At this time last year I didn't even like Japan, let alone consider learning its language. So I guess I made some progress in learning Japanese 
As for my resolutions:
-finish RtK1 (this counts as a 2010 resolution, since I am scheduled to finish it on New Year's Eve)
-finish Core6k
-finish RtK3
-read at least one manga series that does not have furigana everywhere
-read at least one light novel
-start a Lang-8 account
-study for and hopefully take the JLPT N3 (might not work out: they don't do the test in July in St Petersburg, in fact the only Russian city where they do is Vladivostok, which is further from St Petersburg than New York City; while in December I will most likely be on my semester abroad)
-find a real life conversation partner (I am quite shy, so a shortage of Japanese speakers in my area is not the only problem)

This last year has been a good one for my progress in learning Japanese.  I quit my job in late 2009, and then went travelling around some pacific-rim countries for the first three months of this year.  Coming back to Japan in April, I started at a Japanese language school, and have now been there for around nine months.  Naturally, my Japanese has improved hugely since then.  In particular, a lot has come together in the last six weeks or so.

First I've just started being able to read novels without having to painstakingly work my way through with a dictionary and a grammar guide.  (Albeit, only those novels with straight-forward language, for example I am currently reading a murder mystery called 桜の下殺人事件 by 西村京太廊.)  Second, I finally feel like I can have a conversation in Japanese.  Not fluidly or very expressively, but I do now have the confidence that I can tell stories, make points, ask questions, and so on; a huge step forward for me.

To sum that up with some 'metrics': I've completed all three of the みんなの日本語 books (初級 volumes 1 and 2, and 中級 volume 1); I've just sat the JLPT N3 exam and feel there's a fair chance I passed; and I estimate my vocabulary to be around 3000 words.  Listening is hard to measure, but I'd say that I've probably put in a minimum of about 1000 hours of useful listening (over two years, not just last year), and considerably more if I include background listening. I completed Heisig about two years ago, and have been living in Japan for two years.

In 2011 I expect to continue at language school for at least another 6 months, which gives me a good opportunity to continue to improve. My goals for the year are as follows.

First, to sit and pass the JLPT N2.  There are two chances, so that should be achievable!

Second, to increase my vocabulary to about 8000 words, which means adding another 5000 to my vocab deck this year.  That works out to be about 14 a day, though I plan to front-load most of that in the first six months at a rate of about 25 a day.

Third, to improve my conversational ability so that I can converse fairly fluidly, even if my language is unnatural at times and I have to talk around vocab I don't know, and not including detailed technical discussions, just everyday conversations. Probably around another 300 hours or so of conversation practice required, in all.

Fourth, to improve my listening so that I can understand and follow television programs (of medium difficulty) without too much trouble, though I don't have to catch every little nuance or detail. I estimate another 500 hours or so of useful listening should do the trick (1.5 hours per day).

And fifth, to improve my reading so that I can pick up any (adult, general ability) novel, non-fiction book, or magazine and be able to follow and understand the story without resorting to a dictionary.  That means probably skipping over a word I don't know every 3 sentences or so, and doesn't include writing with highly technical and specialised vocabulary.  I also want to be able to read some (simple) newspaper articles.

My god, there's still a huge mountain to climb! I should keep some logs or something, of the time I spend...

Good luck to everyone in 2011, and let's see where we all are in a year's time!

In 2011, I hope I get more sleep.  I think that's the big thing holding me back from being really good at Japanese.  Also, I should probably play less Starcraft II.

In 2010 I passed JLPTN2, but hardly with flying colors.  I made a lot of Japanese friends, mostly female, I don't have many male Japanese friends at all, haha.  But, come to think of it, most of my foreigners friends are also women.  A couple of the friends I made really don't speak any English, so they'll force me to practice more.

I tried for the whole year to do Core 6,000, but I think I'm still only 70% of the way through it.  I've got about 600 RTK reviews and 600 Core reviews due, and I don't know when I'll do them. 

I read a bunch of manga.  I finished reading Lovely Complex, probably the first long series I've read through from beginning to end.

I'm lazy.

