Hi

Goal is something more spiritual and mental and in your sentence : "I set myself the goal of learning a foreign language" the word "goal" is preferred. You mostly see the word "Target" used in military areas. Like the following sentence: "The target of the launched missile, was a desert !"

I hope this will be helpful.

You can use either: unfortunately the Cambridge online dictionary is not very helpful to learners it only gives the military or aggressive definition.

But Merriam Webster gives two definitions one which includes this.

NOUN

Some Brits won't like this but the Merriam Webster webster [American] dictionary is often more useful to even British people than our own OXFORD or CAMBRIDGE [British] dictionaries

Now when learners rely only on one dictionary they get confused when they hear English speakers American, British, Australian and all the other English speakers interchange the two words.

If they can then you can. We do! I do !

Hi Guzel, my understanding says goal is subjective. Target is more specific and something we do in the process of reaching our goal.

For example -

I set myself the goal of learning a foreign language. (e.g French)

So, I set myself the target of passing DELF language exam within two years.

Mr. John, thank you very much, very interesting, informative.

Sanjukta, thank you for the answer and advice, interesting opinion, I will think it over.

Meysam Asadi, thank you for your reply!