My 7 Goals of Language Learning

Goals in this inverted pyramid of sort of a hierarchy.

Hi, there Steve Kaufmann here today and I'm going to talk today about

goals, goals in language learning.

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So why do I want to talk about goals?

Uh, um, personally, I have the sort of general interest in learning

languages which motivates me.

So I don't really focus on any particular goals, but I, I sort of

gave the subject some thought, you know, so much of the time when we're

learning a language, we have the feeling that we're not progressing.

We're not getting anywhere.

And so I thought it, it, it is useful.

I kind of looked at what I do and, and what are the goals that

I focus on at different stages?

In my language learning, what are, what sort of is the hierarchy of goals?

And so that's what I want to talk about a bit today.

At least my hierarchy of goals, uh, what I kind of consider to be more

important at what stage in my learning.

Uh, and, uh, there are seven of them and I'm gonna talk about the

seven a day, and then I've been giving some thought to doing one uh

video on each of these seven goals.

In other words, how do we, you know, achieve those goals?

How do we use those goals to improve our, our, uh, ability in

the language that we're learning?

So, first of all, I see these seven goals as sort of an inverted pyramid,

uh, where the first one, which I will start to discuss shortly is

at the top as a broad sort of line.

Uh, and then the next one comes below it.

And so they get sort of narrower and yet they're expanding sort of

horizontally, uh, all the time.

Uh, so let me tell you what I mean.

So the first goal in language learning uh, the one that's easiest to sort

of measure and which stays with you all the time is acquiring words.

All right.

That's why we have at LingQ, we measure the words you know, uh, we also measure

phrases or we at least let you save phrases, but the key measurement is

the words you know, and, um, certainly that's what I focus on at the beginning.

Uh, and I will get into detail when I do my video on words.

But that's kind of like the initial, I often refer to the mechanical rabbit

that you're chasing this thing to try and, you know, you're running this

race and you're pursuing the rabbit.

To me the mechanical rabbit is words.

That's the number one goal.

And when you start in the language, that's what you're trying to do.

You're...

one word at a time you're learning how this language works.

So number one goal is words, acquiring words.

The second goal on this inverted pyramid, one level down is

reading, reading comprehension.

It's a lot easier to understand what you read than to understand

what you're listening to.

So as you are acquiring words, uh, you're also developing the ability

to make sense of what you read, not a hundred percent, but you're starting

to make sense of what you read.

If you're using LingQ, you're looking words up, you're adding these words

to your known words total, or to your words that you have looked

up that are in your database.

So the next sort of goal is to increase the number of words that you are reading,

something that we also measure at LingQ.

Then the third goal is listening comprehension.

Uh, it it's, I find it difficult to understand what I

listen to if I don't read it.

So that's why in my hierarchy of goals, I start with acquiring words

and I wanna see that number go up: LingQs created, you know, known words

uh, reading, number of words read.

I wanna see that go up, but at the same time, I wanna work

on my listening comprehension.

Now to some extent, the listening comprehension, the learning words, the

reading is all happening at the same time.

But in terms of a goal that I set for myself initially, I

want that word count to go up.

Second of all, I wanna read more words and I'll get into more detail

when I do a video on reading.

The third thing is to improve my listening comprehension.

So those are the first three goals, the next goal then, and you'll, you'll

sort of realize now that, because I always talk about input, acquiring

words, reading, listening, those are the top three then comes speaking.

So, uh, as a goal, you know, ultimately at the end, of course, I wanna able to speak

well, but initially, that's not my goal.

Initially my goal is comprehension: words, reading comprehension,

listening comprehension.

And if I have those, a good base in those, the speaking will be easier for me.

Then of course I wanna speak as much as I can, but if I have that solid base in

the earlier goals, the words, the reading comprehension, listening comprehension,

then the speaking is gonna come.

Now, after speaking comes grammar or usage or speaking correctly.

So in other words, I don't worry at all about how correctly I speak

at an early stage in the language.

My goals initially are input related.

Then I'm speaking, speaking with mistakes.

It doesn't matter.

Then comes a point where I want to focus in on speaking more correctly.

And this comes after struggling to speak and throwing out the words

and the phrases that I've acquired.

And now I want to work towards speaking more correctly.

And when I do my video on how to learn grammar, I will talk in more detail

about how we learn grammar and speak more correctly or more like native speakers.

So the goals so far have been first goal, biggest goal, which stays with us, all

of these, stay with us the whole time:

acquiring words.

Reading second goal: reading comprehension.

Third is listening comprehension.

Fourth is speaking.

Fifth is, uh, grammar learning to, uh, use the language more correctly.

Then the sixth one is writing.

And again, we can start writing at any time, but, and I, I

just look at my own experience.

I tend not to write a lot, except when I was in a situation where I needed

to write when I was learning Chinese.

I was on a program.

I was working for the Canadian government.

I had to learn to read, excuse me, to write and to write correctly.

Similarly, when I was a student in France, I had, I had to write correctly.

So there are many situations where we need to write and write correctly.

And I will do a video on how we improve our ability to write and to write uh, you

know, effectively and, uh, persuasively and accurately and all these things.

So that then is the sixth goal is the writing goal, at least in my hierarchy.

And the final goal is the culture.

And, uh, I think at least in my learning, when I learn a language,

I learn the language in order to connect with the culture.

However, as a goal, It's further down the list because until I have the reading

comprehension, the listing comprehension, the words, um, you know, a better sense

of the language, it's difficult to get into the details of the culture.

So again, like so many of these goals, we can introduce them at any time, but I find

that I'm much more interested in things that relate to the grammar of the lang...

or excuse me, that relate to the, uh, to the culture of

the language that I'm learning.

If I have a better ability to read about these things comfortably in the language,

rather than having different aspects of the culture, uh, festivals or different

family relationships, having all of this explained to me, say in English, uh,

at a point where I don't have a good understanding of the language, I prefer

to save that until I can go out and discover it for myself in the language.

And so I will do another video specifically on this seventh goal.

So all I wanted to do today was to sort of warn you, let you know that

I'm going to be doing these seven videos on the seven goals uh, in

so far as my learning is concerned.

Which are these, uh, goals in this inverted pyramid of

sort of a hierarchy of goals.

The top one is, uh, words, get getting as many words as you can.

The second one is developing your, uh, reading comprehension.

The second one.

The third one is developing your listing comprehension.

The fourth one is speaking.

Uh, the fifth one is working on your correct usage.

The sixth one is writing and the seventh and final one is really

gaining an appreciation of the culture.

So there you have it.

Of course, there's a lot of overlap and many of these things, it can

be happening at different stages, but that is my hierarchy of goals.

So I hope that was used useful.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.