2011
-finish Kanji in Context (or at least the first 3 levels)
-expand vocabulary
-speak

My 2011 resolutions would be:

Finish RTK 1
Start Core 2k
Start Tae Kim
Read through my mountain of unread Japanese Manga/literature
Play through my Super Famicom Games
Find a job or do community service
Hopefully reach literacy and fluency(been wanting to know Japanese since I watched Guyver and Dragon Ball when I was like 4 or 5.)

Congratulations Splatted

Sheesh, do I even still remember my 2010 resolutions? I'm pretty sure it'd have been about not starting drinking, smoking or doing drugs, and at the same time keeping up with my studies, both for school and also for Japanese and some of my other personal projects, perhaps even improve upon those. Well, I'm still a teetotaler and I still don't smoke or do drugs, and I did keep up pretty well with my school studies (although perhaps not quite as much as I would've liked after moving back home (which I didn't want to do anyway, but it was out of my hands)). But some of my other studies, particularly Japanese, could've been better. So it was a decent year in regards of my following up with my resolutions (or what I think my resolutions must've been), but not perfect.

So, my resolutions for next year, then?
- Still not drinking, smoking or doing drugs
- Finally becoming comfortably conversational in Japanese - doesn't need to be excellent yet, but by the end of 2011 I no longer want to have to come to realize that I still don't know a word that should be very simple because it's so common (can't think of examples atm).
- Find a place in Utrecht to live on my own again.
- Becoming better at programming and finishing a next version of my personal project in that regard (that's gonna be a big one).
- Reading more than I did this year (I've been keeping track since February this year, so I should be able to tell), at least as far as non-fiction is concerned but preferably in terms of fiction as well.

Who knows, I might think of more later.

2009:
Live in Japan and see where that takes me... (08/08->12/09)

2010:
Move to Australia and get back into "real" work(02/10->)
Finish KO2001 Anki deck [DONE and still reviewing]
Read all of the Japanese books I bought since I'll be leaving (lots of Murakami and some others) [Only read 1 book]
Lang-8- I'm so inconsistent with lang-8 but I love it when I'm doing it- maybe I should just go for once a week and see where that takes me... [did 2 entries, hah]

Luckily, I'm moving to Australia with my Japanese girlfriend, and I'm hoping she's so sick of speaking English during the day that she'll be keen to speak Japanese when we're together.  My Japanese is heaps better than when I moved to Japan, but I still have a long way to go- I thought about sitting 2級 this year but there wasn't much point since I'm going to Australia. I also didn't really feel like busting my ass to get all the grammar down  If I'm not moving around too much this time next year in Australia, I plan on smacking 2級 around.[definitely did not smack 2級 around]

My year focused on traveling around Australia trying to get back into career work. Unfortunately, I was on a work & holiday visa and no one would seriously consider me for work in my field because the visa has a clause that only allows 6 months of work per company. Not being able to find a real job threw my 2010 into a massive tailspin- all I've done this year is admin and bar work while also looking for jobs abroad. I had a really good interview for a job in Chicago, but unfortunately it didn't work out.

As a backup, in case I wasn't able to find work anywhere else, I interviewed via Skype and was offered a job teaching at an Eikaiwa in Tokyo, starting Feb 2011. It's looking like that's what I'll be doing.

Positives for 2010: Finished KO2001, a Murakami book, Tales of Rebirth on the PSP, listened to heaps of JUNK comedy podcasts, started a travel company and got engaged to my long-term Japanese girlfriend- that was definitely a highlight

Resolutions for 2011: Pretty sure I didn't pass 2級 when I sat it in December. I was really confident because I felt the listening was really easy, and during the test it was easy, I just made some silly mistakes or lost concentration at a crucial moment. So resolution #1 is pass 2級.
#2 Work on my travel company, aiming for 1-2 tours this year
#3 Reconnect with old Japanese friends and make new ones
#4 Have a real life plan in place by the end of 2011

2011 doesn't have to be super Japanese focused for me- I know how hard it was for me to improve being away from Japan for a year, but I'm happy enough with my progress this year. I've gone out many times with Japanese friends I made in Australia and spent the entire night speaking only in Japanese, and to me, that is the most important thing to be able to do in Japanese- communicate with others. I'm rusty right now due to lack of said Japanese friends and my fiance being back in Japan, but I know that moving to Tokyo I'll be fine, and that my Japanese will get better and better. 

Remember, it's not a race and it's important to enjoy yourself along the way

Last edited by captal (2010 December 29, 11:39 pm)

2011 Goals:

Writing:
Write everything in Japanese (notes, emails, etc.) unless I absolutely have to write it in English.
Improve my Kanji writing speed.
Find myself in terms of how I want my writing to look.
Get up to 5-10 short diary entries per day (I'm at 2-3 right now) on Lang-8.

Reading:
Read 1 1/2 manga a month in depth (doing it now, but it's hard work maintaining pace.
Be able to understand newspaper articles past the 50% point (not reading for gist, but real understanding.)

SRS:
Learn 20-40 words in depth per day (I mean a solid understanding of each word)
Get my reviews below 400 per day.
Get my review time down to 1 1/2 hours (it is right now, but not everyday.)
Do more cloze delete work, somehow.
Integrate the Kanji I don't know into my Kanji deck.
Finish the remaining 2000(?) of the Core6000 and do the JPLT 1-4 Anki deck (-double ups, maybe 3000 more words?)
Finish my verb ending cloze delete deck (50% - minor goal).

Grammar (my weak area):
Go through "All About Japanese Particles", "The Dictionary of Japanese Particles" and then the JPLT lists using the DOJG series as a base. Writing one diary entry for each set and working hard on items I don't understand.
Review my grammar decks on a daily basis.

Speaking:
Make more language buddies and talk more.
Shadow TV/Podcasts/Etc. for 1-2 hours per day minimum.

Listening:
Get to 90% understanding from 30-40% (mostly 30%ish)
Not much to improve in my method. Maybe do some Subs2SRS work to see what it's like.

Japanese time:
Move up to 9 hours of my day in Japanese from 4-5. Do most of my daily activities in Japanese and integrate work activities, when I can, in to Japanese time (reaching about 80% of my daily/work activities I would do in English in Japanese.)

Experiments:
Begin experimenting with an extensive production based approach. Example, read out loud instead of silently. Shadow when watching TV. Write out diary entries by hand (the corrected version, not the one with errors). Do grammar production cards with my SRS (just tenses and conjugations) instead of recognition only. Write out vocabulary I have trouble with. Basically, produce as much as possible during recognition or otherwise passive activities to take more of an "active" learning approach.

Last edited by Cranks (2011 January 01, 8:16 am)

My language learning goal for 2011 is to begin Arabic. I doubt I'll have much time at all to devote to it, so it'll be very slow, but it's more for fun than for any practical purpose. Arabic's script has always captivated me, and as a literature nerd that's a good enough reason to learn

My goals for 2011:

1. Be able to explain anything in Japanese. (not fluent but at least no trouble speaking).
2. Understand everything I hear.
3. Reading speed almost as fast as English.

Well on my way to reach these goals ^_^ anything else is just extra!

Reflection 2010: Good job! but wish I did less "going through word lists" and more reading books. Which reminds me another goal (or maybe, method) is to read 1 book a month.

---

Cranks,
I don't know you and maybe this is how you do things and it works for you but somehow I doubt it.

Cranks wrote:

Grammar (my weak area):
Go through "All About Japanese Particles", "The Dictionary of Japanese Particles" and then the JPLT lists using the DOJG series as a base. Writing one diary entry for each set and working hard on items I don't understand.
Review my grammar decks on a daily basis.

"working hard", "grammar decks" (plural), "go through lists"... This doesn't really sound like fun. Your grammar might be weak because you're studying things independently too much in stead of just having fun reading and getting familiar with the language naturally.

Just in general your whole post seems kind of crazy to me. (one to 2 hours minimum per day shadowing??)... You might be setting yourself up for disappointment. I'm not saying it isn't possible to improve your Japanese as much as you want (that's not my point), but I think that you're focusing too much on numbers. Either way if it works for you that's great. Wish you luck!