Goals & Plans 2025 + Review 2024

All Languages
21

Well, I read 28 full length books that are not classified as LN on Natively. I honestly think 3~7 of those could be considered LNs, for instance 吸血鬼はお年ごろ | L25 or ゴーストハント1 旧校舎怪談 | L33. Anyway, that’s still >20 books.

Only 2 non-fiction though, one of which is still technically novelized (私小説―from left to right | L40).

For 2025… well, nothing drastically changed in my life, so more of the same?
Although, I am interested in actually getting through my TBR, so I want to get through the 10 oldest one in there: 源氏物語 01 桐壺 | L50?? which is the last book I still have on my Apple Books app (I know it’s Aozora so I could just jettison it anyway with nothing of value lost, but I don’t wanna; also I’m still hoping to read it this month for my bingo), 闇祓 | L29, 妻は、くノ一 (last two I still have on my Bookmeter wishlist), then finally top off with stuff from Natively that, mathematically have been in there for like 3~4 years.

22 Likes
22

I didn’t really have concrete goals for 2024 (except maybe finishing up Genki), but whatever I hoped to accomplish this year, I failed. I did finally go to Japan, so there’s that. But that was this year and the beginning of a new year brings forth new possibilities! and hopefully no big failures or disappointments

Japanese
My main language focus for the last couple of years

  • Finish Genki II
  • Possibly finish Quartet I
  • Finish N4 (grammar and vocab) on Bunpro
  • Finish 5 manga volumes
  • Reach 200 hours in listening (excluding anything with English subs-anime, games, etc)
  • Finish going through Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

German
The language I have suffered been with the longest. When I started to focus on Japanese more, my German took a hit. I had only just started to interact with it again just in the last a couple of months. Next year I want to regain some of my skills.

  • Reach 100 hours in listening (knowing me, that might be a stretch)
  • Get back into reading (in other words: finish Der Hobbit and go from there)
  • Review the A1, A2, and B1 material on DW Learn German site

Korean
I originally started to learn Korean last year, but I haven’t got far. At all.

  • Go through the beginner TTMIK textbooks I have already
  • Reach 50 hours in listening (setting the bar low with this one)
  • Read all of my favorite web comics in the original language LOL, JK. More like start on easy graded readers

Spanish
???

  • Engage with more wishful thinking

Is that enough for one year? Yes, that’s enough.

19 Likes
23

I would say I’ve achieved this goal. I’m now at 27 series I’ve started but haven’t finished, which is more than the 22 I had a year ago. But only 7 of those are completed series, and really it’s more like 4 since I plan to finish 3 of them by end of year. (I did also officially drop 3 series.)

For 2025, I think I’ll set two very basic goals:

  1. Read two actual novels dammit! I haven’t actually finished (and barely attempted) an actual novel (non-LN) in two years. Admittedly it’s been a rough two years, which is why I read so much manga and not even many LNs this year, but I want to try to make my reading a little more balanced. The most obvious candidate is to finish 博士の愛した数式 | L34, which I paused at about the halfway point, but I don’t want to use that as a cheat which is why my goal is two novels instead of one. That said, I have very few novels on my radar, so I don’t really know what I’d read. :disappointed:
  2. End the year with fewer physical unread manga than I start it with. Right now the count is 37 volumes (I will update this number after the new year updated), excluding a few from series I’ve dropped and a premium edition I don’t intend to read any time soon. I will of course buy more physically, most likely in the range of 40-70 volumes, so I’ll just need to read a little more than I buy.
25 Likes
24

The 2nd post was a great idea. tl;dr and comment as well.

