To get anything done, for example, to learn a little bit of Spanish, you need a plan, right? And to make a plan, you need to answer four questions: Why, To What End, When, and How. (And maybe also two bonus questions: How to prove I’ve done it?  And — how to celebrate?)

By the way, WHEN and HOW will only apply to small individual steps, not to language learning as a whole. “WHEN will I finally learn Cantonese?” — that question has no answer, sorry. “WHEN will I learn to recite Ou Daren’s poems with proper enunciation?” is a hard, but reasonable question. “HOW can I learn Finnish?” — well, any language is an assortment of skills, and you need a different tool to improve each skill, so no single answer here, either.

1. So, first ask yourself, WHY?

“WHY am I learning Swedish (or Japanese, or Estonian)?”. If there’s more than one reason, write down ALL of them. If you can only think of one reason at first — “because it’s fun”, — that’s fine. And that reason should always be on your list, no matter how long it gets!

But the more specific you are, the more useful your study plan will be. So, add more reasons to your list. Some examples: 1. I want to learn French so I can stick a phrase or two into my conversation and impress my friends. 2. I want to learn Japanese to read manga and watch anime. 3. I want to learn Russian because my grandparents came from Russia. 4. I want to learn Hungarian because it’s a hard language, and I need a challenge.

2. TO WHAT END?

Now, for the second question. To What End? What exactly is it that I want to achieve? How will I know when I’m done? If you said, “learn Russian because my grandparents came from Russia”, it doesn’t tell you when you are done. But it points in the right direction. You can use it to set your goals. Just brainstorm on related ideas: “grandparents” – “ancestors” – “genealogy” – “history” – “family”. Now brainstorm your possible goals. Friends can really help with this step, and also can other language learners on forums such as the LingQ language learners’ forum.

If your Russian grandparents are still alive, then one obvious goal would be to talk or write to them in Russian. Or maybe interview them about their youth, record the interview and add captions in Russian and English. Or ask them for old photos or mementos, and make an album with comments in Russian and English on every page. You could also research your family history by yourself and make a blog or a webpage about it (in both Russian and English), or a genealogy tree (just look up “online genealogy tree maker”). You could go further, and research Russian history of that period. As a first step to that goal, you could join an online Russian history forum (such as the Soviet Empire forum), and ask for recommendations for books and websites. Another great thing to do is connect with other people of Russian ancestry in your community. If there isn’t a Russian club in your town, you can start one!

3. WHEN?

Now, to make that study plan really work, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. WHEN exactly will you be done with your first step?

If your reason for studying is “learn Hungarian because it’s hard”, one general goal might be “read difficult books in Hungarian”, and your first step might be “find a good book in Hungarian and read the first chapter by the end of the month”.

4. HOW?

Well, how do you find a good book in Hungarian and read it? Lots of possibilities, online and offline.

Some things you can do online: post on language exchange websites and find Hungarians there who will help you find books and start reading; look up “foreign language books” at Amazon.com and other online bookstores, and see what they got for Hungarian; search for “free online Hungarian texts”, go to one of the websites (such as the Gutenberg Project Hungarian bookshelf), and use machine translation software, such as Google Translate, to start reading.

Offline: go to your public library, or, better yet, a nearby college library and ask the reference librarians for help, or post an ad for Hungarian speakers and experts at local libraries, bookstores and coffee shops.

By the way, some language learning reasons are easier to translate into goals than others. If your reason for learning French is to master a few impressive phrases, then your study plan is easy to come up with.

Just tell yourself how many French phrases you want to learn next month, do a web search for “French phrases used in English”, take one of those phrase lists (e.g., this Wikipedia French phrase list), then find some native French speakers on a language exchange website, and get them to read or record the phrases for you. Bingo! Your plan for next month is ready!

If your reason for learning Japanese is “to be able to watch and understand anime without subtitles”, then make a list of the titles to watch, run a search for “japanese through anime”, and check out some of these excellent top results (like “Japanese through Anime”, or this rich thread on how other people are actually doing it or this collection of anime subtitles in Japanese). After that, find some Japanese speakers on a language exchange website, and get them to read those anime subtitles with you. Another bingo!

Just remember, you will learn faster if every little goal on your way to fluency is yours, and not your teacher’s, your textbook’s or your well-wishing friends’. You can do lots of things with language, so do what you enjoy, and don’t get sucked into projects that are a drag.

Remember this: LANGUAGE IS ONLY A TOOL, NOT AN END IN ITSELF. Those steps on the way to your goal will be more useful if they don’t sound like this: “learn 200 verbs”, “finish part one of the intermediate Pimsleur course”, etc. Come up with meaningful personal goals, such as “read some Wikipedia articles on Thai art history” (or some other deep interest of yours), “record a Latvian short story for Librivox.org (an open source audiobook collection)“, or “learn some lyrics of my favorite songs in Hindi”.

To research this topic in more depth, try looking up “second or foreign language needs analysis” or “ESL needs analysis”. You’ll find some great study plans, such as this ESL in Canada study plan.

By the way, ESL means “English as a Second Language”. There’s more stuff on the web for learners of English than for any other language, and a lot of it can be easily applied to the language you are learning.

One superb (and rarely mentioned) resource for language learners is available at Summer Institute of Linguistics. It’s a book titled “Managing your language learning program”, by Carol J. Orwig.

It includes sections on “How to do a Language Needs Analysis”, “How to make a photo book for language learning”, “How to make a language learning kit”, and other useful stuff.

Finally, for general help with setting and achieving goals, I recommend my favorite self-help author Barbara Sher, and especially her first bestselling book, “Wishcraft” (now 30 years old), freely available online. Barbara Sher’s website has a forum, where you can share your problems, help other people with theirs, and find a “success buddy”. That’s where I found mine, and she helps me a lot! Thanks, A.!

Are you struggling with your language learning goals? Do you have any tips to share? Please post them here, I would love to see them!