New Term New Goals

Welcome to the new spring term here at VCC. This time, we are adding an entirely new group of students to this blog: Upper Intermediate students. Since they will need some higher level grammar, reading and writing links, I will be adding many of those and may even separate higher and lower level practice in a variety of skills. Hopefully that will make it easier for everyone.

I want to invite everyone to subscribe to the blog and to begin writing comments to different postings. I will try to ask a variety of questions that should get a response, or write a post on a topic that is useful to all ESL students and  that deserves a comment.

My small question at this point is:  How does it feel to be back in English class? Are you excited and motivated?or do you feel like it's taking forever?  Attitude is very important. The better you feel about the process, the more you will learn. The more you realize that English is a living breathing language that we use everyday, for absolutely everything we do -- not just a classroom subject with a multiple choice test - like math, the more you can accept that you cannot and will not learn it in one term, or even a year.


Learning English is a step by step process. If you set achievable goals instead of unrealistic ones, you CAN  reach those goals with some hard work. If you continue to have unrealistic goals that fall into the "wish" category, you will constantly be disappointed with yourself and the process. Wouldn't you rather feel good about achieving your goal than upset and disappointed at failing yet again?  Try setting those achievable goals. Write them down. Tell me, or your teacher what they are.Don't just say "I want to improve my English.."  Be more specific. " I want to be able to control my past tenses in all my writing. I want to write compositions that have no sentence fragments or run ons. Do the same kind of thing for your reading, vocabulary, speaking and listening.  You will see how good that feels, and you can check on how your are doing throughout the term.


Let me know  what you think. Just go to the comment box at the end of this posting and add your comment. You don't even have to use your name, but I would certainly appreciate it if you did.


Michelle