چرا شما نباید از اهداف انگلیسی خود تا زمان تحقق آنها دور شوید

This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 53: Deep Thoughts Thursday, “Why You Must Overshoot Your English Goals to Achieve Them.”

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 this episode, you will get the inspiration you need to go the extra mile.

Okay. Gabby we are here, ready to record, and how are you feeling today?

I’m feeling awesome!

Excellent. Very glad to hear it.

Yeah.

And you’ve brought us an awesome quote today Gabby. So do you wanna (want to) share it for us?

Yes, I would like to share it. “If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it. Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who is this by, after all?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Okay. This is a meaty quote. This is, there’s a lot in here.

Yeah, and first of all maybe we should break it down for modern English because this quote is using an old style of English that if you would hit the mark, it actually means, (you know), if you want to hit the mark or if you want to achieve your goal.

Right. So don’t get confused with the conditional here.

Yeah, old style.

‘Cause (because) that’s a confusing thing for students. So it’s if you want to achieve – hit the mark or–

Yeah.

get what you’re trying to get.

Yeah, yeah. if you, if you want to get something, you should aim or you should try to do something that’s even more challenging because every arrow, right, when you shoot an arrow it goes up, but then it comes down a little bit before it hits your target, so the gravity of the earth pulls it down or, (I mean), what would be (like) a comparison, (like) maybe reality might bring you down a bit or maybe negative people–

Yeah.

or what else could bring you down. I don’t know.

I’m just thinking about and yeah, time, because usually when I set a goal, if something has to be done by a certain time, I’ll estimate that date and then I’ll add wiggle room, (you know), of (an) extra, (like), five days because I know it’s gonna (going to) take longer than I estimate.

Aiming a little above it.

That’s excellent. Or maybe if you want to (um), for example, if you want to (like) run a marathon, just for example, right, and you should be running, you know, ten miles a day, I don’t know, but maybe you would actually push yourself to run twelve miles a day.

Yeah. That’s a great one.

And then if you end up running ten a day, well, that’s good too.

That’s pretty great because that means you have actually achieved your goal.

Yeah, or with English. I mean maybe your goal is to read a book. So maybe you think it would be easy to read five pages a day, but instead of choosing the easy way, push yourself. Aim a little bit above that and say no, I’m going to read twenty pages a day.

Yeah, that sounds great.

And then you read your book faster than you thought.

So keep this in mind guys when you go ahead and set your goals, (you know), for the, for the year. (You know) we’re still in, (you know), (the) beginning of 2014–

Yeah.

so think about overshooting your goals.

And just to tie this together with our episode from yesterday, our ‘Wisdom Wednesday’ about what to do when you just can’t go any further with English, this is a strategy that you can use, (you know), challenge yourself with more, more challenging ways of learning English. So make a bigger, greater goal than you had planned and that’s a good way to push yourself beyond that wall.

Excellent.

Gabby what was that sound on your computer?

I just got an email from All Ears English!

Really. Oh, that sounds awesome.

Oh it’s so awesome. I can’t believe they wrote to me.

Oh my god and so what did they say?

they said (like) they have (like) tips and they have a free e-book for me… Lindsay:

Oh, that sounds so cool.

and they have a question for me too. They wanna (want to) know what I think.

Oh my god. That sounds awesome. How can I get that?

You can get on the All Ears English email list at allearsenglish.com.

Yeah. So guys we’re joking around here, but we just wanna (want to) let you know– Gabby:

I wasn’t joking.

Oh, you weren’t joking? I was joking. So we just want to let you know that you should go ahead and get on our email list because we’re gonna be having some great conversations with people on the list over the next few weeks. We’ve got something exciting coming out.

Yeah and we’ve already been having great conversations. I wanna thank you guys if you already are on the email list and thank you especially if you’ve been responding to our questions ‘cause (because) we love having that conversation with you. So if you’re not in the conversation, you can still join it. Come over to allearsenglish.com and join our email list.

See ya’ (you) there.

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See you next time!