🙋 Language goals for 2024? How did you do in 2023? ✨

[HopeWaterfall]

I didn’t really have specific goals for 2023, since I really only upped my Korean practice since July. But still a huge progress, since I started taking lots of Italki classes and I can actually read now!
I pretty much started reading seriously in November, hence so far I’ve only managed to read two full graded readers. I’m well on my way to finishing another two though, so that should come before the end of the year. I also just started reading 보라색 치마를 입은 여자, but who knows when I’ll actually manage to finish it.

For 2024,

• 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
• Read at least 5 novels, graded readers excluded
• Finish the graded readers that I already bought
• 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)
• Take the TOPIK II and get TOPIK 3 level
• 5 audiobooks including graded readers. Just more listening practice in general
• Daily reading (if reasonable, there will be no burnouts happening next year)
• Weekly writing practice

Hopefully that’s not too ambitious, I feel like it’s definitely very doable but I guess we’ll see that next year.

[brandon]

@kuirin

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.

@eefara

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.

@cat

I joined March of 2021 and iirc I was one of the early joiners. I saw Brandon’s reddit post (I was a lurker) and actually was introduced to WK through Natively.

@Naphthalene

@brandon made a thread on WK in May 2021, which remained active until we got the Natively forums instead.

Yes, Natively was first announced on reddit on March 7th, 2021. There are still a few active users who came through that post, @cat being one of them . But yeah, the most successful outreach was through that WaniKani post @Naphthalene and you mentioned, which is where we found most of the wonderful folks here and really got the site going!

After I launch Spanish & German, I’ll probably do some more outreach… and probably should pop back into that WaniKani thread to keep it alive.

[yukitanuki]

I had no goals for 2023. I just wanted to start reading novels and I managed to do that, so I am very happy about that.

2024

Japanese:

• Finish Quartet
• Read 5 books in physical form
• Finish all the Manga I bought in 2023
• Not more than 2 book clubs at once

Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin/Serbian:

• Read all the books I bought this year
• Find another regional author I like
• Find someone to do speaking practice with
• Do output practice (writing or speaking) at least once a week

[snowwater]

2023 goals

• Get back into learning Japanese I think we can say this went quite successfully this year
• Take the N3 in December
• Finish Tobira
• Finish Bunpro N3 lessons before the exam
• Read 3 novels/light novels/books 2/3
• Join a bookclub (joined too many)
• Read the dictionary of beginner japanese grammar Done and I enjoyed this a bit too much

The only goal I couldn’t really reach (until now?) was to read 3 books. To be honest, I did read my first proper book this year, so that’s already amazing. I finished both コンビニ人間 and あん, and was hoping キノの旅 would be my third book, but I just kinda lost interest halfway… I have about 80-100 pages of 本好きの下剋上 left, so I might still be able to accomplish that goal though.

2024 goals

• Read at least 10 books
• Read at least 20 manga
• Read and listen to more news/non-fiction content
• Read the dictionary of intermediate japanese grammar
• Start on the SKM N2 books
• Read すずめの戸締り and コーヒーが冷めないうちに
• Focus more on immersion and enjoyment than SRS

My goal for 2024 is to focus more on immersion and on enjoying the Japanese learning process/media consumption. Because I was studying for the N3 this year, I was using anki, bunpro and wanikani, which ended up taking around 1h a day. And that’s really a lot to do every single day, and wouldn’t allow me enough time to explore other media (with work and studying, I don’t have that much time daily to study anymore). So it felt like a chore at times, and I want to avoid this next year. Reading was (and still is) one of the most enjoyable points of my learning journey, so I will continue to focus on that.

[pieonakr]

Recently hit 2 years Korean so my yearly (2023/2024) goals are kind of tied to my goals for my 2nd and 3rd years of acquiring Korean.

2023 Goals

• 50 full length novels total (i think im at 35 but I genuinely lost count)
• Fully inderstand the (physical) books I brought at end of 2022 (완득이, 체리새우: 비밀입니다, 불편한 편의점, and 안락) - this one is a bit hard to judge. I defined fully as “if I don’t know the exact meaning of a word, I can either pick a sense of it up via context or completely understand the meaning of the sentence it’s in without knowing the word.” which I believe I could do with all the books, albeit still end up missing a few words.
• 95% comp without subtitles (excl unknown words)
• 90% min comprehension over the phone - haven’t called anyone. Though I can understand basically 100% IRL so W
• watch live streams , listen to podcasts , and audiobooks , without a lot of difficulty
• 12,000 known words (started at 6.5k - am at 13.8k right now. On pace to learning another 1k words before the year ends because the sentence mining grind is real during the holidays LMAO)
• Vocab never a problem while watching content and talking to natives - IDK bout that one
• good output

2024 Goals / Year 3 Goals

• Stage 4 Refold - AKA output
• 20k words
• Finish the physics lecture playlist I’ve been going through
• Semi-Consistent Shadowing and Chorusing
• 60 Full Length Books - with a focus on non-fiction; Korean History, Science - Physics, Chem - books similar to Atomic Habits.
• More Regular Listening - preferably more listening than reading

I’ve burnt out from reading in the last few months (which is lowkey why I stopped using this app lmao) but I still read a little everyday and all that shit. I realised my enjoyment of reading in Korean is almost entirely tied to how much I can learn, which is why I’m moving towards non-fiction as even if I am mining less (which has been the case with novels in the last 4/5 months as my comp in most things are at least 96% according to Migaku) I still feel productive. I love reading in English but it doesn’t translate to Korean because the mundane things I enjoy reading get actually tiring and boring when youre slow and using brain power and so mining makes it actually fun.
My SRS usage has actually gone down despite my new cards going up. My retention is like 90%-95% somehow and my card time is 3/s (currently avg 15 min doing reviews) so I don’t really find any reason to not mine a lot outside of not finding enough sentences.
I’ve put off speaking for so long because I don’t really want to suck and I already have anxiety around speaking so yeah just not fun times. But I don’t really have a reason to put it off skill-wise. I can understand effortlessly when hearing Korean IRL. I want to speak, but my dread is stronger than that want. So I am planning on just speaking to myself for a while (maybe using ASMR videos as a partner LOL) then getting iTalki before finally doing an IRL exchange or just going up to Koreans at my climbing gym.

Anyway. Happy 2024 everyone! Hopefully you had an amazing 2023, and hopefully your 2024 will be even better! This community is pretty amazing

[alexay7]

I’ve had several goals over the year, but the main one was to reach 1500 manga volumes read by the end of the year. I’m currently at 1488 so it shouldn’t be hard to achieve.

My first two years of learning japanese were mainly focused on anime, this third and fourth year has been focused on manga so I think I am going to focus on reading LN this time.

2024 Goals
Read at least 1 million characters per month
Reach 100 LN read by the end of the year (currently at 19)
This is not really a goal, but I would like to finish all the higurashi VNs, I recently finished the 3rd part.
Learn to use the JIS keyboard layout

[cat]

@alexay7

Learn to use the JIS keyboard layout

I have one that I use sometimes and the tiny backspace/delete button drives me nuts

[alexay7]

In my case I bought stickers for my everyday keyboard so everything stays the same

The problem is memorizing where every character is…

[Mara]

My main goal in 2023 was to become as conversational as possible before my trip to Japan in November, and I definitely feel successful! By the time we departed I felt confident that I could at least basically communicate anything I really needed to say (not necessarily correctly, but successfully).

In Japan I successfully ...

• checked into hotels
• asked hotel staff for help finding out if a particular onsen allowed tattoos (answer: yes!)
• asked shop staff for different shoe sizes for my partner (the woman I talked with walked us out of the store after purchasing and thanked me for being easy to understand!)
• explained my conundrum when choosing between red and pink or black and grey when buying a sakura patterned scarf, and got the shoplady’s advice (she was right, the black and grey was the one for me)
• asked for specific manga volumes and then for a recommendation at a used book store
• requested vegetarian food multiple times

The only time I felt truly stumped was when I was talking with a woman I met at an onsen. I wanted to say that some other onsen had seemed to dry out my skin, but this one didn’t, but could for the life of me think how to say “dry”.

I achieved that basically through a combination of reading, watching youtube videos, going through a children’s picture dictionary, keeping a journal, and 1-2 italki lessons per week for a period of … 5 months maybe?

Anyway, I’m really happy with that progress, and want to continue occasional italki lessons (mainly to keep in touch with my teacher, who is awesome), but I didn’t make too much kanji progress last year on account of focusing on conversational skills.

Goals for 2024!

• Add 1000 kanji to my study routine (on the Kanji Study app)
• Play reading bingo

There's lots of other stuff I want to do ...

• keep watching youtube videos
• keep improving my conversation ability
• plan a 2025 trip to Japan (involves reading tourism info in Japanese, communicating with hotels in Japanese, etc)
• finish the children’s picture dictionary
• keep a reading log / journal for writing & composition practice
• surpass 10,000 pages read! (as calculated by bookmeter)

But none of that needs to be an official goal. The simpler my goals are, the better I think they tend to work for me.

