“I want to speak English more fluently.”

“I want to have more confidence when I speak English at work.”

“I want to understand more on my next conference call in English.”

Have you ever heard someone say any of these things? Have you ever said them?  There’s a big problem with these statements, can you guess what it is?  They’re too vague.

Think for a minute: what does ‘speak more fluently’ really mean? How do you know when you’re starting to speak more fluently? How do you know you’ve achieved your goal, and you DO speak fluently?

And what about “I want to have more confidence to speak English at work?”  Same thing. How do you know you have enough? What does ‘having confidence’ look like? What does it sound like? More importantly, what does it feel like – and in what circumstances?

Take away: Be specific with what you want to work on with your English. Instead of saying: “I want to speak English more fluently” ask yourself a few questions:

1. What do I do everyday in English? (Make a list.)

2. Ask yourself: Why do I do those activities – what are the expected outcomes?

3. Prioritize: which one of those tasks/activities are most important to you?

Think again: HOW do you want to do that high priority task in English? I’m not talking about the ‘mechanics’ of doing that task. I’m talking about how do you want to communicate in English to accomplish that task.

Example: Many business people workng in multinational companies have to participate in English conference calls.  Maybe a high priority task for you would be to explain a local process to a foreign coworker.

• Ask yourself if you are sure you know WHY you need to explain that process? A possible ‘why’ would be to explain the most important differences between your local process and the foreign one.
• Ask yourself what outcome you need to have happen as a result of your explanation. — A possible outcome in our example could be: My coworker stops asking me to use ‘their process’ because they now understand that ‘their process’ is not compatible with local conditions.  

That’s a very specific fluency goal: I want to explain the local process of  X activity to my English speaking coworker. I want to explain the process so that he/she stops asking me to use ‘their process’ which cannot work here. 

Now it’s your turn. What ‘vague’ English goals are you working with that you could change?

(Photo by kevin dooley)