Last month I decided to resume my English studies after almost 4 years. However, this doesn’t mean that I ever stopped learning English. In fact, it’s a language I practice every day, whenever I am watching series, listening to a podcast, reading a book, or just browsing through social media. But, even though I get a nice amount of daily input, I didn't really have any chances to practice speaking with someone else, and I rarely practiced writing.

Now, I've been taking conversational lessons with an English tutor for more than a month, and so I believe it's time I spend some time thinking about what I would like to accomplish in the next months. This post will serve me to document my long-term goals for English and some short-term goals or actions that I think will help me achieve them.

Long-term goals

1. Feel comfortable when having a long spontaneous conversation. By "comfortable" I mean not feeling anxious when having spontaneous conversations, which is how I normally feel because of the level of uncertainty this implies. I realize I still don't feel very confident when the next topic of conversation is unknown, and therefore, I hesitate when speaking and sometimes use incorrect grammar.
2. Be able to speak with a high level of accuracy. This goal is very related to the first one. If I made fewer mistakes when speaking (in spontaneous situations), I believe that would help improve my overall confidence. At the same time, if I start feeling more confident when speaking, I expect I would hesitate less and, therefore, make fewer mistakes.
3. Be able to write confidently and without relying on external help. As I am writing this, I am second-guessing my word choice and grammar in almost every sentence. Additionally, I often need to look up the right collocations, prepositions or check if a word is used in a specific context. Thus, it is my goal to be able to write with accuracy and confidence in English, without relying too much on dictionaries or language forums, just like I do in my native language.

Short-term goals

These are actions I plan to take to achieve my long-term goals.

1. Have 4 conversational English lessons every month. I've already been doing this on italki, which lets me see the history of all my lessons and check if I am on track to hitting this goal.
2. Write 1 blog post every week. I plan to post weekly on Journaly and on my personal blog as well, to hold myself accountable.
3. Read a book for 30 minutes every day. I won't set a specific number of books as a goal, since some are longer and more complex to read than others. But, ideally, I will be able to finish 2 books per month this way.
4. Save and review new vocabulary every week. I will be using Quizlet to add new words and phrases I might come across while reading, watching videos, etc. I will also quiz myself on this new vocabulary each week.