[seanblue]

I’m not going to set any reading targets (i.e. number of books), but I will set a pretty straightforward goal of cleaning up my “paused” list. Right now, according to my AniList account, I have 22 manga series that I started but haven’t finished. This includes 15 series that are finished publishing. So I think I’ll set a goal of completing at least 10 of those 15 series. “Completing” could include dropping since I won’t force myself to read something I’m not interested in finishing, but there are 10 or so that I’m likely to actually read to the end if I put in the time. Bonus points if I can manage to not just replace those paused series with other paused series.

[CatDQ]

Quick recap of my 2023 goals I posted st the end of 2022:

• Read more
• Improve my understanding of basic grammar
• Improve my vocabulary
• Write more
• Get a tutor
• Complete MNN blue text books

Of these, the only one I didn’t do was MNN blue text book since I spent most of the time reviewing and getting stuck in burnout.

I did manage to read several manga as well as a few native level novels which all helped me improve my grammar understanding and vocabulary.

Goals for 2024:

• Fix the burnout so I can get back to proper studying
• Read more; I’d like to finish Flying witch manga, re-read Kino’s Journey and Zoo book 1 before trying some other short stories (especially Zoo book 2) and light novels (including trying to hopefully read through 本好き later next year by which time I should have the rest of the books so far)
• Study MNN blue textbook
• Take more lessons and improve my speaking.

I would like to switch to using my Japanese-Japanese dictionaries as well.

Even though I didn’t manage to do as much as I wanted, I’m still happy with what I have achieved. I’m still a step closer to my overall goal and I have definitely improved from where I was at the start of the year

[Negin]

Short version:

• 2023:
  -Japanese
  -German

• 2024:
  - Japanese: Immersion, Don’t ignore listening!
  - German(priority): reach B2 (C1 ideally)
  - English: practice writing and speaking

Details:

Japanese

I started learning Japanese in early 2023, so my goal was simply learning the language! Back in spring in order to push myself a bit I set additional goals:
1- take JLPT N2
2- read 2 novels(was so frustrated I couldn’t read anything but graded readers, wanted to read “real” books!)
With ふしぎな図書館 | L24 and むらさきのスカートの女 | L29 I’ve reached my goals.
Overall I’m very satisfied with my progress in Japanese, I’ve done even more than what I expected. Natively has been a great motivator.

2024 plans:

• After spending 23 mostly on textbooks I’m gonna switch to immersion, trying to read variety of genres and different authors so that I can discover my interests and gain a general picture of Japanese literature.
• My listening comprehension is very very weak. I’ll listen to audiobooks, if available, along reading. This one is a must; for some extra effort: watching movies without subs or with JP subs.

German

I wanted to review the lessons I took few years ago (roughly A2 level) in 2023. Sadly only managed to do around 20%.

2024 plans:
Finish reviewing my lessons and read B1 & B2 textbooks.
Will try to read novels as well.

English

Didn’t have any goals in 2023!

2024 plans:
Much as I’m confident in reading in English(been reading books mainly in English for years), my ‘output’ is lacking A LOT. I can rarely express my points and I’m aware of mistakes I’m making but can’t fix them!
I should try writing and speaking in English more until I can express myself clearly, with minimum errors. This will automatically lead to reviewing some grammar as well.

[shitsurei]

2023
I randomly found Natively this summer from a link on Reddit. I accidentally ended up reading *checks stats* 139 days, 4 books, and 20 manga (so far). If you would have told me that at the beginning of the year, I would have said you were crazy. Suffice it to say that while I didn’t have any goals at the beginning of the year, I far surpassed any that I would have set.

2024
Echoing a lot of other people, I don’t do well with rigid goals, but I do worse with no goals, so here’s my loosey goosey goalsetting for the next year:

Read comfortably at about level 30, listen comfortably at about level 25

My biggest focus right now is to get my listening level up closer to my reading level. I’d say I can comfortably read materials without excessive lookups at about level 25 right now, but with no text/subs, my listening is somewhere around 20. Ideally I’d like to tighten that range, but I’m also ok with just increasing them both

Read more days than not

Pretty straightforward, and another one I’m sandbagging a little on to make sure I don’t get discouraged by setting a read every day goal and getting discouraged by missing one day and then knowing my goal is blown for the whole year.

Finish 3 book club books

This honestly feels like I could probably bump up the number here quite a bit, but I also don’t want to set myself up to fail.

Finish 3 Switch games

I bought a ton of second hand games in Japan in May and haven’t started a single one of them. 've also been stuck on the first few hours of the second Famicom Detective game since around the same time (I blame Tears of the Kingdom for sucking up all of my gaming time when I had started it).

Bonus points for:

French

Being in Canada for the next few years (even though it’s not close to the French speaking part of Canada), it feels like a missed opportunity to not work on my French.

