Goals for 2010!

Open Forum in English
1

You know what to do, let us know what you plan or hope to achieve for 2010! I’ve had a pretty poor year progress-wise, not achieving nearly as much as I could have and I feel like it was a real waste. I’ve studied Swedish on and off for almost two years and I really just have no excuse for not having attained a good level in it. I could also have made far more progress in Spanish than I have, having started in January and basically putting it on hold for no real reason.

It’s going to be quite tough in 2010, because I was extremely lazy with my University studies last year and did poorly in my classes. I’ve made the resolution to really nail my remaining classes for my degree and come out with some top marks. So balancing that with my language studies is going to be a real challenge. Hopefully an enjoyable one, but a real challenge nonetheless

Anyway, here we go. My 2010 goals for currently studied languages:

Maintain my German and French and start making use of tutors to improve and refine my speaking skills.

READ MORE French and German. I seriously don’t read anywhere enough in any language and it’s embarrassing.

Activate my Spanish and Swedish. Try and get my vocabulary up to around 15,000 in each by December 31, 2010.

Try to do the same for French and German (should be pretty easy, since I have a pretty wide vocabulary in German and French is not far behind).

Finish both volumes of James Heisig’s “Remembering Traditional Hanzi” and then, if I have enough time, make a start on learning the remaining 1400 odd characters in Richard Harbaugh’s “Chinese Characters: A Dictionary and Genealogy”.

Work through all three volumes of John DeFrancis’ Chinese Reader series, then start going through LingQ.

Try and hit at least Upper-Intermediate on Chinesepod.

Generally just keep plodding along comfortably and enjoyably in Chinese.

My future languages for 2010:

After I have gotten underway with Spanish and Swedish and chatted with the tutors and basically developed a level of all-round comfort in these languages, make a start on Dutch, Italian and Portuguese and essentially try to cover as much as possible of the most major Germanic and Romance languages.

If I can handle it, make a start on Russian.

Now let’s see how much of this I actually achieve. How do you guys plan to spend next year?

2

My plans are :

To reach the amount of :
18 000 words in English ( now 15000)
8 000 words in German ( now 2500)
3 000 words in Spanish (now 500)

To listen these 3 languages much than one hour per day.

3

I want to start on Russian, Chinese and Korean (when it’s up here), but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to give them the time they will require until I have gotten further with my French and Spanish. If anything, I might take a 3 month break from either one or both of these (by break I mean just doing a little bit of weekly maintenance work) and dedicate the time to one (or two) of the above-mentioned languages. However, I doubt that this will actually happen.

4

My goals for 2010 is

  • to learn most frequently used kanji;
  • to reach Intermediate II level in Japanese (губа не дура!);
  • to reach Beginner II - Intermediate I level in Bashkirian;
  • to use English articles and prepositions properly.
5

Goals for 2010 are

  • To get to 10,000 words in Japanese (Currently at 350~)
  • 1,500 words in Russian (Currently at 0)
  • Start working out again
6

I’m gonna work hard on my french, so I can read, write, speak okay. Known words in LingQ should be at least 15 000 at the end of the year. I’m gonna continue listening to the very nice conversations that are here, especially from Marianne & Serge (and hope to see some more conversations from them!).

In Italian I’m gonna read at least one book a month. Known words here at LingQ: 20 000 and 500 LingQs learned.

In Spanish I want to complete “Who Is She?” and “Eating Out”, and reach 3000 known words.

7

I have no set goals in terms of number of words, but if I can get to a level where I can have and decent conversation in German, Spanish and French by the time I finish University in the Summer then I will be very pleased, and if I can get to a level beyond that then even better! Russian is just a side project for the times when I’ve had enough of learning the three aforementioned languages so any progress in that is a bonus. :slight_smile:

8

My goal for 2010: following my own advice to others about speaking freely with no fear. (I’m superstitious about declaring measurable goals, they tend to fall by the wayside once I have spoken about them. I’ll keep my goals nice and woolly.)

9

In the past, my language studies were often sidetracked by other distractions. The main thing for me in 2010 is to stay on track; I must keep doing what I am doing to consolidate the progress I’ve made.

10

My goals are:
Spanish: By May have a about 10,000 known words, read about 500,000 words, and listened to about 126 hours. Right now my main focus is Spanish.

I want to then start German after I meet those goals. I don’t really have set goals for German but when I do they would be along the lines of: by mid September try to get around 2500-5000 known words and about 250,000 read words with about 100 hours of listening.

The same goes for Arabic. I’ll really go at Arabic when I am doing German because I’ll have more time on my hands.

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  1. Reach a conversational level in French by the beginning of the summer.
  2. Stay focused on the prize and not get sidetracked by other enticing languages! lol
12

Language goals for 2010:

  1. To start talking with a Russian tutor on Lingq
  2. To make some Russian speaking friends in Seoul
  3. To steadily improve my Korean each day
  4. To find some balance between studying Korean and Russian (usually there is no balance)
13

For anyone making goals this year the best way is to follow the SMART method:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time

14

My overall language goal for this year is to be fluent in Spanish. I want to learn other languages, but not until I feel that I am at a fluent level in Spanish. I feel that my vocabulary is not great, I can’t express myself in Spanish to save my life (without a large amount of time and effort), and I can’t understand Spanish spoken at a native speed without it being repeated (i.e. talk-radio, tv, etc.)

  • Continue talking with tutors at minimum twice a week.
  • Submit writings at minimum twice a week
  • Listen to Spanish every day (a minimum of 1 hour)
  • Read some Spanish every day (no specific amount, once I get started, I’m hard to stop)
  • Record my Spanish listening and reading on Lingq (even if only approximate numbers) so that I can keep track.
  • 20000 words known (now at 8390)
15

Montemayor-- I like that SMART system-- never heard of it before. I’m going to keep that in mind.

16

Thanks, I just found out about this method and it seems like it might work pretty well.

17

Interesting article about goal-setting and planning:

Potheads, planners and players:
http://bit.ly/6bB9e7

18

Language goals:

  • fully (or 99.9%) re-learn greek
    -Japanse: finish pimsleur, michel thomas and start using LingQ
19

All these goals seem too much like they are posted within some kind of language learning site. My goals, including of course the language goals, include learning how to kite board, beating my boss at the 2010 Aviva Singapore Half Ironman, climbing Mt. Fuji and figuring out what I’m going to be when I grow up.

20

Well I did make the thread for language-specific goals, but any goals for 2010 apply.