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).
read at least one book in the L34-L40 range (the green levels): 0/1
finish Wanikani: reached level 50 , but not level 60
finish Bunpro N3:
listening: didn’t really do much of this but I did finally do a couple italki lessons and I listened more than I did in previous years, so it’s sort of a win?
I was doing really well until June, then I kind of stopped >_< 2023’s not over yet, but I’m not going to be able to meet my goals.
But on the other hand I’ve gotten back to learning Irish!! Which was something I wanted to do but didn’t have any specific plans for
2024 Goals
The main priority will be Japanese, but I will also work on Irish^_^
日本語
actually finish Wanikani oh my god
Bunpro N2
read every day. that’s it. I have some reading challenges I’m participating in (Level+1 and Natively Bingo), but my main priority will be staying consistent
edit: 1000 minutes of active listening practice
Gaeilge
keep attending classes (started going again recently and I wish I never stopped)
I didn’t expect to be doing any language learning at all this year until I found Natively in October while I was in Japan (and then bought a bunch of books that I couldn’t read ) It’s been a pretty productive couple of months, though I can feel the initial burst of energy waning. I’ve been surprised that I’ve been able to pick it back up pretty quickly given that it’s been a couple years since I’ve done anything outside of Duolingo.
I am also the kind of person who is terrible at goals, so for 2024 mine are going to be very simple:
read
don’t burn out
have fun
More specifically:
keep learning grammar through Bunpro (finish N4 + start N3)
keep learning vocab for various things I eventually want to read through jpdb
maybe read my first LN and/or children’s novel (I signed up for both book clubs which might be biting off more than I can chew, but we’ll see)
I hope I can keep up with some book clubs here and on WK, and the bingo event! And maybe slowly get back into Mandarin & Cantonese as well.
Good question… I had to dig through my browser history to get an idea, because I don’t remember. I think I saw some Tadoku graded readers in a Kinokuniya, googled some reviews of them and ended up on /r/LearnJapanese where someone mentioned it in a comment as a good place to find material at your level after graded readers.
It’s fairly new, right? I didn’t see Natively being used for WaniKani book clubs in like… late 2021 when I briefly dipped back into learning Japanese, or I would have probably found it there.
I’m getting back into studying Japanese this fall for the first time since college, so I don’t really know what numbers I want to be aiming to accomplish. My goals here are pretty vague.
My goals for 2024
Read more thoroughly - no skimming manga – actually look up and make vocab cards for words I don’t 100% know.
Finish going through my premade 2k/6k anki deck.
Read (thoroughly) my physical volumes of manga before buying any more (physical or digital).
That sounds about right? I want to say that Natively started up in like 2021 or so? Is that right @brandon? But I myself didn’t really start seeing it on WK until, say, early 2022.
I almost made the bookclub goal… then チュベローズで待ってる AGE22 | L33 came around… 
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
but I did finally do a couple italki lessons and I listened more than I did in previous years, so it’s sort of a win?