It’s that time of year and if you’re looking to reach new heights in your efforts to perfect the Spanish language a New Year’s Resolution could be the perfect way to reach your goals. Below, I’ll outline some important considerations and suggestions for making your New Year’s Resolution.

Choose a Measureable Goal to Achieve While You Study Spanish

New Year’s Resolutions should be somewhat monumental and challenging, but also reasonable. You’ll need to make a resolution that you can break into smaller measureable chunks so that you can track your progress and keep motivated throughout the year. Some examples of great measureable goals would be:

• Overall Resolution: Improve Spanish conversation skills
  • Chunks:
    • Find a conversation partner
    • Practice 30 minutes every week
    • Choose a new verb tense or topic each week
  • Overall Resolution: Increase Spanish vocabulary
    • Chunks:
      • Choose 3 words every Monday to learn
      • Place the words in post-it notes on your mirror
      • Use each word in 5 written sentences throughout the week

These resolutions seem broad and challenging – but by breaking each goal into chunks or steps, the goals become measureable and achievable. You’ll be able to see if you’re on track to reaching your goal because it’s easy to know if you’ve kept your promise or not. Either you conversed 30 minutes in a week or you didn’t. You chose 3 words on Monday or you didn’t. These help keep you accountable and also give you a great feeling of accomplishment when you can check off the task.

Extra Tip: Grab a buddy

One reason New Year’s Resolutions sometimes are left unfulfilled is a lack of accountability. If you don’t tell anyone about your goal, all you’ve got is your own willpower in order to succeed. However, if you spread the word or better yet, get someone to team up and do your resolution with you, you’ll be more likely to succeed. Just having someone who asks you about your progress can be helpful. However, getting someone to walk alongside you and complete each step with you is even better as you’ll both become more invested in reaching the goal.

Extra Tip: Give Yourself Some Incentive to Study Spanish

Consider adding some incentive for yourself when you reach your goal by planning a trip or big Spanish party to finish off 2016. You could host a Spanish language party complete with Spanish music or movies and food. Or you could plan a trip to a Spanish speaking country! Either of these ideas would give you a great way to practice your Spanish skills obtained throughout the year. By having something to look forward to and plan for towards the end of the year, you’ll increase your motivation to reach your Spanish language goals.

The possibilities for reaching new goals in Spanish as a New Year’s Resolution are endless. Perfect your use of the tenses, read novels in Spanish, write your own autobiography in Spanish using the imperfect and preterit tenses, watch and understand the news in Spanish; all of these are great ideas to give your Spanish language skills a push this year.

What is your Spanish New Year’s Resolution?