Japanese
This is the language I've spent the longest learning that I did not grow up with so this will probably be the lengthiest section.Goals at the start of the year
My goals for this year in Japanese was to read 6 novels, write at least a sentence almost everyday in Japanese, read through the grammar book I'm using(初級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック), and watch 365 ~20-30min segments worth of Japanese audio without Japanese subtitles (so about the length of an episode of TV, but it could be a movie, podcast, video, etc.).How those goals turned out
I didn't achieve any of them... lol Let's go through each of these and see why.Read 6 novels: This was supposed to be a lowered goal to make it easier to go with one of my Spanish goals. Unfortunately, I made one fatal mistake. I thought, "What if those novels... were visual?", and the goal died right there. If I were to count adventure games/visual novels, I most definitely hit that goal, but I'm not counting it. I did get a lot of reading practice out of it, but visual novels are on average much easier to read than actual novels so it wasn't challenging in the way I wanted. It was fun though! Also if I count the Kara no Kyoukai trilogy as novels(I'm not sure if they're that or light novels), then I technically hit half my goal!
Write at least a sentence almost everyday in Japanese: I was using Lang8(unfortunately not open to the public anymore) to write a post everyday, and was able to successfully do so for about ~2 months, along with the same goal in Spanish. Mainly this one failed in the way that once you miss like two days in a row it becomes easier to miss more. I did notice it became easier to write sentences as time went on, but what got harder was coming up with stuff to write about.
Read 初級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック: This is probably my favorite grammar book I've used and I'm always surprised I rarely see it mentioned outside of resources for teachers. I failed this one for a somewhat good reason: At first I was just reading through it, and while that worked, I didn't retain everything. So I ended up starting over, but this time I made flashcard questions out of the material so I could keep practicing long after finishing a chapter, and this really helped my grammar retention. It takes longer, but it's a better learning process. I did drop off partway through the year as I focused on other languages, but the cards will let me jump right back to where I was and not reread when I do go back.
365 ~20-30min JP audio, no JP subs: It's harder to accurately measure how close I got to this goal, but I think it was probably around ~200 ~20-30min segments of audio. The idea behind this was similar to a goal I had before of reading 365 volumes of manga in Japanese(which I did hit that year!) which helped my general reading speed a lot. So similarly I hoped this would improve my listening skills, which are ehhh.... Even though I didn't hit the goal, it did help a lot. I feel like if I was like really into Vtubers I could've hit this goal easily, but every time I try I get kind of bored. Something I've done that will probably help next time is watching while washing dishes. I'll put on an anime, the news, or a podcast to try to diversify the types of Japanese I'm hearing. It's the English podcasts that I listen to that eat into that time mostly. If we're counting JP audio with JP subs though, I went much much higher than that goal, which is why I didn't count that since I'd end up relying on my reading skills and not my listening skills.
Everything else
This is a picture of my Japanese vocab Anki deck stats for the year.
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This is the deck I've built for the longest and because of that it's kind of on autopilot for me. I added more cards than any other deck this year(3464 cards), but it's actually the smallest number added than I did for Japanese any other year. I'm seeing much less new words than I used to, so I expect next year it'll probably be smaller unless I extremely diversify what I'm engaging in. Reading novels, textbooks, might help with that. I'll hopefully get past 30k cards!
This is a picture of my Japanese grammar Anki deck stats for the year.
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This is the deck I mentioned creating from the grammar book goal. While there's not a lot of cards in it, each card takes longer to get through since it's more involved than "do you know what this word means?".
Goals for next year
I'm just going to repeat the ones I did for this year. lol Except for the write at least everyday, I'll have a sub-goal of if that fails, at least write somewhat consistently throughout the year. I might try to translate some of my posts into Japanese to see if that helps keep me more consistent. Also will modify my 6 novels goal to include textbooks/academic books. Don't know if I'll read any of those, but if I do, they would be similarly challenging, so I'd include them in the count.Spanish
This year Spanish was mostly tied with my Japanese goals and due to that and other languages kind of got more neglected than I'd like.Goals at the start of the year
My goals were to read 6 novels and write at least a sentence almost everyday in Spanish.How those goals turned out
Again I didn't achieve any of them.Read 6 novels: Failed this one, started two books, never finished them. My main issue is that I feel like the novels I want to read in Spanish are probably too complicated for me so I read very slow, when I should maybe read something a little easier. I did read one comic in Spanish though, Alter Ego, I recommend it! It's trying to be a cute yuri manga, and I think it succeeded in that.
