How to help students achieve their New Year’s resolutions

Nicola Pope
A group of students stood in a classroom high fiving eachother
Reading time: 2 minutes

2025 is here. As we step into the new year, it's the perfect time to reflect on our recent challenges andachievements. It’s also a good moment to think about the future with optimism andplan our goals. Our students, too, are thinking about their New Year's resolutions.

As a teacher, you can help them consider how learning English will help them now and in the future. On top of this, you can guide them as they plan their goals and give them useful advice on how to achieve them.

How to help students with their resolutions
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Extended mind mapping

You probably already know how useful mind mapping can be when it comes to being creative or thinking about goals. This 30-minute activity will help your students think about how learning English will help them in the future and also consider what is most important to them.

You won’t need to prepare anything ahead of time, but you will need to supply each student with a large piece of paper (e.g., A3 size). If they are working online, they will need to have something to write on. Tools likeare a good, simple and free alternative if you want to be paper-free.

1. Write “How learning English can help me” on the board and have students copy it out in the center of the paper. Younger students can be more creative and also draw a picture of themselves if you think it will be more engaging for them.

2. Ask your students to call out ways English can help them now and in the future. Write them on the board in a spider diagram as they do so. Encourage them to expand on their ideas and speak in full sentences. For example:

“English can help me understand things on the internet.”

  • I can watch English-language movies;
  • I can read forums in English;
  • I can play online games in English.

Once students have understood the activity, put them in pairs or small groups and have them think of as many ways that English can help them as they can.

Encourage older learners to think about how English might help them with studying at university, living abroad and their future careers. Younger learners might be more focused on things that can help them in the immediate future. If you are working online, put them in breakout rooms to do so. Allow about ten to fifteen minutes for this.

3. Have each group share their ideas with the rest of the class. Students should add anything new or interesting to their own mind maps.

4. Next, students should individually rank which five ideas are most important to them. These will form the basis of their own personal language learning goals.

5. Then have students write out their five top language learning goals. Depending on the age and ability of the group, you may need to supply the structure. For example:

  • By the end of the year, I want to watch a movie in English.
  • By the end of the year, I want to be able to play online games in English.
  • By the end of the year, I want to pass my language exam.

Finally, once students have completed their own personal goals, set homework. They should consider what steps they need to take to achieve their goals. Also, encourage them to think about the following questions:

  • What can they do on their own?
  • What can you (the teacher) do to help them?

In the next class, reflect on their ideas and help students put a plan into action.

Tracking progress

Tell students to display their New Year's resolutions in a prominent place. If you’re working in a classroom, you can put them on the wall. If you are working online, you can have students print them and display them above their desks at home, or you could attach them to your virtual learning platform.

You should review their goals at different times throughout the year and quiz students on their progress. This will hold them accountable and keep them focused on what they want to achieve.

Encouraging a growth mindset

It's important to foster a growth mindset in your students. Remind them that learning a new language is a journey that requires patience and persistence. Celebrate their progress, no matter how small, and encourage them to view challenges as opportunities for growth.

We wish you the best of luck with your classes, whether they are face-to-face, online or hybrid and a very happy and healthy 2025.

Read our posts 'Building healthy New Year habits with your students' and 'The art of goal setting'.

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    7 ways to individualize your teaching

    Por Andrew Walkley
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    There's no denying that tailoring your teaching to individual students is an effective strategy. However, many teachers struggle with finding the time to include teaching moments which address an individual learner's specific needs. So, what's the best way to create an individualized classroom? Andrew Walkley, co-author of Roadmap, explains the benefits of this approach and shares some techniques to ensure that every student gets the most out of your lessons.

    The best of both worlds?

    First of all, what does individualized teaching mean? It's the concept that students will learn most effectively when the activity is specific to their needs and the language they are using is appropriate for their level. This concept is sometimes seen in opposition to coursebooks and class-based learning, where students are all expected to follow the same syllabus. However, class syllabuses and coursebooks have the following benefits:

    • Providing students with common goals
    • Encouraging learners to follow an unfamiliar topic that then opens new doors of learning
    • The learning opportunities in peer-to-peer explanation

    When we talk about individualized teaching in the classroom, we want to exploit the benefits of learning together while also providing opportunities for more individualized development. So, how can you, as a teacher, combine the two approaches?