Mandarin Chinese

  • Get into reading with mostly good comprehension
  • Get into listening with fair comprehension
  • Maybe get into speaking and chatting
  • Finish vocabularies up to HSK Level 6
  • My study log in WaniKani is more Chinese-focused

Japanese

  • 10 manga series / 100 manga volumes
  • 3 light novels series
  • Get into web novels (I might not need as long as a year)
  • Get into manga magazines and weekly updates
  • Get practical and reliable at listening to news
  • Practical at able to listen to audiobook without needing text volume

I have 2024 goals in WaniKani. I should wait for the end of the year to summary (prob some day in Jan 2025). So far,

  • 76 books according to Bookmeter, most of which are manga. Some are audiobooks, including 本好きの下剋上 up to Vol.6
  • Didn’t read a Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar yet. WaniKani has a club starting Jan 2025.
  • I didn’t try to complete Joyo list. Reading and learning vocabularies only.
  • Japanese listening is unreliable. Some not bad, some bad.
  • No Japanese friends
  • Mandarin Chinese was started latter half of the year. Now can read, on a shaky ground, and a lot of lookup.
24 Likes
25

Year one (of goals and plans, not learning Japanese). Surely I’m not swinging too wide

In order from which ones I think are the easiest to achieve to the hardest to achieve

Japanese

Extra goals section

  • (Hopefully…) Read 80% of my physical manga collection
  • Finish at least one Super Sentai or Kamen Rider show with Japanese subtitles AND one Precure show with Japanese subtitles (the first two are weird because nobody knows the levels of Super Sentai and Kamen Rider is stuffed into one big category; Precure in progress) I’m a very start in release order guy but the first Kamen Rider has off-sync subtitles so this is interesting for me
  • Fix grammar notebook up to date
  • Play one Japanese RPG of any level
  • Starting pitch accent practice (extremely vague, i don’t know.)

Bingo sounds cool but I’m not quite there yet

Vietnamese

  • Watch OR play literally anything
  • Make an Anki deck for literally any vocabulary learned from read/watched/played

Thinking of studying Vietnamese pisses me off bad, not because it’s a “bad language” but because I’m a heritage “speaker” so it’s actually really difficult to understand what I know from what I don’t before examining learning material

Extras
  • Start crocheting
  • Finish all of my level one basics books for the three instruments I am practicing/playing
  • Study physics
24 Likes
26

You could try the Bingo with manga or graded readers. Difficulty doesn’t matter, we’re all just having fun!

11 Likes
27

I’m realizing that I only set goals for Korean last year.

2024 Goals: Korean

  • I want to up my Italki classes from 30 minutes to 45 minutes per lesson(or even an hour? We’ll see). And still two classes a week of course
    :x: epic fail, I stopped Italki some time in January? I did get better at speaking however, although how that happened I have no idea

  • Read at least 5 novels, graded readers exclude
    :white_check_mark: 8/5 so far, and several I’m close to completing, so I should get to 10 by the end of the year, if not more

  • Finish the graded readers that I already bought
    :question: I decided to stop Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners | L12. I’m also seriously wondering whether I should do the same with Korean Stories for Language Learners: Traditional Folktales in Korean and English (Free Online Audio) | L10. Or I could just finish it in December :sweat_smile:. On the brightside, I’ve crushed through the other graded readers I had, including the Darakwon graded readers. The only one I have left is 홍길동전 | L34?? which I will start next week and should finish in early February, but I bought that a lot more recently.

  • Book clubs! Join any that are in Korean and actually feasible for my level. (And don’t buy books that are way too high lvl that I won’t be able to read for a long time)
    :x: stuff happened so I couldn’t join all the book clubs I wanted to join. I also bought the first Harry Potter book, which looking back was very ambitious

  • Take the TOPIK II and get TOPIK 3 level
    :x: same as above, with my health going sideways I just couldn’t take it this year. Concerning how high my current level is though, I would say I’m maybe around TOPIK 4? Or getting there very soon at least

  • 5 audiobooks including graded readers. Just more listening practice in general
    :white_check_mark: 5/5 (soon to be 6, just 15 minutes left on that audiobook). I listened to the four volumes of 사라진 날 | L18 that are on Storytel. I do think I generally did more listening than the previous year, but not as much as I was hoping

  • Daily reading (if reasonable, there will be no burnouts happening next year)
    :white_check_mark: All the months where my health was well enough for me to read, I got there. I was forced to take a break from most brain intensive activities though this summer, but I did manage to stop myself from worsening the situation by exhausting myself even more

  • Weekly writing practice
    :x: this one I failed miserably and I have no excuses :joy:

Overall, I’m pretty happy about everything I’ve accomplished for Korean. My body did not cooperate this year, but that did not stop me from still acheiving some of those goals! 3.5/8

2025 Goals

Korean

Japanese

  • Finish Genki I (and Genki II? Unless I find another resource by then and do that instead)
  • Wanikani level 30
  • 5 mangas
  • A long form graded reader or children’s book?
  • Some listening practice
  • ABBC on wanikani

Italian

  • Finish the graded readers I already have
  • 3 novels (children’s books included)
  • Listening! Some of those beginner and intermediate stories on Youtube? Movies? TVshows?

Spanish

  • 12 novels. So one per month. Not a lot, but I really just need to find the motivation to read more
20 Likes
28

2024 Recap:

  • Read 10 books - not happening, I’m at 3/10, could potentially make it to 4 or 5, but 10 is pretty much out of the realm of possibility. :x:
  • Read at least 1 Novel Finished コンビニ人間 :white_check_mark:
  • Finish 1 longer Visual Novel - played through the first ARIA PS2 game in my listening challenge in feb. :white_check_mark:
  • Physical 積読本 stack under 20 - lmao, lol :x: I did a pretty good job of not increasing the amount of physical stuff I bought this year, but I definitely did not make a big dent in my current stack.
  • Transition to a J-J dictionary - this one I’ve kinda done a little bit. I have a j-j dictionary on yomichan, and spend a lot of time looking up things in japanese, especially as the japanese specificity of my questions has increased, but I still primarily use a j-e dictionary when reading if that options is available. :white_check_mark: :question: like said originally, I still not totally sold on using a j-j dictionary for everything, but there’s definitely cases where it’s easier or required to use them, so getting practice using one is definitely good.
  • Daily Japanese Reading - 0 missed days, don’t see that changing :white_check_mark:
  • Continue Natively Level+1 Challenge - other than finishing toradora at L32, I haven’t been able to fill any boxes in, but if finishing okami is any indicator, that’s not from lack of language improvement :laughing: :white_check_mark: :question: Now that I am a lot less scared of reading stuff in the green, those reading levels will naturally start to work up as I continue to read the kinds of things that I want to read.

Overall, my goals were set based on the idea that I would continue primarily spending my time reading, which really just isn’t what happened this year. Most of my time with japanese has been spent either playing games or listening, which means my quantifiable goals for tracking reading progress did not align with the actual study I ended up doing, and that’s ok!

2025 Goals:

I feel like as I’ve progressed a bit the thing that has worked the best for me are actually mid-length challenges, something that’s maybe a month or two long, so I’m going to make my main yearly goal to do more of those :laughing: This year I had a lot of success with doing a listening challenge in feb, and doing what amounted to approximately a month long project of playing okami. If the stuff I’m working on stretches beyond that time frame I seem to have a hard time staying focused on the project, so I’m going to look for more things around that length to work on.

But! there are a few things that I can say are certain goals:

  • Daily Japanese Reading and Listening - this is my kind of minimum goal, just doing something with the written and something with the spoken language at least a little bit every day, no matter how small. I’m over 800 days of reading and about 300 days of listening at this point, so those are pretty established habits.
  • Finish a Light Novel Series - I know I just said no longer term goals… but man I really want to have a finished light novel series under my belt :laughing: Primarily looking at とらドラ！ still, which is only 10 volumes and I have finished the first.
  • Finish a long Visual Novel - I finished a ~10 hour one this year, but most of the super highly rated ones are in the like 40-50+ hour range, and I want to tackle some of those. That’s probably going to be a monthish challenge goal type thing
  • Read a Physical Book - Thusfar, all of my text reading has been with the benefit of yomichan or some kind of copy/paste lookups, but I really want to be able to just pick up a book, hold it in my hands, and read it, so gotta start actually trying to do that :books:
  • Lower the 積読 stacks for both physical books/manga and games - No hard numbers, but I want that to be a general trend, trying to be reading and playing the stuff I already own
  • Spend time working on output - I really have spent close to 0 time on producing japanese, either spoken or written, but since 2023 was my year of breaking into reading, 2024 was my year of breaking into listening, I think 2025 it would be nice to be able to at least try to start working towards speaking/writing a bit. What that looks like? I don’t know! That leads me to…
  • Try new things! - One of my joys in japanese study has been finding new things to like, and I want to continue to experiment and try out new kinds of study to see where those things will take me! Doing this is what derailed my study plan for this year, so let’s make explicitly doing this the goal instead next year :laughing: Maybe I make some new friends online and start chatting with them more, maybe I get really into writing a japanese language blog, who knows!

Like with my last few years, I fully expect to fail some of these still. I do not know what my life will look like 12 months from now, or how my study techniques and likes and dislikes will change within those 12 months, but I hope that by the end of 2025 I have continued making progress in ways that bring me joy.

24 Likes
29

Thanks for starting this thread and everyone who contributed, it’s so insightful to get a peak into everyone’s language learning journey.

Japanese goals

My pattern was previously (2016-2022) to make really big goals that were unrealistic and then proceed to do none of them most of the time. That changed in 2023 when I decided to do just one thing really well, and I made just 1 goal: to read daily. That turned out to be a very successful strategy. So in 2024 I added just 1 new goal again:

2024 goals:

  • Continue (from 2023) my daily reading/vocab experiment. More specifically, I’d like to finish at least 2 books and 2 manga. I’m pretty sure I can blow that out of the water, but I’d like to be realistic.
  • Add one new goal/focus - currently drafted as improving my kanji recognition reliably by about 36 kanji per month.

2024 results

As expected, I did blow the first goal out of the water, finishing: 9 children’s books, 7 manga, 2 Satori series, 1 graded reader (N4/N3), and 1 textbook so far. I’ll almost certainly edge in 1 more children’s book and 1 more manga before the end of December.

Surprisingly (to me), I actually did manage the second goal as well - to dramatically increase my kanji recognition. This is a huge win for me since it had been a long-term (years) goal to make progress on this front. It took many months of experimenting, and I only got great traction around July. But in the end, since then I manage to learn kanji at a pace of 30-100/month depending on what I’m up for. So far I’ve gone from 326 at the start of 2024 to >700 now.

2025 goals

Goal definition thoughts

I would like to find a way to practice my output more because it is getting further and further behind my reading and listening skills. I can get my thoughts across in a rough way, but not very elegantly. I talk with a friend in Japanese 30 min/week but I realise I would improve a lot faster if I would also practice more, e.g., writing, in between. Similar to my kanji goal last year, I think I’ll need to experiment with this. I love the idea of keeping a thematic log (i.e., read about a topic in Japanese and then write my thoughts around that in Japanese). But realistically that is biting off way too much since it involves not just writing (and I struggle even committing to write even 100-200 characters now and then) but more ambitious input to explore a topic online. Although it’s quite unrealistic at the moment, I’d like to work towards it.

Let’s break this down.

What is holding me back?

  • Ability to (easily) watch travelogs and documentaries on YouTube
  • Ability to read more widely, especially nonfiction biography and historical sources
  • Ability to summarise what I’ve read or express my thoughts without undue effort

How can I turn each challenge into a habitual learning activity?

  • Listen extensively to conversational Japanese that is within reach (4989 American Life podcast). Be consistent.
  • Connect a topic I’ve read about to another media, i.e., read a short story or essay about a topic and then watch a related video.
  • Practice writing short sentences from existing sentences, e.g., taking example sentences from my grammar book and modifying them, modifying found sentences in books, repeating sentence formulation of recent constructs I learned

The hope is:

  • Connecting what I read intensively to a media source will strengthen the new knowledge and gradually stretch the depth of what I can explore online in Japanese
  • Regularly listening at a higher volume (within my comfort range) will gradually consolidate my knowledge in a way that is accessible via audio sources, not just reading.
  • Repeated writing of simple sentences and rewriting them to be more relevant to my current thoughts will lead to me more spontaneously being able to express myself in Japanese.

Again, realistically, I’m not going to add all three activities at once. I already do a bit of listening naturally, so I’ll keep that up as far as time allows. And once I get my tbr pile down, I could choose books and topics that will naturally lead me to searching for other media about those topics now and then. Of those three, the one I almost never do and will need clear goal definition is writing.

So I’ll start with that and make it as simple as possible. For example, keep a list of target grammar constructions. Then just take a few minutes a day to swap out words to write new sentences regularly. At some point, surely it will get easier to use them spontaneously, unprompted.

  1. Continue (from 2023) to read daily. Milestones: I’d like to finish my first adult-level paperback novel. In terms of parameters, I’d like to draw down to just 3-4 simultaneous reads (currently 6, likely to peak at 7 before going down), and keep my physical tbr to 3-4 (currently 9). 2023-2024 were great years for exploring what I could read, and I couldn’t have done that without throwing myself into multiple clubs and new reads. Now, I feel like I will get more enjoyment from a more focused approach as I feel a bit scattered across too many series.
  2. Continue (from 2024) improving my kanji recognition. Keep up >30 kanji per month pace. Milestone: finish the year with >1000 known kanji. I should be able to blow this out of the water, but I really want to achieve it and don’t want to set an unrealistic target. Let’s just say a stretch goal to reach 1200 would be amazing.
  3. New goal for 2025: Work towards being able to express myself better in Japanese. Practice writing short sentences from existing sentences, e.g., taking example sentences from my grammar book and modifying them, modifying found sentences in books, repeating sentence formulation of recent constructs I learned. I would consider this goal fulfilled if at the end of the year I’m regularly writing something on a weekly basis.

my study log on WK

Other languages

Do I dare making other goals for other languages?
I think I’ll wait to make a formal goal until 2026, and keep my Japanese capped at 3 formal goals.

But I’ll put in some thoughts… and maybe one will blossom eventually

English

My mother tongue is suffering! I should probably read regularly in English again.

French

Current level: probably upper A2 level
Desired level: maintain and build on this, even if it’s imperceptibly slow

I have some basic French knowledge that I’d like to keep active.

My journey has been up and down: a couple semesters at uni, then went dormant many years, surprised years later I could activate some of it on a weekend trip to France, then went dormant for many years, then went on holiday in France and was amazed how useful even a small amount was, then spent 1 year solid on Duolingo at about 20 minutes a day (at the time my French easily surpassed my Japanese even though I spent less time on it!) and after a year, went on another holiday in France - AMAZING, my SO and I had so many interesting conversations with people and even managed to get our car repaired with only our (very basic) French. I’m probably at an upper A2 level on a good day (and that good day was 1.5 years ago on that trip). Duolingo would still be helpful but for some reason after that holiday I wasn’t as drawn to it and didn’t use it since - the translation nature is a bit annoying once you’re nudging into B1+ territory imo. I could read, use podcasts, continue Duo, etc, etc. I have no shortage of ideas, I think I’ve just been overwhelmed with other stuff in life and don’t have added capacity for another language.

German

Current level: C1 (untested but fluent and at ease with life in Germany)
Desired level: Ability to express myself more clearly/with more nuance. Get rid of lots of gendered article mistakes that cause my language to feel like it’s constantly scratching at my brain. Correct worst pronunciation errors (am making progress on this front at least)

I honestly don’t know how to make progress aside from much higher volume reading and intensive output that gets corrected. Oof, a lot of work. My professional life is still 100% in English, so I’m lacking strong motivation…

20 Likes
30

Just don’t use any articles. :face_with_peeking_eye: :rofl: but in all seriousness: how do ppl even get rid of gender mistakes? Unless someone constantly corrects you, that is…
Gendered articles make 0 sense (though a couple of rules exist) and different languages have different genders for things. :thinking: I don’t think I have ever encountered a non-native with 0 gender mistakes. :thinking:

11 Likes
31

Kind (sechs Jahre alt): Mama, warum sagst du denn immer Der Auto, es heißt doch Das Auto?
Mutter: Thank you Mr Native Speaker.

10 Likes
32

:sweat_smile: nah, I’ll never get it down to zero, and people tell me it’s not that bad, and for the most part I believe them (several Germans have made the case that having more natural pronunciation and speed of speech is way better than correct articles but poor pronunciation or overthinking the grammar). But I’d sure like to improve it to let go of that corner of my brain reserved for picking articles and declensions at random when I’m unsure.