Write at least a sentence almost everyday in Spanish: Same as Japanese. I would write first in Japanese and then translate it into Spanish. I would've done it the other way around, but I worried that I'd write something more complex in Spanish that I'd have too hard a time translating into Japanese. This probably meant I didn't get to practice my writing to the extent I could've.
Everything else
To at least get some more practice in Spanish, I'd watch some shows and play some games with Spanish dubs/subs. I'd prefer if the media I engaged in was originally in Spanish, this was more to just get any practice. The problem is that almost any time there's a movie I want to watch it doesn't have Spanish subs, and since my listening isn't as good as my reading, it just takes more effort. Usually the way I got around this was watching them with my parents so I could ask them about any vocab that confused me. I should probably just do that more. Same with talking to them in Spanish more. For grammar study I've been reading through Uso de la gramática española and making cards like I've been doing with Japanese (though I only have a few cards so far so I won't show a picture of the deck). The difference is most of it is review, so I'll probably go through it faster than in Japanese, it's just I have to put the time aside to do it.This is a picture of my Spanish vocab Anki deck stats for the year.
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This one's a little different than Japanese and other languages since it wasn't me starting from essentially 0 knowledge, so I think there's always going to be less cards overall. But it's also due to not putting enough time in to reading to get new vocab.
Goals for next year
Same as last year, but also adding watch more movies originally in Spanish as well as try to speak more Spanish with my family. If I continue on my adventure game playing journey and hit 1984 I can start playing more Spanish adventure games and get some basic practice that way. My more abstract goal is that I want Spanish to be the language I study most next year. I always feel like if I just put in the time that I put into other languages here, I could probably improve a lot and quickly, more than any of the other languages I'm learning.Mandarin Chinese
This was the first year in a while that I really put in some effort to learn Mandarin Chinese. The last time I really tried was in high school and then did a bit throughout the years, but never for long. I'm kind of starting from scratch again here. I didn't have any goals since I kind of started learning again on a whim. I was researching Chinese VNs and manhua and wanted to play/read them in their original language, so I thought might as well start learning again.At first I was using Duolingo, but that was a bad idea and I dropped it about halfway into the course. What's been very helpful for me is using Chinese Grammar Wiki along with HSK Reading. I make questions out of the grammar and practice reading basic articles along with my vocab deck. I got to B1 grammar before taking a break and just focusing on cards. I can read basic sentences which is better than I've ever been so I'm pretty happy.
This is a picture of my Mandarin Chinese vocab Anki deck stats for the year.
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The second most words added of any deck, but also it's due to adding literally everything I see.
Goals for next year
I don't really have any. If I get the feeling to study again I'll probably do a "sprint" where I really focus on learning for like a month. I still can't play Chinese VNs or read manhua, probably won't be able to next year either without really struggling, but if I end up doing so, I'll consider that a bonus goal completed.French
It was a mostly quiet year for learning French. I had a similar "sprint" last year like I did with Mandarin this year. The only thing I really did was a little vocab mining from re-watching anime with French dubs/subs, and there are lots to choose from. It's easier to do this than with like Mandarin since I can kind of cheat by relying on French's similarity with Spanish grammar(Portuguese has this even more so) and my knowledge of the show to get by on that point and focus on building vocab. I also just played that one French adventure game, so I'll probably play more and get practice that way. Aside from that I didn't do much else. Will probably do the same next year.This is a picture of my French vocab Anki deck stats for the year.
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Brazilian Portuguese
This one I started learning this year! It's been a language I've wanted to learn for a while, so thought might as well do some light learning in the background until I feel like really putting in the time to focus on it. Mostly did the same thing as French, but with even less grammar prep because of how close it is to Spanish grammar on the surface. Any other differences I can just look up when they come up, but right now my focus will mostly be on vocab building and light grammar studying. The book I'm using for grammar is Living Language: Brazilian Portuguese: Complete Course, The Basics.This is a picture of my Brazilian Portuguese vocab Anki deck stats for the year.
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