    1. Involve students in choosing your route

    All classroom groups are different and made up of people from different age groups with distinct needs and interests. Roadmap can help in two ways:

    1. There is a fast and slow track. The fast track focuses on language input and speaking. The slow track has additional skills lessons at the back of the book that are thematically linked to the corresponding fast track lesson.
    2. Each lesson has a clear goal and final task. For shorter courses, get each student to choose three tasks they would definitely like to do. Based on the results, you can prioritize those lessons.

    At the start of the course, make a point of asking about students' learning priorities and then plan accordingly. Once you've completed an input and speaking lesson, you can ask the students if they want to further explore the topic through the skills lesson.

    2. Make use of tasks

    Open tasks, where students exchange their own ideas in a meaningful way, are a key part of individualized lessons. In essence, they are self-differentiating because each student will attempt to complete the task using whatever language they are able to use. In Roadmap, each of the main lessons ends with a clear task connected to a Global Scale of English (GSE) can-do statement. However, there are also lots of other speaking opportunities without a 'speaking' label (under vocabulary or reading, etc.), as well as the conversation that typically occurs in any lesson, all of which can be treated as open tasks.

    3. Give individualized feedback and then share it

    In a group setting, it's impossible to give individual feedback on every single task. However, you can give individual attention to different people throughout the lesson. Make yourself available to give students the language they need as it arises during an activity. Then, when they've completed the task, write some of these examples on the board, but leave a gap for the keywords. Elicit these keywords from other members of the class. If they can't get it, ask the student(s) you helped to explain the missing language. You might then repeat the task, but this time, pay attention to a new group.

    4. Check what vocabulary students know

    All coursebook writers and teachers make choices about what vocabulary to introduce to students. In the case of Roadmap we are guided by the GSE and teachers might like to experiment themselves using the GSE Teacher Toolkit. However, all students will have their own lexicons. You can individualize learning better by asking students to rate the words you aim to cover in a unit according to whether they know them or not. For example, 1 = it's completely new, 2 = the meaning is familiar but I don't use it, 3 = this is part of my productive vocabulary.

    5. Get students to create their own word lists and cards

    This knowledge will enable you to encourage students to focus on their individual vocabulary needs. They can reinforce learning by developing a word list or making flashcards using a web tool such as Quizlet. For new words they may have a word/collocation with an L1 translation.

    With familiar vocabulary, they could have cards with a keyword on one side and varied collocations or common examples on the other (also in English). It's worth setting aside some time in class to do this at the start of a course. If your students are engaged and motivated, it can become a regular discipline for learning new vocabulary.

    6. Ask more open questions about usage, not just meaning

    When we do vocabulary tasks from the course material in class, we can use open questions to individualize learning with the following two techniques. Firstly, as you go through the answers, rather than going in order 1 to 8, you can nominate people to give the answer that they're most unsure of and want to check. Secondly, we can ask the rest of the class open questions which focus on how words are used. For example, take these questions from different vocabulary exercises in Roadmap B1+:

    • What (other) things might you spill?
    • Why might a character in a series be killed off?
    • What (else) can you describe as reliable?
    • What can someone do to stay calm?

    You could also ask questions such as, "What's the opposite of staying calm?" or "What might you say if you spilled something?"

    When you ask these questions, you are checking meaning, but more importantly, you are also pushing students to reveal how well they know a word. Do they know the collocations of spill and reliable? Do they have the other language they might need to talk about the aspects of a TV series or help someone who is in a panic? You can then encourage students to choose how much of this potentially new language they want to add to their word lists.

    7. Provide open homework tasks and make time to share the results

    Homework is another opportunity to individualize learning. Give students a wide choice of tasks based on the material of the course or beyond, for example:

    • Choose any number of exercises they want to do from workbook material
    • Find and read one article they are interested in (in L1 or L2)
    • Write five things they want to learn how to say in English (perhaps using Google Translate)
    • Write up an interesting conversation they had in English (the conversation could be originally in L1 or L2)

    Whatever task they choose, the key is to dedicate some classroom time to discussing which homework task they did and why. Encourage them to explain their answers and what they learned through the task, and whether or not they would choose to do a similar task again.

    For a more detailed introduction on how you can individualize your teaching, check out Andrew's webinar: