Exactly what do they mean by "goals"?

Hi, I’m planning to come to Taiwan next month and would like to enroll in a Mandarin language class.

Friends of mine tell me that I should have ‘goals’ – but I’m a little unclear what they mean. I want to learn how to speak well to order food and get around, and be able to read a newspaper. Are these goals specific enough?

I understand that having goals is important – but aren’t these goals, well, pretty obvious? Just wondering.

I’m glad I found this forum, I also found tealit.com to be useful too.

If you’re talking about the enrollment form for Shida (the Mandarin Training Center, or whatever they’re calling it these days, at NTNU), then I wouldn’t worry about the “goals” thing too much. They’ll ignore it completely in any case. It’s just a piece of paper that they think will make things better. The method of using that piece of paper to make things better is unfortuantely still to stick it into a file somewhere without actually thinking about the goals of the students and altering the curriculum to reflect them, but hey, at least they’re asking. :laughing:

I think what you’ve written is just fine. At least you aren’t coming out with the ever-amusing “I plan to spend one year in Taiwan learning perfect Chinese, and then return to my home country to get a fabulous job as a result.” :shock: