What were the highlights and low-lights of this past year?
What did I learn?
What did I forget to do?
Did I accomplish my goals?
What did I accomplish?

Personally, I hope to learn from 2011 and apply what I learned in 2012. I know that many of you reading this blog post have a goal to learn Spanish. That is a good goal; however, perhaps you should be a bit more specific. Instead of merely saying that you want to learn Spanish, I recommend that you set a goal to become fluent in basic conversational Spanish. This will help you to focus on the goal at hand.

Not being specific enough with my goals is one mistake that I made this past year. Everybody makes mistakes and I make a lot of them. The best way to learn is from the mistakes of others. This is a grand opportunity for you to learn from some of mine regarding goals. Here are a few more mistakes I made in regards to goals:

1. I wrote my goals down, then I forgot them.
2. I set too many goals, thus there was not enough focus on individual goals.
3. I wasn’t specific enough with my goals.
4. I didn’t celebrate the small successes.

I will elaborate further in an upcoming video lesson and blog post, but that tells the tale for the most part. As you reflect on the past year, don’t allow yourself to be overcome by your mistakes. I am a firm believer in positive thinking when I remember to positively think.

the program | el programa
the problem | el problema
the drama | el drama
the system | el sistema
the charisma | el carisma
the symptom | el síntoma
the aroma | el aroma
the climate | el clima
the trauma | el trauma

Like I previously stated, this is a list of nouns and their genders which you must simply memorize. A common mistake that Spanish learners make is assuming that just because the Spanish noun ends in -a, it must be feminine. Don’t assume. Consistently learn and improve your Spanish.

I have a friend in Japan who learned English 17 years ago in the United States. She attended high school and college in the U.S. She now has a very good job as an assistant and translator for a large company and gets to travel all around the world. She has very good English, but she still makes mistakes. After 17 years of learning and improving her English, she still works hard to correct her mistakes. She has been very successful because of that. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Laugh about them, learn from them, and move on.