Goals and Strategies

Goals and strategies provide a clear path forward to reach the community’s vision statement. A clear and specific plan will outline exactly:

• What the community wants to achieve for the language
• How they will get there
• How they will track their progress

What Are Goals?

• Goals are the main outcomes that will make the vision statement a reality.
• Goals are the “big ideas” of the plan. They may be also be called focus areas or pillars.
• Aim to have between three and five goals for the language plan.
• Goals relate directly to the plan’s vision statement.

Developing Goals

1. Brainstorm and gather ideas: To set language planning goals, think about the community’s language dreams and aspirations at a high level. Consider both short-term and long-term goals. For now, don’t worry about limitations such as budgets or staffing. Review the language profile and brainstorm with the planning team and/or community about what goals will help to achieve the language plan’s vision statement. Consider this question: what are the big language goals we want to accomplish?
2. Organize and prioritize: Once you have a list of goals, take time to sort and organize them. Goals should be high level, so you will probably need to narrow down the list of goals by grouping related goals together. Common goal themes may relate to language fluency in adults and children, documenting and recording the language, making the language easily accessible and developing language resources.
3. Finalize: Once the goals are sorted and organized, review them as a team. Consider presenting them to the advisory committee or the whole community, depending on the communication approach you are taking.

What Are Strategies?

• Each goal might have anywhere from two to four strategies. Strategies are the approaches that will help achieve the goals. They are the ways to make the goals real.
• Strategies explain what to do to meet the goals.
• Strategies are typically written with action words such as “develop,” “start,” or “create.”
• Strategies can be monitored, evaluated and measured.

Developing Strategies

1. Review the goals and brainstorm “how”: The strategies will be determined by the language plan’s goals and the community’s language profile.
2. Review the community’s language profile to identify gaps and opportunities. Think about programs that might address these gaps and opportunities.
3. Research successful approaches to language revitalization. Refer to fpcc.ca for resources and to learn about successful approaches.
4. With this knowledge, review the language plan goals. Brainstorm with the team and/or with the community which approaches to use in order to achieve each goal.
5. Select and finalize: Once you have a list of possible strategies, select the strategies you think will be best for each goal. Choose strategies that are realistic for the community to implement and appropriate for the community’s language situation.

Note that goals are written as statements that describe a future state. Strategies are written as actions that help to achieve the goals.