I didn’t make language goals at the start of this year because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t meet them since I had quite a lot of important dates and life changes lined up. And I was right.
My reading has been on and off the entire year, due to time constraints but also mental health related issues… 2024 is likely going to be the same in terms of busyness but I’m determined to set some goals this year, even if they’re small.
2024 Reading/Learning goals
read at least 10 japanese books (manga and individual short stories/essays excluded)
read at least 5 stories on aozora (Dazai, Edogawa etc.)
continue sentence mining from books I read and do my anki reviews
get comfortable with books up to natively lvl ~33 (meaning “relatively” few lookups, my upper reading range would probably move to ~36)
write at least 5 book reviews on natively!
above all: read (somewhat) consistently. no reading 2 books in a week and then doing nothing for three months.
aaaa can’t believe it’s really the end of the year already… I feel like I blinked in august and now it’s already december
2023 Reading Goals:
Finish every volume of manga I physically own (from before 2023 started) by the end of the year - i sorta shifted my plan for this to “read the first volume of every series I bought and decide if I want to keep them or not”, and I’m currently at 9/11 of those first volumes read. No plans to tackle the last 2, but that’s pretty solid progress. This was more to prevent my 積読本 stack from getting too out of control, and I more or less followed the spirit, if not the letter, of that goal but still couldn’t quite finish it off
Be prepared to take the JLPT N2 exam in December - Well, I sure did take it, but whether I was prepared is another story lol. Pass or fail, don’t think I’ll be taking another jlpt unless I need to. I really just did not enjoy the experience of studying for and taking this test. I’ll just call it a “learning experience”
Complete 100 Books (english+jp combined, jp manga included) and 100 journal articles in 2023 - currently at 95/100 books, should easily break 100 before the end of the month, and 29/100 journal articles… whoops There might be some I read but forgot to track on my spreadsheet, but still significantly short of that goal.
Continue to work on filling out the natively level n+1 challenge! - At the start of the year, the hardest thing I’d read was 22 (ホリミヤ), and if I finish とらドラ！before the end of the year, I will have finished every level up to 32. Pretty happy on this front!
No missed japanese reading days - unqualified success!
Experiment with different formats of reading - this one was kinda unstated, but I wanted to try to branch out from the mostly manga I’d been reading up to that point. I read some childrens books, some short stories, short essays, actual newspapers like the 朝日新聞, and finished a few short visual novels, and at least the better part of a light novel! Dabbled in some novel novels, but ended up not finishing あん or コンビニ人間
Solid progress, I’d say! For 2024, I’d still like to be working on some big goals, but maybe a little less intense than the ones I set up for this year I do think I succeeded in getting to the point where most of the manga I read doesn’t feel like enough effort to count, although some series definitely still do.
2024 Reading Goals
Read 10 books - counting anything over ~100 pages that’s not manga or a childrens book, but light novels are fair game. I wasn’t sure exactly how many I wanted to read, but 10 sounds like a nice good round number
Read at least 1 Novel - light novels excluded
Finish 1 longer Visual Novel - the ones I finished are basically bite sized (max 40k chars), I want to try getting lost in something with a bit more scale to it to really feel like I’ve tried out the format
Physical 積読本 stack under 20 - this one is probably my most ambitious goal, seeing as how I am incapable of not buying more books
Transition to a J-J dictionary - I have some mixed feelings on how useful this will be for most words, but it’s something I’d like to try out for a bit at least
Daily Japanese Reading - kinda goes without saying, since consistency has really been my main weapon in learning japanese, but I would like to keep my streak alive so I write it for the sake of accountability
Continue Natively Level+1 Challenge - my goal this year was to break into the 30s, but making it all the way to the 40s seems extremely optimistic. Either way, call that the loose goalpost
No plans to even pretend to prepare for N1 at the moment, but I imagine pushing higher into the levels will naturally prepare me for that should the need to start studying arise. I really hope the need does not arise, though…
Instead I read like uhhhh 102 manga and 27 graded readers and who knows what number of NHK Easy articles, tweets, etc. I think since Jan 1 I’ve missed less than 20 days of reading at least 15 minutes a day, and as I got more confident that time spent per day became higher. I’ve started branching out and feeling comfortable challenging a much larger variety of manga than I thought at this stage.
It’s been a good year, even if I didn’t achieve the goal I set out with. I only wish I had started sooner. (In fact, I think I registered on Natively years ago, but I didn’t actually start using it until this year. How stupid of me)
2024 goal: read a novel or a light novel or a children’s book that isn’t for preschoolers. Everything else is a bonus
I don’t like to set specific goals, as they tend to have the opposite effect on me. I just want each year to be better in some way than the last one.
Here’s what I wrote last year:
Let’s break it down:
Read
Clear my current 積読 pile (hahaha, dream on)
Read more books than last year (32 so far compared to last year’s ~15)
Discover more authors I like, and enjoy myself.
All in all, not bad.