I’m a solid A1 right now, but would love to get somewhere around B1 by the end of the year. If we get Natively for French ( ) I’ll want to have some book goals, but for now, keeping it kinda nebulous on purpose.

German?

French leapfrogged over German for “language mistress”. I was at high A2 level when I stopped earlier this year and would like to at least maintain there if possible, but not really a priority.

Mandarin????

So there’s a channel, Comprehensible Mandarin, and they have more than 700 videos, and it really feels like if I could just get to where I could follow what people are saying I’d be able to really take advantage of it, but I have no real motivation for learning it other than it’s there, I do already know kanji so that will help, and it would impress people. Which aren’t great reasons to learn a language

Start a language blog?

I sorta want to start a blog for English learners. Probably intermediate level since I love that sort of content and you just need so much. But also, won’t people just rather consume all of the content that already exists in English? Everyone is learning English, and so many people already exist in this space (although, I would argue, lots are grammar focused and pretty boring).

[cat]

@shitsurei

I sorta want to start a blog for English learners.

Re the “why would they read mine” - since you’re learning other languages maybe target those learners by talking about things you’re learning about in their cultures at an intermediate friendly level? And sharing how it compares your culture?

[spaghettiman]

While I started Kuma Bear Vol. 1 in 2022, this was the year I finished it, and from there I ended up reading about 13 or 14 novels/light novels which I think was pretty good for being the first year I read native books. That and a handful of manga, though I don’t really count manga the same as prose books since I feel like it’s not as good for vocab retention, but it’s definitely fun.

[Legato]

My goals were:

@Legato

In 2023, I’d like to…

• …start and finish at least two manga without furigana. (Hopefully that’ll cure me of my fear of leaving furigana behind without being able to use Yomichan…)
• …start and finish a book from the L27+ orange zone. (My highest level so far has been L24.)
• …finish up at least the main storyline of Yokai Watch 1. (And maybe even the same for Pokemon Legends: Arceus too!)

• Read 2 non-furigana manga: In total I finished 6 manga across 3 different series. Ironically it lead less to “without being able to use Yomichan” than “finding out how to use mokuro to use Yomichan with manga too”, but after figuring out good tooling, I’m definitely not scared of furigana-less manga anymore.
• L27+ book: I read Kino no Tabi at L29. (But it was really hard and took such a long time - I think I’ll slowly work my way up to it instead of forcing such a jump again.)
• Finish up Yokai Watch 1: I didn’t - but that was because I started doing lots and lots of side quests, which involve a ton of reading too. I’m a bit afraid that I’ll lose interest once I finish the main storyline, so I want to play a lot of side quests before I do that. Technically I can’t give this one a checkmark, but I did play much, much more than what would’ve been necessary to simply finish the main storyline, so I feel like I’ve definitely followed the spirit of the goal.

Also I’m on track to achieving my secret goal that I haven’t told anybody about: Reading every single day of 2023! Some days were just “Oh man, I have to go to bed and didn’t read yet, guess I’ll just read one page.”, but on many others I read half an hour, an hour, or more.

---

For 2024, I don’t have any super specific goals. Reading every day again would be nice. Finally finishing the last bit of N3 on Bunpro, and maybe the first third of N2 would be cool too.

And, uh, getting through this pile and then keeping it up this time:

My biggest problem with reading is definitely my small vocabulary, so I hope to get back into SRS. It’s such an effective tool.
If only it wasn’t so tedious.

[cat]

@Legato

If only it wasn’t so tedious.

I feel that. Do you modify your cards at all? I add all sorts of pictures and example sentences to mine to give myself more memory hooks, and also because occasional silly pics/sentences make things more fun.

[Legato]

I don’t like pictures on my cards so much, and I want audio for my example sentences (and my vocab), so all my cards look like this:

It’s not particularly exciting, but I like the structure

(On the unflipped side, there is just kanji & kana/word type/example sentence without furigana in Jp->Eng, and meaning/word type/english example sentence in Eng->Jp. And when I flip it, the audio auto-plays.)

[Jintor]

Learning to CSS my cards and add all sorts of wacky fields or whatever really unlocked my SRS.

Well that and culling it so I don’t do more than 30min a day because otherwise i get bored af

[Naphthalene]

@Naphthalene

My goal for 2023 was to read 20 non-light novel books.
I’m at 18/20, halfway through one more and I plan to read チュベローズで待ってる AGE22 as well, rounding off the count.

And that’s literally what I did!
I’m going to finish 店長がバカすぎて | L30 next, reaching 21 “proper” books versus 42 light novels (and thus reaching 1/3 of my total 活字 books; not half as originally planned, but not bad)
Of course, that assumes that I won’t read any more light novels this year which is… doubtful I’m already planning to read log horizon next.