A language learners’ forum

Cèid Donn wrote:May we all succeed, and if not succeed, fail with grace and pizzazz.

I misread that as "pizzas" first, and thought, "Wow! I'm in!" Failure is always better with pizzas.

My overall goal is to do at least one thing in one language every day, even if it's just reading one newspaper article, or one page of a book, etc. Kind of like the 365 day challenge a lot of people are doing, but with no restrictions, since it can be any language, and the minimum time per day is basically any time at all. My goal is just not to completely abandon language-learning when I inevitably feel like I need a break.

Spanish:

• Finish FSI Spanish, GdUdE B1-B2, and my Anki 5000 word frequency deck.
• Do some more intensive work with reading/watching TV.
• Finish at least 4 books.
• At least 150 hours of listening, particularly TV/movies made outside of Spain.
• Work on the subjunctive and feel comfortable using it spontaneously myself (I don't expect to feel like I've completely mastered it, but I'd like to be more familiar with it and know most of the cases when it's used).

French:

• Finish FSI French Phonology.
• At least 100 hours of listening.
• Be able to watch a TV show/movie in French that I've never seen before without subtitles and follow the plot and not get terribly lost.
• Finish at least 2 books.

In 2019 I want to read more German. This year I only finished 3 German books. Next year I ought to do better.

I'd also like to figure out what, if anything, I want to do next with languages. Do I pick up a shiny new one, give an old neglected one some polish, or simply sit back and enjoy what I have already achieved with German? At the moment I am just procrastinating through my indecision - I don't want that to continue throughout next year.

brokenrecord wrote:My overall goal is to do at least one thing in one language every day, even if it's just reading one newspaper article, or one page of a book, etc. Kind of like the 365 day challenge a lot of people are doing, but with no restrictions, since it can be any language, and the minimum time per day is basically any time at all. My goal is just not to completely abandon language-learning when I inevitably feel like I need a break.

Hey @brokenrecord, come join me in the 365 day challenge in the "generic" category. You can study any language as long as it is 30 min per day.

IronMike wrote:

brokenrecord wrote:My overall goal is to do at least one thing in one language every day, even if it's just reading one newspaper article, or one page of a book, etc. Kind of like the 365 day challenge a lot of people are doing, but with no restrictions, since it can be any language, and the minimum time per day is basically any time at all. My goal is just not to completely abandon language-learning when I inevitably feel like I need a break.

Hey @brokenrecord, come join me in the 365 day challenge in the "generic" category. You can study any language as long as it is 30 min per day.

I had thought about doing that, but I don't think the 365 day challenge suits my purposes. I know 30 minutes a day isn't really a lot (and nearly every day, I do more than that), but even that feels too restrictive for me. I understand the purpose behind having a minimum of 30 minutes, but the reason I've made that goal is because if I completely skip a day, it's likely to turn into a week or a month because I'm easily distracted by my other interests. However, if I stick to doing even a minute of work a day, then I'm more likely to get back to spending greater amounts of time on my languages sooner. But thanks for the invite, anyways! I do think it's a great idea, and I wish everyone who's committed to that challenge the best of luck!

I can't even remember what my goals for 2018 were. I'd have to look through my first language log and it should be there somewhere. It's still too painful to reread that log- I don't need any more explicit reminders of the horror that was IB HL French and how naive I was.

My resolution is to always engage with all three languages everyday in anyway I can no matter- as long as it's a minimum of 30 minutes a day for each of them.

My goal for French would be to hopefully pass the DALF (or at least not to completely fail every section).

For Japanese, I want to be able to watch one season of Terrace House/one episode of Haikyuu or Boku no Academia/a Studio Ghibli film without needing to rely completely on subtitles.

For Spanish, I want to be able to have decent conversations and understand a couple of decent shows that I find.

It's already on my log, but in the interest of making myself doubly accountable:

Five books each in Spanish, German, and Italian. Adult novels or substantial words of nonfiction.
One easy reader in Persian
4,000 words in Anki (a thousand in each language)

Note though that I did set these goals out about two months ago so I already am well underway. Cheating? Maybe...

If I hit the targets before the end of the year, then I will let myself embrace the wanderlust!

I haven't posted on my log yet but my main resolution is too be more consistent with my studying. For 2018 I definitely made progress with my Spanish but it could have been much better if I didn't have so many start and stop bursts that set me back. I signed up for the 365 day challenge so I'm hoping that will help me be more accountable.

Anyway, to be more specific I would love to get to around B2. I'm currently A2 and so if I can stay consistent I think I can get there but if not that's fine too as long I stay on track.

In 2018 because of work I mainly concentrated on Spanish, French, German with a bit of Italian, Arabic and Polish - and one conversation in Japanese thrown in - so I didn't have time or opportunity to branch out properly into anything else.

So for 2019 which is now already two hours and fifty one minutes old I'm going to have a proper crack at PERSIAN which I've been perusing for a while now but not seriously got even close to conversational - I can just about introduce myself and talk about family, order a meal etc. My handwriting is rubbish but it's not that good in English either as it looks like a spider with tremors and a snotty cold wobbled across the page after having several beers.
I can't decide whether I would also revive my LATIN from my schoolboy days but that should be easy .

This is late, but I was traveling during New Year’s and then sick. Time to write my post and finally close this tab on my Internet browser!

I don’t quite remember what my specific resolutions were for 2018, but I think they basically amounted to the following:
- improve your Japanese (because you live in Japan)
- improve your German (because you might be moving to Germany)

With such horribly vague goals, it’s easy to claim success. I did improve my Japanese a great deal in the first half of the year, but then I left Japan and stopped using Japanese altogether, so I may have lost most or all of that progress. German, on the other hand, has come a long way. I don’t think I was even conscious of the extent to which my German had become rusty after several years of neglect, but I’ve certainly revived it now to the level it once was at, and improved it further. I’ve been living in Germany for about 4 months now with almost no (language-related) difficulty. In the spring I added the goal of drastically improving my vocabulary in Greek, because it was kind of embarrassing how limited it was. That’s not a task that can ever truly be completed, but I can say with certainty that my Greek vocabulary is far better than it was a year ago.

I wrote more detailed goals for 2019 in my personal notes already, but I’ll share the gist of them here:
- Maintain/strengthen/solidify/reactivate: Croatian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish (all approximately C1, some rusty)
- Greek: Continue plugging away at Greek to reach stronger B2 or approach C1. I expect to spend at least a couple weeks in Greece this summer.
- Italian: I’m already easily B2 in passive skills, but I’d like to be solidly B2 in active production as well. Motivation: possibly visiting Italy during the summer.
- Turkish: My Turkish has atrophied a lot since I studied in Istanbul a few years back, and it’s embarrassing. I’d like to get it back up to a solid B2.
- Japanese: I’ve put so much effort into Japanese and it’s a shame to just lose it. I’d like to bring it back to the level I was at before I left Japan (high B1 ~ low B2). Beyond that I don’t really care.
- Mandarin: Mandarin is on hold for now. My goal is not to forget everything and maybe maintain my A2~B1 level.
- Persian: I’ve been saying for years that this will be be the year that I really devote myself to Persian and finally reach B2. This year probably won’t be any different, but the goal remains high B1 or B2.
- Arabic: I started studying Arabic a couple weeks ago, inspired by an upcoming trip to Morocco this spring. I don’t know how much time I can realistically dedicate to Arabic, but something like A2 in MSA by the end of 2019 would be great. I doubt I’ll have the brain/willpower to start looking the dialects in any real capacity, but if I do then all the better.