For next year, I’d like to:
Read more books than last year
Discover more authors I like
Read fewer books I have misgivings about. So far no book I read despite my instincts turned out to be one I enjoyed.
Read at least one book from my 積読 for every newly bought book I read (note: read, not buy. That would be impossible)
Vague, optional goals:
Get better at listening. This has already been quietly happening, but I hate working for it. I’m willing to work hard at reading, but listening often feels like a chore, even when I understand what I’m hearing. Anyway, it would be nice to look back and see that I’ve made some progress. Not really a quantifiable goal, I know, but that’s okay.
Possibly start, very slowly and casually, learning Korean? I’d like my Japanese to be much better before I do that, but nothing compares to the thrill of starting a new language, and watching what previously seemed like gibberish gradually turn into understandable content. So, maybe? Or maybe not yet.
Kanji – I want to increase my ability to recognise kanji dramatically
Study 4 new kanji and related vocab per day with the aim to target recognition
Vocabulary – I want to steadily increase my vocabulary by reading consistently
Read 1 episode per day on Satori and add 3 new words per day to my stack
Prepare written text and sentences for my conversations and grammar course
Grammar
Make an overview of grammar points from JfBP and Satori (optionally cross reference Genki grammar and points from DoBJG)
Write new grammar points and constructions (e.g., on index cards) as prompts for when I’m preparing sentences for conversation practice
What happened
Shortly after the new year, I recognised that I was doing what I always do. Make really big goals that are unrealistic and then proceed to do none of them most of the time.
So I decided to do just one thing really well, and I decided to read every day. And I tracked my vocab growth with that. I document that on the WK forums here.
The summary of what I achieved:
Except for 1 month I read every day, and except for about 3 months, I read my target amount per day (> 1500 characters).
I increased my vocabulary by more than 1000 words, and after having stagnated for several years this felt great
Reading is dramatically easier, I went from struggling with a 2nd grade biographies book, to being able to read several new pages a day and enjoying it. I finished my first manga – 小さな森のオオカミちゃん and several series on Satori (Jam Maker, River Sanzu, Oku Nikkou). And I can read short stories online that are targeted to native speakers. It really surprises me that this is already possible!
2024 goals:
Continue 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.
I had some pretty vague goals at the start of 2023; like so many other before me, let’s break them down:
Read more in general: Easy success. I finished 68 books this year (all book types combined) compared with 24 in 2022. I’ve also read for a cool 267 days so far this year, and managed to hit one month where I read every single day!
Become more comfortable with different styles of writing and author voices: Hard to track, but I probably succeeded given the larger number of books I managed to get through this year.
30 LN/novels completed: 16/30 Well, I got over halfway at least.
Slowly pick up manga off my TBR pile and work my way through them: Another easy success: I read 40 entire manga this year (compared to 8 last year).
Listen to more audiobooks: I did fantastic; I got really lucky in that most of the book clubs I’ve participated in this year had an audiobook I could pick up. By my rough count I listened to 6 full audiobooks this year (7 when I finish medium) as I read along.
Read through all my physical manga (or read enough to decide not to continue it if need be)
Work my way through the rest of the audiobooks I picked up this year (I won’t jot down an actual list; just gotta get through more)
Finish watching 5 TV shows and 5 movies in Japanese - harder than it looks; I barely watch anything in English so I’m predisposed to not watch anything in Japanese either.
Finish reading FLESH & BLOOD (series) | L34 : Ugh, I hate to even say it; it’s one of those series you read and read and hope it never ends. But I’d rather read to the end than never finish it. And there are plenty of bonus stories and drama CDs I’ll need to work on in-between, so the party should last me all year.
2024 Spicy Modifier: Only read books and join book clubs for books I already own : Ain’t gonna happen, lol. But I’ll try my best, and only buy the new books that look really, really good. (Watch me immediately break this…)
Bonus 2024:Dust off that Spanish
Ah, the eternal “I should probably pick my school Spanish back up”. Now that Natively’s got Spanish locked in its sights, I’m hoping to be able to access that everlasting well of motivation called “peer pressure”.
Any particular reason you’re starting on the third book, out of curiosity?
After several intense years with Japanese, I didn’t set any goals this year. I suffered from pretty bad burnout at the end of 2022 and wanted to take it easy this year and start having fun again. I think I’ve accomplished that and am back in a good mindset, ready for 2024!
Korean
This was a fantastic year for my Korean learning! I think I’ve achieved a very solid level that will allow me to learn 90% or more from reading and listening immersion only going forward.
Reach TOPIK level 6
→ I missed the test but will consider this complete as I was easily completing level 6 materials
Interact with Korean culture and Koreans more
→ Visited Korea this year and spoke to people for the first time, made some amazing Korean friends this year
Reach 300 hours of total time spent listening to Korean audio without subs
→ Was not easy but I did it with a lot of effort and time management!
Reach 8,000 pages read
→ Just completed this as I finished up the Korean edition of Ascendence of a Bookworm with the book club!
2024 Goals
Japanese
Read all of my TBR
→ I am currently at around 40 books and think this is doable with a bit of discipline
Read at least 15 level 40+ books
→ I feel very comfortable reading the average work of adult fiction but want to continue going outside of my comfort zone and tackling harder and older books
Read all of 本好きの下剋上
→ I have always wanted to read one of those very long LN series and enjoy this one, so let’s do it!
Korean
I anticipate that Korean won’t be my main focus in 2024, but it would be great to keep up some of the momentum I have from this year . As such, I’ve set myself the following very casual goals:
Join in any Korean book clubs that pop up on the forums here
Read 13 novels (if I don’t reach this I won’t be disappointed, though)
Because I found it at a used book store - I know the whole series basically inside out because I loved it as a kid, so which book I start with isn’t super relevant all things considered.
Also so many people have 積読 goals…maybe I should work on mine Ok, ambitious addition to my 2024 goals:
Read 5 books from my physical 積読
I say this like it will even make a dent…
I wish I could make detailed concrete goals like you all! But I’ve had enough failures to realize by now that I’m the sort of person that, if I spend too much time doing that, my brain seems to get the same satisfaction as if I actually did it… and then I get nothing done.
What’s been a lot more successful for me is to tell myself to put in x amount of doable time a day doing something, logging it so I can check progress every now and then and moving on.
So! I guess my major goals will be to:
☆ Continue to review 10 new kanji in the ‘Kanji Study’ app and do all my reviews, which equals about an hour of work each day.
☆ Once I get through all the 常用漢字 around spring, start incorporating more kanji/vocab textbooks so I can review them in different contexts. (For some reason, I seem to remember vocab better from seeing the kanji first, so that’s why I’ve been prioritizing in that direction.)
☆ Carefully read for at least one hour a day - that means making sure to check unknown vocab in a monoligual dictionary and read articles about confusing grammar points until I’m sure I understand how it’s being used in context.
Ultimately what I choose to read I leave up to however I feel that day so I don’t feel bogged down. I only joined this site a few weeks ago, so I’ll be aggressively logging everything I finish, and hopefully by this time next year, I’ll be pleasantly surprised by my progress!
I’ll consider taking the JLPT 2? 1? closer to the middle year if I feel up for it, as well.
Wish I could do more like Anki sentence mining but right now in my life, if I can’t do it on my phone/e-reader, it won’t get done at all.
Man do I resemble this one. I tend to make my goals over the winter holiday when I’m not working and totally refreshed, so they’re technically achievable but realistically would burn me out.
As such I failed all my goals this year but I did make some progress! I finished a VN, several manga, and will finish 本好き1. I also finished Bunpro thru Quartet 2, so I’m mid way thru N3 grammar.
I think I’m going to scale back my 2023 goals since I do like them over all.
2023 Goals
Read One Manga Per Week
Read One Book Per Month
Read 5 Satori Articles per day (until subscription is up in Aprilish)
Play Persona 3 Portable (starting over from scratch with the re-release in Jan)
Keep doing WK reviews (staying at 45 at least until April, maybe longer)
Two Vocab and Two Grammar on Bunpro per day + reviews (until all unknown/weak N4/N3 are covered)
One Hour of Listening per Week (probably will increase in April when other things lighten up)
Maybe try the JLPT N3 for funsies in December
2024 Goals
Read Two Manga Per Month
Read Two Book chapters Per week
Play one game or VN
Finish WK (currently level 53)
Finish Bunpro N3 (3-5 grammar points per week)
One Hour of Listening per Week
Read 6 TBR books 23/6 This didn’t make a huge dent because I bought more books I think my current physical TBR is 24 novels and 40 manga
Get comfortable reading novels at L30 I feel quite comfortable with novels in the L30-32 range at the moment! I’ve also read a few novels in the 34-38 range this year although those were much harder
Take JLPT N2 in December Not sure if I passed the listening section, but goal was to take the test, not pass it
Mandarin
Read 1.2M characters (1M/1.2M right now, should meet this goal)
Do 50 hours of listening (51/50)
Watch 3 dramas 4/3 + 1 movie
My 2024 goals are:
Japanese
Read 50 LN/novels
Read 50 volumes of manga
Finish 3 novel series
Do 100 hours of listening practice without subtitles (because I read instead of listen )
I read 12 LN/novels in November so I’m being ambitious and hoping that the trend will continue for at least part of next year haha. This could go very wrong but chances are most of my reading will be 本好きの下剋上 (I’ve currently read through volume 7 of 33), ティアムーン帝国物語 (9/14, ongoing series), and かくりよの宿飯 (3/12).
There might be some I read but forgot to track on my spreadsheet, but still significantly short of that goal. 
I do think I succeeded in getting to the point where most of the manga I read doesn’t feel like enough effort to count, although some series definitely still do.
(hahaha, dream on)
Japanese
Korean
Chinese
Thai
2024 Spicy Modifier: Only read books and join book clubs for books I already own 
Dust off that Spanish
Ok, ambitious addition to my 2024 goals:
I think my current physical TBR is 24 novels and 40 manga