How to Make English a Part of Your Life: Lesson 7
Achieve Success
Welcome to Lesson 7 of the How to Make English a Part of Your Life mini-course!
Extremely successful people often talk about the importance of goal-setting as a factor for success. It’s not enough to just want something–you have to envision it, and make a plan to achieve it. It’s also crucial that you track your progress, so that you can see which efforts have the strongest outcomes, and which are perhaps less effective.
In the final lesson of the How to Make English a Part of Your Life mini-course I’m going to show you how to track your progress and create goals to ensure success on your language learning journey.
Below you’ll find the transcript along with a downloadable exercise and all previous lessons of the course.
IMPORTANT:
We want to THANK YOU so much for making it to the end! We have a special present for those of you who graduate the course. Please contact us with the subject line “I Want to Make English a Part of My Life” and we’ll send it to you right away! Thanks and enjoy lesson 7!
Transcript:
If you can dream it, you can do it -Walt Disney
Congratulations! You’ve made it all the way through the RealLife Make English a Part of Your Life Course.
We hope that you’ve already gotten inspired to make some changes in the way you’ve been learning English and have even tried some of the methods that we’ve recommended to you.
In this lesson, we’re going to give you a simple exercise that will help with setting and keeping goals, keeping track of [monitoring] the time you dedicate to improving, and help you hold yourself accountable.
The exercise is provided in the form of two documents, available for download both in Microsoft Excel and PDF formats. You can either use our templates, or create your own version tailored to your specific needs. Get creative!
The first is a goals chart. This is where you can note all of your short and long term goals with English (and anything else)! As we mentioned in Lesson One, people who record their goals and frequently come back to them are much more successful, so this may just be the motivation you need on your path to fluency.
Remember, a goal without a plan is just a wish (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry).
This document is pretty straightforward [easy to understand]. On the top you have different periods of time between the very short term (this week) and the very long term (in two to 10 years).
On the left you have goals and action steps. The second part is essential because it’s easy to write down your desires and dreams, but it’s much more challenging to take action! This is what’s going to ensure success.
At each stage, I’ve given you examples. You might take a moment to look at these and think about what other goals you have. It may seem difficult to plan as far ahead in the future as 10 years (which is why this section is called crazy maker), but don’t be afraid to think big. Maybe you’ve always wanted to take a trip somewhere, or live abroad.
If you start planning now, anything is possible!
Feel free to pause the video at this point, download the goals document, and fill it out. I recommend that you put it somewhere you’ll see it often and can add to it (your bedroom, the bathroom mirror, your English notebook).
Now, let’s move on to the second part of the exercise: the log. This helps you hold yourself accountable by tracking what you’re doing every day to make your goals a reality. If you’re diligent about following your progress in your learning, you won’t want to go a single day without doing something to improve because it’s a terrible and unacceptable feeling seeing a zero in your log.
This log is rather detailed, but for a simpler option, you could choose just to write down how much time you spent in English every day in a notebook.
On the other hand, if you’re more detailed-oriented, you could create an even more complex log in which you separate your progress into categories (for example, reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary, and grammar).
Using this log is easy. Every day, you write down what you’re doing, and at what time, like in the example. At the end of the day, you add up all of the time you spent. By the end of the week you’ll have a total of the time you spent in English. Challenge yourself by augmenting this time every week!
Download the log document now and fill in today with the time you’ve already spent watching this course. Make a habit of it and watch your English improve, as you accomplish each goal and it becomes a more and more important part of your life.
Alright guys, that wraps up the Make English a Part of Your Life course. We want to thank you for all of your time. We hope you’ve enjoyed, learned, and benefited from this, and that you’ll put it into action, if you haven’t already.
Be sure to leave some feedback by either commenting below or sending us an email.
Thanks again, from the RealLife Guys. Awww Yeah!
Guys, thank you so so so much for this mini course (and for the tips to). It has helped me to be more motivated to study English (and French). I’m feel so blessed to discover the Real Life English. I think to create a English routine is soo good and fundamental to have a better English communication. I want to be a global citizen and you’ve taught me how to do it!
Guys, thank you so so so much for this mini course (and for the tips to). It has helped me to be more motivated to study English (and French). I’m feel so blessed to discover the Real Life English. I think to create a English routine is soo good and fundamental to have a better English communication. I want to be a global citizen and you’ve taught me how to do it!.
Thank YOU for taking the time to watch all the videos. Be sure to send us an email so we can send you your present 🙂