Your Language-related New Year's Resolutions 2024

[leosmith]

Thanks rdearman for breaking this off into its own thread.
Last year was epic for me - so many milestones converged in the same year. Allow me to brag. In 2023 I finally finished Tagalog Lite, my online Tagalog grammar book, I finished a 500hr spurt in Mandarin reading, which took me from roughly A1/A2 to B1/B2 in reading, and I went from scratch to roughly B1 in German.

2024 should be a big year too; here are my goals:
1) Reach roughly B2 in German (I might miss this one because I only have till the end of the month and I'm sick).
2) Go from scratch to roughly B2 in Italian.
3) Start a spurt in Japanese reading (designed to take me from roughly A1/A2 to B1/B2 by early 2025)
4) Maintain all my languages.

[philomath]

My main goal is to take the DELE B2 exam. This will be my first language proficiency exam. I also want to maintain French, finish Assimil German, and start enjoying native material in German.

[Le Baron]

If I don't make any, I won't break any. I know, it is the coward's way out.

[iguanamon]

For those who may be interested. There is an alternatives to goals. I see so many here set goals and become sad and desolate that they did not achieve them. I've seen others achieve goals, yet lose their ultimate desire in a language because achieving the goal sucked the joy out of learning the language. Of course, I am not suggesting that everyone here on the forum follow this alternative way of achievement... but if you're interested in possibly jumping off the hamster wheel, have a look at what Leo Babauta of zenhabits.org has to say about them. It may work for you.
The best goal is no goal
Achieving without goals

[Le Baron]

Best line from the first article:

Living without goals hasn’t ever been an actual goal of mine …

I wonder what the real difference (if any) there is between 'goals' and having a plan? I also don't care too much about goals and 'tracking'. With tracking especially because it's like living life as an accountant. However, some sort of plan seems necessary. Just without very specific and fixed goals.

[Iversen]

I don't like new year's resolutions, and it's an quire unintended and fortuitous accident that I have decided to add something to my repertoire of techniques just now, but I have started to listen to short fragments in Slavic languages as spoken by Google translate and then repeat them - and do this a couple of times before proceeding to the next short fragment. This activity should presumably push those languages a bit more towards something that also exists in spoken versions (and not just as written languages).

[golyplot]

My goals are to read the first six Harry Potter books in Japanese and to become conversational in Japanese. The latter seems like a longshot though.

[sporedandroid]

I’m already watching Finnish YouTube videos fairly regularly. My approach for learning languages is to fake it til I make it. I’m still mainly faking it. Hopefully I’ll make it some time this year. I think I’ll also try to get into some Finnish podcasts. Right now I appreciate the visuals I get from YouTube videos. Especially vlogs and day in the life videos where people pretty much describe exactly what they’re doing. Pretty easy to fake it when I watch those videos.

For now I plan to stay reasonably consistent with Anki. I specifically created a beginner Anki deck that I plan to delete when I get to a higher level. I think since I’m a beginner, staying consistent will really pay off. Passion can’t do much. I guess passion does help me tolerate watching two hours of videos without understanding much. It probably isn’t the most efficient use of my time, but if I enjoy it I don’t really care.

My goals for Hebrew are less defined. I decided to take a break around late September. Right before they declared war. I didn’t specifically take a break because of current events. I was losing motivation and unhappy with my progress. I just kept going through the motions without seeing any improvement. Right now I’m taking a break which I think is helping me sort of get the passion back. I’m more focused on my feelings than making any progress.

If I feel like making more progress, I’m going to try to get an audiobook for one of the books I have and listen and read at the same time. I’ve tried this before, but it’s fairly challenging when I’m dealing with any migraines. I just want to be able to read better in Hebrew.

[ryanheise]

My resolution for 2023 was to just focus on physiotherapy to help with my walking since my language learning has always been tied to my daily walks. Almost immediately I suffered a labral tear in my left hip, and later a second(!) labral tear in my right hip, each of which set me back 6 months, and through hard work, I finished the year back up to where I started. But just like a language learning plateau which is an opportunity for consolidation before moving on, I still gained muscle mass during that time where it seemed like I was making no progress, and am in a stronger position for 2024. My 2024 resolution will be the same as my 2023 resolution.

As for "goals vs habits", or "goals vs no goals", there is a type of goal that doesn't seem so bad. Here are my goals for 2024 (more distance = more language learning):



There is no time pressure for this goal, I will reach it whenever I reach it. But in order to reach it, I need to consistently put in the time/distance every day, and gradually increase that (100 metres every 2 weeks). And there is not just one reward at the end after reaching the goal, new rewards are unlocked every 2 weeks as I expand my radius. In each expansion, I get to experience more places and more language saturation up until I reach that maximum limit (marked as GOAL) where the daily habit doesn't stop but just continues at that same level. One of the rewards along the way should (hopefully) happen in about 6 months when I will be able to walk far enough to reach one of the old language exchange places that I used to go to. Anyway, whatever happens in 2024, I'm happy with this plan since there will surely be rewards all along the way to where I want to be.

[Cainntear]

I wonder what the real difference (if any) there is between 'goals' and having a plan?

Replace "goal" with destination and "plan" with route, and you've got an analogous thing -- routes require a destination, but destinations don't necessarily inply routed; and a destination without a route won't guarantee you ever get there.
A plan needs to work towards a goal, but having a goal doesn't mean you have a plen. Setting goals without setting plans makes it hard to be sure your goal is achievable.