I’ve looked into this a lot. Apparently lots and lots of dictation is the way (or at least one good way) to go (listen to audio and hand write it, then double check the hand written copy for errors). It’s so mind-numbingly boring, only kids do it when forced by their parents, maybe parents don’t even force their kids to do it anymore. But it gets more active engagement of the brain on grammar than just reading, and is more effective and consistent correction than in speech (consistent conversational corrections just aren’t feasible as an adult and trying this with my SO - it’s high effort/friction and not particularly effective). Crucially, the dictation ingrains full phrase use of words, so you build in a feeling for a correct article + adjective ending + noun.

10 Likes
33

I still make gender mistakes in German, but here were a few things that helped me improve in case it’s helpful?

  1. Learning and internalizing all the gender patterns for nouns with a predictable gender. This drastically cut down the number of nouns I had to pay attention to. (Also in my unscientific opinion, a lot of the nouns that don’t fall under a pattern are for more everyday words that you hear more often, so you get good reinforcement through exposure).
  2. Purposely paying close attention to gender of those leftover nouns when listening to people, reading, or writing anything. Just noticing in general brings you pretty far!
  3. I chatted with my best friend in German a lot and told them to harshly correct me anytime I got something wrong. Ymmv depending on if you have a German speaker close to you or not, but it helps! :smile:

When in doubt you can kind of mumble genders or guess depending on the case. :joy: If it’s dativ and you just say dem, you covered 2/3 genders haha

13 Likes
34

Sooo helpful, thank you! Those suggestions are all much more realistic than what I’d found

Such a great idea to narrow down for what to pay attention to after doing that, I like that strategy a lot. Previously it felt futile as there are so many exceptions, but you’re right, it narrows down where attention is.

Very encouraging, thank you :star:

Ah, maybe that is the secret. I haven’t had much luck with corrections but the harshness / urgency would certainly help (although would it help with my relationships???). The one word I definitely now use correctly was when my SO had an absolute meltdown after the 10th time he corrected me from Tankestelle → Tankstelle. :sweat_smile: No, I never made that mistake again. But such an emotional outburst about a word is perhaps only authentic in a once in 10 year cycle :joy:

OMG yes

9 Likes
35

Yay I’m glad!

There are plenty of lists online that have some (some lists look like they don’t have all of them, though, so make sure to check several different ones!!)

Or an advanced grammar book like “B Grammatik” or “C Grammatik” (these are my favorites) should have a list.

Maybe harsh is not the right word! I meant more like “streng”? :laughing: Important to note I didn’t have my actual partner correct me and just a good friend haha. Just someone who is honest by still helpful.

7 Likes
36

Have you tried finding someone 10+ years older than you? It may be that if you have someone who doesn’t feel like a peer might have less problems correcting you. I say this like you can just pick up an older friend at a store (:sweat_smile:), but it might be worth thinking in your extended social group about someone who might fit this.

7 Likes
37

Do you mean as a partner or friend? :rofl:

8 Likes
38

This is off topic a bit but Sail is a Japanese language exchange platform that primarily connects retired old Japanese folks (on the platform for free) with Japanese learners (who pay). So… Maybe you can pay an older person to talk to and correct you :rofl:

11 Likes
39

Language friend :joy::joy::sweat_smile:

6 Likes
40

2024 Goals
Korean

  • 4000 total pages read in Korean (inc. novels, young adult books, manhwa, poetry) :white_check_mark: at 8,000 pages!
  • 12 books (inc. novels, young adult books, language study textbooks) :white_check_mark: about 22? Excluding manhwa/picture based books like 그림 에세이, short stories

Spanish

  • 20 books (children’s books, language study textbooks, graded readers :x: lmao I got to 10

Going to try and add more while simplifying my goals…

2025 Goals
Korean

  • 13,000 total pages read on LN
  • Finish one textbook
  • Have a 50/50 English and Korean books read this year on Storygraph (in 2024 it’s 54/46 so very doable I think) (I read about 52 books a year so this also kind of makes my goal to be 26 Korean books lol)

Spanish

  • Finish one textbook
  • 10 graded readers/children’s books
  • One novel (really shooting for the stars with this one)
18 Likes