I have one of the official 5級　test prep books (漢字学習ステップ）. My plan is to put all of the questions into Anki -- the book has sections for radicals and stroke order and things like that, so it should cover most of the kanji-specific questions that will be on the test, and then I'll just try to add in a couple hundred example sentences for common vocabulary words -- things like

チイキの防災について話し合う

修学旅行のスライドをウツす

where you have to put the word into kanji. And not pass the card unless I can correctly write the kanji with the right stroke order and right proportions and right little details.

Kanji Kentei, from what I've seen in test prep books, is about 1/3 knowing how to correctly write any given kanji, 1/3 vocabulary (including, for example, the difference between 移す　and 写す　and 映す), and 1/3 things like radicals and okurigana.

Mishima is definitely a possibility! I am leaning toward 人間失格　or something else by Dazai Osamu, since I have never read anything by him (I have read just a tiny bit of Mishima, not a whole novel) but it will most likely be a few months before I make up my mind.

Wow!
I'm impressed with everyone's goals. 

My 2012 goals.
1)  Give RTK another go with 10 Kanji a day.
2) Take a dance class.
3) Keeping plugging away at Spanish.

I'm in Mexico this year, so Japanese has to come second to Spanish.  I saw the Spanish version 1Q84 in a bookstore today and was tempted.

Fillanzea wrote:

Mishima is definitely a possibility! I am leaning toward 人間失格　or something else by Dazai Osamu, since I have never read anything by him (I have read just a tiny bit of Mishima, not a whole novel) but it will most likely be a few months before I make up my mind.

Dazai is really interesting, and not that hard to read. I'm reading 人間失格 currently and really enjoying it.^^

2011 Goals:
-No Japanese related.
-Graduate as soon as possible-> Done
-Work -> Done
-Get into research -> failed, horribly, not my fault though

2012 Goals:
I've a huge resolution to learn Japanese, actually I've been denying myself from learning Japanese! This is how much I'm motivated.

Generally, I want to be functional in Japanese by the end of the year, maybe to the point of playing video games and reading manga. Here's the list:
-Redo RTK1 (with writing)
-Tae Kim's guide and deck
-Core2k
-Mining sentence or do Core6k
-Add 300 new Kanji
-Listen to a HUGE amount of Japanese. Already preparing music and podcasts, even if I don't understand! >_> Hearing Japanese every now and then made my ears more comfortable with the language.
-Watch at least 3 dramas and try sub2srs.

Other things that I hope won't interfere: Job, second job, and my engineering passions.

Can't wait to reread this in Jan 1st 2013:D

Last edited by undead_saif (2012 January 14, 5:06 pm)

＞＜ I already feel that my goals are unrealistic.

Congrats on the job. Especially on bypassing the english teaching step.

You may think you've plateaued, but I bet your level is still going up so long as you're actually using japanese at work. Go read something you found difficult a few months ago. There have been times when I slack off on my japanese media consumption and when get back to it later I can still feel the improvement. In fact sometime you may need to take a break to notice it. If you're always comparing yourself to how you were yesterday the growth can be hard to notice.

Well I guess it depends what you're doing and a bunch of other factors. I've found now that now I work in a Japanese company and my daily communication is 95% japanese only my ability to express myself just gets better and better even if I don't really do anything else. And that's having a kind of holistic effect on everything else, like my reading and listening. Then there's also things like constantly writing email, having to research things, occasional reports, meetings, occasional translation and interpretation duties that get handed to me. I guess if you're a programmer you spend less time using japanese at work, but if your job involves a lot of communication that extra usage time can really start to add up.

Last edited by nadiatims (2012 March 01, 8:00 am)

Did not do well with my goals last year at all. But I am progressing in spurts, sometimes with long breaks. I've been stressed out about various things recently and it messes with my studying, but that's no excuse :-). I do keep coming back to Japanese though, which is the important part, right?

Here we go:

Finish RTK1 (I'm almost 75% done)
Finish Japanese for Everyone

For now those are my goals. Maybe not as amazing as other people's, but I think they are still good.