.

Last year's goals:

Blahah Wrote:2010
This year I really want to take some lessons from last year's failings, as well as set myself some more realistic goals:
- I'll keep studying no matter what else is going on.
- Keep watching anime, it gives me strong motivation to learn
- Work through all of Jpod101, using Anki to retain info
- Build up the motivation to read all of tae kim, ankying sentences as reminders.
- Build grammar and vocab in a structured way at first, changing to a natural method after about 6 months (i.e. go from learning the most useful stuff to learning what comes up in whatever I'm doing)
- Be ready for JLPT2 in december 2010, maybe JLPT1 if I really do well
- Read some japanese history
- Read a manga in japanese
- understand just one Rappagariya song

Well I can safely say that I achieved very little of this. I did carry on watching anime and have recently started watching dramas as well. Actually switching to dramas made me notice that I do understand a fair bit of Japanese, which I wasn't really noticing in anime with all the stupid voices and random changes in politeness level. Hmm I did learn a bit of Japanese history, mostly by watching historical anime/drama and then looking up all the events or people. I started reading Death Note, but gave up after a short while as it was boring (since I've already seen it) and too slow going.

When I started new job in August I stopped studying for a couple of months, then started again recently. I've actually been making progress on the Jpod101 thing, which is useful again because I drive a few hours each day. I'm working through J Sensei adding it all to anki then studying in anki with listening only cards. This seems to be going fine, but I've been going slowly with adding new stuff.

Also, I've recently started speaking Japanese at home with my brother, who is also studying it. This is awesome because I've never even tried output before, and I've found that outputting really makes the learning stick. So to keep this output up I've just started writing a daily journal in Japanese, trying to use some of the stuff I've learned that day.

In 2011 I want to:
- switch to watching things without subs
- get all the way through J Sensei (10,000 words + sentences)
- choose a grammar course and get through it (possibly I'll use DBJG and the accompanying anki deck)
- continue watching dramas as much as possible
- continue speaking Japanese at home
- keep up the journal

And my final goals for the end of 2011:
- write my year summary post on here in Japanese
- be able to show Japanese visitors around at work and give a tour in Japanese, and actually be able to understand their questions

edit: I forgot to add life-in-general stuff. This year has been AWESOME in terms of general life achievements. 4 years with my gf and my life has improved steadily every year. Top of all classes at university, and I got onto the best internship in my subject this year. I'm currently doing the internship, which is paid so I have everything material thing I want, and having the time of my life. Research is freaking awesome, and this place lets me take part in so many projects. I'll also be published a few times by the end of 2011. So yeah... life is great, just want my damn Japanese to catch up with everything else!

Quote:My 2010 goals.. Being able to read advanced material, e.g. scientific literature on various subjects. So far my vocabulary is pretty limited when it comes to economics and stuff.

Well, I read one book on economics and one on sociology, but as far as scientific literature goes these ones are probably as easy as it gets. But nethertheless I made some progress and apart from my lack of 専門用語 vocabulary in most fields I consider my Japanese journey to be over (for the most part).

And now for something completely different. Next year I'd really like to reach a conversational level of Korean. Pretty please!
Also: Find real love

OK. my goals. First time I define resolutions regarding Japanese.

1. Review my RTK 1 and RTK supplement for 360 days, with 5 exceptions. No matter how much I might hate it, I keep doing it.

2. Finish KO2001 Level 1 and 2.

3. Repeat / work through Japanese for Busy People 2 and 3 from cover to cover.

4. Work through as much as JPod101 as possible. Fill all the gaps that I have while doing so.

5. Lots and lots of audio listening.

6. and play a concert tour in Japan with my band, me doing all the announcements on stage in Japanese.

I can't say I really had any reflections last year for Japanese...was too busy trying to get through classes (ahaha, same thing this year...).

