. So put your ears into English!

Hey Lindsay. What’s up?

Hey Gabby.

So today we have a pretty awesome quote. (Um) I was wondering if you would share that one.

Yes.

From (uh) Pablo Picasso.

Oh yes. So did he really say this? I don’t know, but we’re assuming he did.

Okay. “Action is the foundational key to all success.”

Yeah. I love it. So you were talking about (um) just taking little steps to move toward your goal.

Yeah. I feel like it’s really easy to get stuck in your head, right? Planning- you have a goal. You want to become fluent in English. You want to pass the TOEFL exam. It’s very easy to start planning for that. How am I going to pass the exam? But what you really should do is just take one small action each day.

Yeah. I totally agree. (Um) I have worked with students before who think about studying all the time and they think about all these things they should be doing and so it feels like they’re spending a lot of time on learning English, but they’re actually not doing anything and so they get frustrated when their English skills don’t improve or their test scores don’t go up.

So, yeah, it is interesting because it’s like you spend all that time thinking about the topic. So you think you should be improving, but it’s all about actually doing those tasks that can improve your skills.

And that time that you spend thinking is energy wasted.

Exactly.

Isn’t it?

Exactly.

(Huh). Okay. So what is that key action that you’re going to take starting today or starting tomorrow? Think about that and then take the action.

Right. Well, and if you have a big goal (like) (um) ‘get 100 on the TOEFL.’ (You know) it’s good to break that down into smaller steps, (um), or especially if you have a really general goal like ‘be fluent in English.’ It’s a really big, general goal that needs to broken down. And (um) there’s something called a SMART goal, which is – okay it’s an acronym so (S) - specific, (M) - measurable, (A) - achievable, (R) - reasonable, and (T) - timely. So (um) think about if your goal is all these things and (um) how you can break it down into the smallest little action possible because then it’s easier to take action if you’re just doing something small.

All right. Sounds like great advice. Interesting.

Thanks.

Okay. So thanks for hanging out with us today.

Thank you. We’ll see you next week for a ‘Meeting Monday.’ We’re talking about New Years in New York City.

See you then!

Okay. So (you know), I’ve actually talked with 30 different students over the past few months and a lot of the students that I’ve spoken with have said that they’re at an intermediate level or high intermediate level and they just can’t seem to find a way to move beyond that intermediate level, to move to the advanced level.

And this is what we wanna (want to) help you guys with, but if you really wanna (want to) move to that level, it’s gonna (going to) require a little bit more of a commitment, okay. So go for the premium transcripts that we have available for you and in order to get those, you need to go to www.allearsenglish.com/conversations. So check it out.

Thanks for listening to the All Ears English Podcast. We’re here to help you learn English and you can help us by leaving a five star review on iTunes.

See you next time.