Setting Goals & Studying
by Jill Nagrodsky
Setting goals and studying go hand in hand.
Students need to have goals that are short and long term. Students want to think about and need to discuss what they are going to do. They may be learning English to improve job skills for work in their home country. Others are going to get a college degree in an English-speaking country. To reach any of their goals, students need good study skills. Here are a few tips to share with students.
1. Have a good place to study.
Is this place away from distractions?
Do you have a positive attitude about your study area?
Are you feeling glad you are there?
Do you have all the materials you need to complete your assignments?
Is there enough light so you do not tire your eyes?
2. Take a break away from studying.
Pay attention from the very beginning of the study period and plan when you will take a break.
Be sure you turned off your phone at the beginning of the study period so you can enjoy using it on your break.
Move away from your study area to take your break.
Set a time limit for your break and stick to this limit.
3. After your study break:
Review what you accomplished before your break.
Try to summarize what you learned or did in a few sentences.
See what you are going to do in the next part of your study period and set a goal for what you want to accomplish next.
Write some study questions after you preview the work you are going to do.
This information works well with Now We’re Talking, Book 1, Unit 8, Goals & Dreams.
Tags: Study skills; Goal setting
Greetings from America
Informal in-person greetings
Many ESL students learn the popular greeting, “Hi, how are you?” only to be confused when they arrive in the United States. Instead of this familiar question, they often hear “How’s it going?” or “What’s up?” from friends or roommates.
Here is how to decipher (and re-use) the informal greetings you hear:
If you are meeting a college friend or someone close to you (especially a young person), you will most likely hear “How’s it going?” or “How are you doing?” (Translation: How is everything going in your life? How is life?). A good answer would be “Doing well, and you?”
You may also hear “What’s going on?” or “What’s up?” or “What’s happening?” (Translation: What is new in your life?). If you want to answer that nothing exciting is happening, you may reply “Not much, what’s new with you?”
These informal questions may come by themselves or follow an even more informal “Hi!”, or “Hey!”, “Howdy!”, or even a “Yo!” They all mean “Hello.”
Formal in-person greetings
When greeting people in a more formal setting (such as a professor in college, or a potential employer for an interview), your greeting must be more formal and conventional. These situations call for the well-known, “Hi, how are you?” or “Hello, it’s nice to meet you.” Other polite greetings include “Good morning” or “Good afternoon.” If you are meeting someone after 5 pm, most people greet each other with “Good evening” in formal situations. You should only say “Good night” when you are going home.
Some students wonder about the greeting, “How do you do?” In America, you rarely hear someone using it. It is more common in Great Britain.
Regardless of all these options you have, when in doubt, always use the old reliable “Hi, how are you?” It is a safe greeting for both formal and less-formal situations.
Learning Grammar after the Grammar Class Ends
“Grammar instruction, no matter how well designed, is unlikely to achieve immediate success.”
–Rod Ellis
There are two challenges for grammar learning and teaching. The first is remembering what was learned in class. Even though a student might learn the rule well enough to ace a grammar test, the memory of the rule is highly likely to fade from memory several weeks or months after the language course is completed. Teachers who have students continue from one semester to the next experience this often.
Another issue with grammar learning is being able to use what was learned in the classroom outside the classroom. When speaking with someone in ‘real life’ outside the classroom, the learner has a lot of things to keep in mind as she communicates. She needs to check her comprehension of what was said to her, think of the content of her response, the needed vocabulary (and how to pronounce it) and all the necessary grammar points as well. When attempting to communicate successfully, grammar tends to receive the lowest priority among the above. Grammar needs to be deeply internalized if the speaker hopes to use it correctly in spontaneous speech. The classroom can rarely give enough time for this process to happen.
With these challenges in mind, learners need strategies to continue to improve their grammar skills after their English classes are finished. Here are three suggestions for language learners.
- Extensive reading
- Continued explicit study
- Becoming “Grammatical”
Extensive Reading
I’ll have another post on extensive reading in the future (until then, this video can give a good overview), but in brief, here are the three components:
- Reading at least 20 minutes a day
- Reading books that are easy enough to understand without using a dictionary more than a few times per page
- Reading books that are enjoyable
How can this kind of reading help your grammar? Over time, extensive reading gives learners massive exposure to correct forms of grammar. In this way, learners develop a ‘sense’ of the language that is difficult, if not impossible, to get solely through explicit instruction. This exposure to the language also reinforces what the students have learned in the grammar classroom. Indeed, there are a number of second language scholars that claim this kind of practice is crucial for language mastery (Licthman & VanPatten, 2021).
Continued explicit study
Though students can learn a lot of grammar through extensive reading, there will be some grammar forms that are missed. This means students will need to find a way to directly study grammar on their own. One way to do this is for learners to keep their grammar books from their most recent ESL class and periodically review a chapter or two from time to time. There are also a number of quality YouTube videos that teach grammar.
Writing can also be a good way to help learners continue on their path to language mastery. Grammar check software that comes with all popular word-processing programs (Grammarly is particularly helpful) can give learners immediate feedback on grammar issues they may have. It is true that sometimes grammar checking software is incorrect, but most of the time, the suggestions are helpful.
Becoming ‘grammatical’
The last suggestion is becoming ‘grammatical.’ Rod Ellis, long considered one of the leaders of the field in learning and teaching grammar, coined the expression ‘grammatical.’ As Ellis writes, “grammar teaching needs to emphasize awareness of how grammatical features work rather than mastery. Learners who are aware of a grammatical structure are more likely to notice it when they subsequently encounter it. Thus, awareness can facilitate and trigger learning; it is a crutch that helps learners walk until they can do so by themselves.”
For the learner, this means occasionally taking the time to analyze the language encountered outside the language classroom. Learners can compare the language they read or hear with what they understand about English grammar. When noticing the text or native speaker saying something a little differently than they expect, the learner should investigate further. Native speakers rarely correct a learner’s mistakes, but when asked, most are happy to let the learner know how to say something correctly.
Grammar mastery is a long process. The number of hours spent in a classroom cannot come close to the total amount of time needed to become native-like. None of the above suggestions is a quick fix for learning, but following these practices for a few years will make a significant difference.
Sources
Black Cat Channel. (2019). What is Extensive Reading? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IVVjwq5rBg
Ellis, R. (2003). Becoming grammatical. Language Teaching & Learning, 7, 124-232. https://www.impactseries.com/grammar/becoming.html
Licthman, K. & VanPatten, B. (2021). Was Krashen right? Forty years later. Foreign Language Annals, 54(2) 283-305. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12552
Study Skills and Concentration
We can have the best content in the world to teach our students but sometimes it is still not enough for them to learn everything in a limited amount of time.
We need to work with them on study skills and concentration to go along with our content. A set of questions like this used on a daily or weekly basis may help.
- Do you have a place to do your work away from distractions?
- Are you taking notes in class and reviewing them a few minutes a day?
- Can you make a check mark on paper every time your mind wanders?
- Do you try making a concept map or word cloud to study?
- Are you using a free tutor at the tutoring center?
- Are you taking short breaks to keep your energy up?
- Do you set a goal of how long it will take to complete an assignment?
- Do you use a calendar that shows when tests and assignments are due?