Goal Setting
Resolve Speech Therapy · Dysarthria series
Tap a heading to open or close it. Only open what you need right now.
Goal setting means agreeing, together, on what you most want to get better at with your speech and communication.
Dysarthria can affect the muscles used for speech, which can make it harder to be understood clearly. Good goals are specific to you — they're built around the situations and people that matter most in your everyday life.
In this section you'll map out who you talk to, which situations feel easy or hard, and then turn that into clear goals you can work towards with your therapist.
A communication breakdown is like a misunderstanding. It happens when one person doesn't understand the other, and it can leave people feeling confused, frustrated, or upset.
Example: "The waiter didn't understand what I was saying. They didn't let me know. They brought me out the wrong dish."
Thinking about when breakdowns happen — and what helps when they do — is one of the best ways to work out what your goals should be.
SMARTER goals follow a structured framework so goals are clear and easy to track:
- Specific — clear and precise about exactly what you want to achieve
- Measurable — has a way to track progress, so you both know it's working
- Achievable — realistic given your abilities, time, and resources
- Relevant — connected to communication that actually matters to you
- Time-bound — has a timeframe, so there's a sense of progress
- Evaluated — checked regularly to see if it needs adjusting
- Reviewed — revisited to decide if it's done, or if a new goal is needed
Head to the My Goals tab when you're ready to build one.
Let's identify the people you talk to — often, sometimes, and less often. Add as many as you like in each group.
👨👩👧 Family
😄 Friends
🩺 Doctors, waiters, professionals
🧳 Acquaintances & strangers
Tap a category to open it, then rate each situation Easy, Medium, or Hard. This helps build the hierarchy and your goals.
Add your own situation
Any everyday situations not listed above that you'd like to work on?
Build a ladder of communication situations from easiest (bottom) to hardest (top). Use what you rated in the Situations tab to help fill these in.
Shops, restaurants etc (hardest)
Talking to strangers and acquaintances
Working on sentences and questions
Working on word and phrase lists in sessions
At home talking with family (easiest)
Build one or more SMARTER goals. Tap a goal to open it, and add a new one whenever you're ready for the next step.
| S | Ordering at a restaurant |
| M | Using a self-rating scale before and after |
| A | This can be achieved through compensatory strategies |
| R | This is a task identified during the situations picture-sorting task |
| T | By Christmas |
| E | We will reassess how they are responding to the compensatory strategies |
| R | We will reassess to establish other goals |
📧 Email your goal notes
Enter your therapist's email address. We'll open Gmail in a new tab with your notes ready to send.
Your partners, situation ratings, hierarchy and goals are saved automatically in this browser, so they'll still be here next time you visit on this device. They're private to you — no one else using this site will see them. Switching devices or browsers, or clearing your browser data, will start you fresh.