2022 is here and it's time to get back to basics!
For me, anyway.
My journey with German has been a long one and there are gaps to plug, but I'm happy with my level right now. I'm still working on it, of course, but I interact with German every day without even really noticing it. I translated one book last year and - if things go well - I might be translating the second book in the series this year, which is always a good vocabulary builder!
My Spanish journey has been about as long as my German one, just with much less focus. I'd love to get this up to a good B2 level this year; again, a lot of it is about plugging gaps before I move back onto more intermediate/advanced material.
And poor, poor Mandarin. I was hoping (pre-2020) to go to China again this year but that's not on the cards for all kinds of reasons - but also, my knowledge of the language has dramatically decreased since I graduated. Again, I need to refresh, get things back to about where they were, and then likely work with a tutor/exchange partner to push up the spoken stuff. Reading and writing are going to be my downfall, though, so need to get a plan for those.
These are my core three languages. I've been working on them forever, I love them, and I want to really push through what's been holding me back the past few years and make some progress.
What about the others?
I'm not committing to adding a full-time language this year - though I will be spending some time on Polish until May. I'm not going to even pretend to know whether international events are likely to go ahead in 2022, but if the Polyglot Gathering is on, I'm likely to be there, and in that case I wouldn't mind spending some time in Poland as well. Plus, I've dabbled in Polish before, it seems fun, and useful in the UK as well. I got Teach Yourself Polish for £1.99 a couple of weeks ago, so I'm going to work through that and Pimsleur and see how it goes.
Goals for 2022
- Read 20 books in German.
- Watch 100 episodes/films in German.*
- Read 5 books in Spanish.
- Watch 50 episodes/films in Spanish.
- Watch 50 episodes/films in Mandarin.
- Finish Teach Yourself Polish.
This is my tentative list of goals for this year - with a heavy focus on media consumption because 1) I know it's helpful and 2) I know I like doing it.
* I know there's a difference between films and episodes - but I'm likely to go over this number if it's just episodes anyway, especially for Mandarin, where one Mainland series is usually at least 50 episodes long!
I'm hoping to keep up a daily / every other day little overview of what I've done here, too, to keep on track. I don't think I'll have monthly goals as such; I just need to get on with being consistent, which means finishing things I start (unless, of course, they're really not helping me reach any goals).
Happy 2022!