So my resolutions for 2011:

-Finish Core 6k
-Start another anki vocab deck once done w/core 6k
-Pick a grammar thing and stick to it
-Be able to read manga, even if it's just with a dictionary
-Pass all my classes + impress boss
-Oh! And try to study Japanese every day, even if it's just 15 cards.

And...that's about it. Pretty simple.

Adding:

-Finish RTK1 (probably will start Jan.)
-Start practicing on Lang-8 (even if it's just "Hi. My name is xx. I like dogs." It's better than nothing, so suck it up.)
-Be able to read pokemon semi-fluently in kanji version
-once able to read manga, start working on novels

I totally forgot about that thread. Maybe someone should bump this one in six months to remind us how miserably we're failing our goals!

2010 Resolutions Wrote:- finish 2000 remaining words from JLPT1 list.
- learn all JLPT1 grammar.
- do more shadowing!
- extend my program to work with my iPod dictionary vocab lists and learn at least 4000 words.
- hopefully pass JLPT1 exam in the winter (or whatever it'll be called by then).

I did the vocab stuff (and a ton of other SRS), but fell short on the grammar. I made speaking my focus of the last 6-8 months, but I couldn't find a regular partner, which was kind of discouraging. I'm coming up to 4 years of study in February, and I realised how little I've progressed in the last two years, so I'm determined to make 2011 count.

- complete KM within the next couple of months
- do the 聴解 and 読解 ワークブックs my g/f is getting me for Christmas and be ready for N1 ASAP.
- pass N1
- read the reams of unread books I own
- try to form some good study and reading/exposure habits (a few news articles per day, get into some dramas/films etc)

Start and finish Core 6K
Do Tae Kim or similar
Be able to read at least one manga
Be able to watch and understand one movie (thinking of making it Seven Samurai, but I am open to suggestions!)

The last four Core lessons are 500 words so keep that in mind when planning out your schedule. I would reccomend 時をかける少女 as the movie because it will be easier to understand, but not at all boring in my opinion.

頑張ってください！
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I did complete the N2 as my main goal I'm not going to go on to N1 next year. It's not because I don't think I could, but because I have other priorities this year. In September I start college -- a big step for me. I know that I will be taking courses in Chinese, Korean as well as Japanese so I want to work on them while still improving my Japanese.

I have 8 months and I want to learn 8000 words in both Chinese and Korean, 8000 AJATT sentences in Japanese, write 3000 汉字(simplified), write 3000 漢字, and read 3000 繁體字(traditional). (After visiting the teachers of the uni, I won't be writing in traditional anytime soon -- he is a simple man. XD)

I will be using New Practical Chinese reader as my Chinese text and Intergrated Korean.

Starting on the new year I want to STOP all English in my Japanese study as much as possible -- I want to watch dramas, TV and read magazines in Japanese without too* much trouble.

*I don't expect to be "fluent" anytime soon with this workload.

I even made myself a desktop background to help me stay on track!
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/7641/70119316.jpg

My Korean is very basic, I can read and write and I understand basic grammar and with Chinese I got down the very basics as well. Going from 2000 Japanese 漢字 to Chinese will not be as nearly as hard as learning the characters the first time -- I hope.

Thanks Icecream! That's pretty cool coming from you.

Goals for next year is:
Get to 3000+ kanji in reading/writing
Gain the ability to read flawlessly
Improve my speaking abilities greatly
Gain transcription abilities (more of a side project)
Re-work my srs pace(doing it now actually)
Going to work my output skills in depth now
Going to do some projects in japanese(i.e. read 100+ pages of japanese daily,write kanji,watch news/read news and lastly I have a writing journal where I write my kanji down)
Lastly I don't expect to become fluent just yet. But I do expect to gain proficiency in reading in another year.

gyuujuice Wrote:I even made myself a desktop background to help me stay on track!
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/7641/70119316.jpg

Few months ago I made one too... doesn't work. :|

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/8236/focusx.jpg

2010-

Language:
Finish RtK by Christmas - I might maybe finish this. If I get off the forums and finish the enormous goal I set for myself today.
Relearn Spanish - Epic fail on that. Reviewed it a bit though

General:

Epic fail on many levels D:

2011:

Language:
Learn the readings of the Kanji and study more vocab
Study grammar and learn how to read easy stuff in Japanese.
Restudy my Spanish

General:
Lose weight
Get a friggin job. Any job.
Maybe get back in school.

2010 was a great year for me, actually!

- Got retired
- Started learning Japanese
-- Kana first
-- Working through げんき1 and the workbook
-- Started RTK
-- Found this community

In other words, life has been good to me, lately.

My big goals for 2011:

- Finishing RTK 1 in January
- Reviewing the Kanji
- Working through げんき2 and the workbook
- Working through An Integrated approach of Intermediate Japanese and the workbook
- Working through DBJG, DIJG, DAJG
- Preparing for JLPT
- Taking my first JLPT test which i think will be N3

- Going on a trip to Japan for some time as reward for doing all this. Jumping in the cold water, head first. *haha*

My other goals for 2011:

- Starting to read ドラエモン and other Manga
- Working on my shadowing technique to improve on my speaking abilities
- Reading on the web
- Sentence mining

My "i quit smoking this year, no, really, this year i will!" goals for 2011:

- Going the extra mile learning all the RTK 3 kanji by the end of 2011.

By that time next year we will see how much of all this i was actually able to achieve. I'm looking forward to it.

Yay Icecream! Thanks for doing this thread -- I had almost forgotten about making one like I did last year. Be sure to post your resolutions too, Icecream!!

2010 Reflection
- Reach 10,000 sentences before 2011. ←9840 sentences so far so I think I'll make it
- Be able to hold an over 3-minute conversation with no English. ←I've spoken for over 3 minutes, but not without English here and there D:
- Be able to understand nearly 100% of new listening material. (90-99% range) ← Probably fulfilled or almost fulfilled. If it's every-day conversation level and not a doctor or a professional of something talking, I have confidence it's around 90%
- Finish iKnow core 6000 ←Fulfilled
- Update lang-8 once a week (when something interesting comes up or on Sunday) ←Not every week, but I have at least 4 entries a month. I consider it mostly fulfilled


2011 Resolutions (gonna get really, really specific about it because that's the only way I can actually fulfill them):
1. Write at least eight lang-8 entries a month. Total should be at least 96 entries in a year.
2. Shadow 10 shadow-able works of at least 10 minutes in length (audio books, drama, documentaries, etc -- preferably with JPN subs).
3. Read at least 10 books - aim for one book a month.
4. Add no less than 50 new sentences a month but stay under 300.
5. Be able to understand 98-100% of an episode of the podcast ねえ、ねえ、聞いて！ that I haven't listened to before.

I was thinking about doing RTK3 but I think I'll have a workload with lang-8, shadowing and reading the 10 books, so maybe I'll save it for next year. As for non-Japanese resolutions... I really don't think I'd accomplish whatever resolution I'd make because Japanese studies run my life that much XD

"1. Write at least eight lang-8 entries a month. Total should be at least 96 entries in a year."

Ah, I knew I forgot something!! Well I am only doing half the amounty of journals. I'm trying one every Sunday in all 4 languages (including English). XD

"3. Read at least 10 books - aim for one book a month."

Amazing goal! Good luck!

gyuujuice Wrote:"1. Write at least eight lang-8 entries a month. Total should be at least 96 entries in a year."

Ah, I knew I forgot something!! Well I am only doing half the amounty of journals. I'm trying one every Sunday in all 4 languages (including English). XD

"3. Read at least 10 books - aim for one book a month."

Amazing goal! Good luck!

Thank you gyuujuice! My goals are nothing compared to yours though -- I admire your dedication (with the wallpaper and everything)! Good luck to you as well

mezbup Wrote:二千十年：

First and foremost my biggest Japanese learning goal of 2010 is to complete my vocabulary. It will be between 15,000 - 20,000 words.

Second KanKen Sitting ６級 in feb and I'm going to own it. It's offered 6 months later and at that point I'm aiming for either ４級　or ３級.

I think that keeps it nice and simple for me

Reflections:
I was over optimistic to aim for 20,000 by the end of 2010! I did get 12.5 so far and it looks like I will hit 13k before years end which is my revised goal. Not a bad effort though considering I started at 2.5k in January 2010!

KanKen-wise, I got 6級! Then stuff happened around the time I was going to take 5級 but I'm going for it in Feb next year.

Got JLTP2 and sat JLPT1.

Resolutions:

2011 is the year I want to round off my vocab to 20,000. I think that's much more achievable.

I want to pass JLPT1 (probs mid year).

I would like to get KanKen 5級 and 4級.

I have about 10 Novels of which I've read 1! I want to finish reading all 10.

Other than that it's most important in 2011 to make lots of friends and enjoy lots of good times, in Japanese of course! After all, that's what it's all about

as far as 2010 is concerned, I think I have improved my japanese a bit, in the last 3 months, only. I started watching doramas, started listening to japanese as much as possible and therefore my listening skills got and are getting better.

I finally decided that I want to use japanese as my job in the near future, so I decided to focus much more on japanese rather than chinese (also because the chinese given in my course is so ridiculous). In these three months my japanese improved greatly, I can only imagine how it will improve next year, if I continue like this.

So my goals for the next year:

-more and more doramas (with japanese subs of course, and study of the subs)

-more music and reading and studying the lyrics

-more textbooks and listening to japanese learning CD's

-finish AIAIJ before 2011 (I'm finishing lesson 9)

-put all vocabulary from JLPT 3-1 into Anki

-I also had the goal of goint to a japanese summer course in japan, but I think it's better if I save that money towards my masters degree.

-Take JLPT 2 in December

-improve my speaking skills (I've come to find out that repeating out loud is good for this)

-start reading japanese news

ああ、日本語に対して愛情を感じてきました。

I didn't make any goals for last year, but I'm immensely happy with my progress in 2010, especially since this year had a lot of disruptions (cross-US move, marriage...). I still went from midway through RTK in January to reading children's novels in September!

2011 looks only marginally smoother, so I'm keeping this conservative:
1) Finish Core 6000. (About 1900 left, so I hope to do this mid-year.) After that, keep up 10+ words from the wild daily.
2) I should finish redoing Tae Kim by the end of the month, so in 2011 I want to work through KM2kyuu grammar and then start filling in gaps from the Dictionary of ___ JG series. After KM2, 1-2 new grammar points a day would be fine.
3) Reading: I picked up the first book of a 13-volume novel series, パセリ伝説, today. It's for about third grade students. Given my recent reading speed, I want to finish it by September.
4) Don't quit. This is the hardest! I often feel like I'm wasting my time learning a language just because it's fun. If I can just keep this one, I'll win, though.

mezbup Wrote:二千十年：
I did get 12.5 so far and it looks like I will hit 13k before years end which is my revised goal.

mezbup, how do you keep track of your vocabulary count? Do you have a deck of all the words you know?

Also, going from 2,500 to 13,000 words in a year is a huge, I mean HUGE, accomplishment. How did you acquire all these words in such a short time frame?

Nuriko Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:二千十年：
I did get 12.5 so far and it looks like I will hit 13k before years end which is my revised goal.

mezbup, how do you keep track of your vocabulary count? Do you have a deck of all the words you know?

Also, going from 2,500 to 13,000 words in a year is a huge, I mean HUGE, accomplishment. How did you acquire all these words in such a short time frame?

Thanks! It feels good to have that acknowledged.

I have seperate decks for grammar, vocab and output. So yes, essentially having a pure vocab deck makes it easy to keep count of your vocab because 1 card = 1 word.

My main study method this year has been basically AJATT but not sentences, just pure vocab. So I aimed to get 35 words per day, every day. I think I fell a little short of that in the end but wound up getting something like 25 ~ 30. Still, If I keep that up for 1 more year I think that by and large i'll be finished the bulk of vocabulary acquisition.

I gotta say, after hitting roughly the 10K mark things really started to take off.

Apparently I didn't post in the last one, for some reason...
2010 Reflections
Language Related
Definitely didn't study as much as I would have liked. It's a common theme in my life though -- which is probably why I took classes.
Regardless, I found out that my level was more JLPT1 than JLPT2. I guess I'll find out in early March if I was right to take N1 instead of N2! I'm still kind of proud of taking N1...
Continually updating/changing my SRS decks, habits, and styles. Which is good and is working for me... But it comes back to how much studying I'm actually doing -- I definitely need to do more.

Life/Other Related
Came back from Japan, and started on my super-busy-make-up-for-lost-time, hopefully final, year of college. Going from no studying to taking the credit limit has been quite difficult on me. I had a 3.8 GPA, but this semester, I am completely average in all my classes. Literally, in a class with 56 people, I'm #27.
I did go to the Boston Career Forum, and am still continuing the interview process with Square Enix. To be honest, I'm not expecting this to go through, but it would be the most awesome thing ever if it did.
Social life has taken a downward turn as well. When I'm always doing homework, it's hard to have fun. Especially when my weekends consist of doing big projects.

2011 Goals
Language Related
-Go through my Kanzen Master and Sou Matome and maybe D*JG books and pick up loose ends
----more concretely stated: go through the workbooks. Mainly Grammar and Vocab.
----to solidify grammar: create my own sentences on lang8 and see what people say
-Read at least 3 articles out of 朝日新聞 per week. Retired professor brings them to our conversation table, and I like reading physical copies better than things online.
-Make it to 漢検2級 or 準２級 on KanKen DS. I don't actually know my current level, but I know that the lower levels have a lot of words that I don't know and loose ends.
-(finally) finish going through the Core series and pick up words that I don't know...been putting this off for too long. Hopefully going into the 10k from JSensei or whatever.
-probably put more here as I think of them

Life/Etc
-Graduate! Assuming everything goes well....
-Find a Job!
-Get back to Japan! (hopefully this one and the last one go together...like that SE job )
...I should probably come up with more for this section. Otherwise I'm just "floating" through life.

Didn't start seriously studying japanese until about may this year, so I didn't really have any solid goals in mind. My resolutions for next year though are:

- Finish core 6k
- Finish An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
- Improve both my listening and speaking skills (by spending more time with japanese people and creating a better immersion environment in general.)
- Take whatever Japanese course is appropriate for my level (this is contingent on whether I get accepted into graduate school, of course!)

Good luck to everyone!

Shadeless Wrote:

gyuujuice Wrote:I even made myself a desktop background to help me stay on track!
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/7641/70119316.jpg

Few months ago I made one too... doesn't work. :|

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/8236/focusx.jpg

Try this one:

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/2236/...h27725.jpg

Works for me

I don't make news years resolutions based on the fact I find the date completely arbitrary and if you want to do something, just damned well do it. That being said, i know i need to get better, I've been in Japan for 3 months and i still totally shit myself when someone converses with me. So much time procrastinating needs to be converted into study time.. force myself to not be so shy.. that's a killer atm, I'm shy and my conversational skills suck.. never ending spiral that one.
On the plus, this year my listening has got better, it's not great but i can follow a good chunk of stuff, and if i have J subs on a tv show I can probably understand nearly all of it... still a few speech things i only understand when i see written down.
(that being said.. japanese tv makes me want to cry at the best of times)
i can speak better than i could, but thats like saying being punched in the stomach is better than being punched it the face.. it still sucks, just slightly less.

i got really sloppy and lazy over summer.. need to really buckle down and get this learnt.. im sick of sucking now.