Goals are the Guideposts to Learning Chinese

To make progress in anything, including work, learning, and life, it is best to set goals and to prioritize by fixing deadlines and timelines. Achieving your goals and the steps to get there get easier the clearer you make them. Know where you are going and you’re more likely to get there. This is especially true for learning a language such as Chinese. Create a series of stepping stones that allow you to track progress while approaching your destination, which is the ability to communicate in the Chinese language fully. 

Goals serve multiple purposes, from small things to larger projects, with a time-frame of minutes to several years, they ultimately serve as guideposts along the way. The goals you set should help keep you accountable to yourself and what you are learning. They help you to track progress and to ensure you are on the right path to being able to engage in the Chinese language confidently. 

The key to learning is consistency and persistence. You need goals to involve daily modules, and a module can be as little as 15 minutes. If you do something consistently every day for 15 minutes a day, you will make progress no matter what it is. If you miss days, you will find yourself plateauing and unable to move forward. Clarity on the specific goals you are aiming for makes it easier to achieve them. 

There is also a useful mental trick of imagining yourself as having already achieved the goal. That is the feeling that you want to obtain that provides you with the motivation to be consistent and persistent in completing your modules.

We are not just teaching speaking in Chinese. We are teaching communicating in Chinese, which includes speaking, comprehension, reading and writing. Communicating in Chinese fluently is the destination. Having fun is a great mindset, but remember that developing goals and being serious about achieving those goals will provide you with more profound satisfaction, and a greater sense of self-achievement.