The 2013 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[Meng Lelan]

Started this thread because 1. it's never too early to start thinking ahead 2. the new year 2013 is just around the corner 3. I resolve to take more initative in things I do 4. the world did not end as the Mayan calendar predicted so just as well to go ahead and plan for 2013 5. post away everyone!

[navaburo]

My 2013 Chinese goals:

1. 文言文 course with DrWatson et. al.. 1 lesson per week (~2hrs/wk + discussion time)

2. Finish 哈比人歷險記. Using Lomb method, with "Der kleine hobbit" as a reference.

3. Complete Heisig's RTH2. (currently at 2200 but stalled).

4. Watch and read along with all the NPCR videos.

5. Skype with my Chinese friend occasionally.

---

Other languages:

French: Read two modern novels. (perhaps le Clezio). Finish watching The Mentalist. Do ~50pgs of CLE grammar workbooks. Speak French with my Swiss friends.

German: Finish Momo. Try Nibelungenlied. Read Kafka. Watch some TV. (LOST was great in German... What else could work?)

Swedish: Finish "Dans med en ängel", memorize some more song lyrics. Watch more Disney movies.

Japanese: finish JSL1 and videos. Work through JWL1, with reference to BJ1. Listen to some more JapanesePod101. Finish 綱の錬金術師. Finish GitS manga.

Russian: learn sounds and Cyrillic. Read some bilingual short stories (parsing the Russian and taking notes).

[eshton]

My 2013 Goals : 1) Pass HSK 4 & 5

2) Work on my 科技 汉语

3) Try not forget Spanish

4) Move to Nanjing

[Demonic_Duck]

Is getting from ~HSK3 to HSK6 level a realistic goal for a year, considering I'm living in China and studying for 2 hours a day, but also working a full-time English teaching job in an English-speaking environment?

[eshton]

@Demonic_Duck

I think it's possible, I mean I'm planning to go from beginner to HSK 5 by June.

[OneEye]

My goals for the year are:

1) Continue with Chinese conversation lessons (really a language exchange) and writing lessons (an actual tutor) once per week, at least until September.

2) I have a list of books I want to read before starting my MA in September:

裘錫圭，《文字學概要》 (currently reading)

劉釗，《古文字構形學》

馬如森，《殷墟甲骨學》

劉翔等，《商周古文字讀本》 (currently working through)

杜忠誥，《說文篆文訛形釋例》 (will be auditing a class in which this is the main text

龍異騰，《基礎音韻學》 (currently reading)

竺家寧，《古音學入門》

何大安，《聲韻學中的觀念和方法》

陳新雄，《訓詁學》（上）

胡楚生，《訓詁學大綱》

周何，《中國訓詁學》

For me, that's a fairly ambitious list, and I'm prepared for the fact that I may not actually finish it all before September (the goal is to learn the material well, not simply to finish the reading), but I'm going to do my best to.

3) Previously, I said that I wanted to read a novel per month during 2013, but that was before I decided to beef up the above reading list. For the time being, I have a few novels that I'd like to finish this year: 《流星·蝴蝶·劍》 by 古龍 (上 and 下, so really 2 books), 《那些年，我們一起追的女孩》 by 九把刀 (possibly), and maybe a 金庸 novel if I'm feeling up to it later this year (雪山飛狐). The priority really has to be on getting ready for grad school, though.

4) I recently re-started Japanese (never got more than a few lessons in before anyway). I also spent the past 6 days in Tokyo, which really motivated me to learn the language, plus it will of course be useful (if not required) in grad school, so I'll be putting a fair amount of time into this. I'm currently using a Taiwanese textbook (they tend not to assume that you're afraid of kanji, unlike English-based textbooks, and they also tend to cover pitch-accent better) called 大家學標準日本語. I also have Assimil, which I also plan on using, and I'll also be making use of Tae Kim's grammar guide. If I have time later this year, I'd like to find a tutor or language exchange.

5) Watch a lot of TV shows and movies in Chinese. I'm keeping this one vague on purpose, because the other goals take priority. But this does help a lot with listening and speaking.

6) Apply for MA programs and scholarships in February/March. This will require me to actually sit down to write my study plan and all that stuff (in Chinese).

7) My work is all freelance, and I'd like to move toward more translation and less English tutoring.

I'd like to learn some Taiwanese/Hokkien, but this is not a priority. I'd be happy enough with just some listening comprehension, which isn't nearly as difficult as learning to speak.

[anonymoose]

Survive until 2014.

[Meng Lelan]

Chinese related goals:

1. Skritter to 5000 in the queue by the end of 2013.

2. Post an entry to my blog once a month.

3. Master two 武術套路 this year. Hopefully compete in the Houston summer tournament.

4. Stop messing up 琵琶 lessons.

5. Watch three 功夫片 with 中文 subtitles.

6. Write my much anticipated book review here in Chinese Forums.

Non-Chinese related goals:

1. Get a Real Job and quit Hellish Job (may not happen until I finish the blind rehab internship....). If not then seriously consider medical school in Texas.

2. Learn how to take better pictures with my iPhone.

3. Start blind rehab internship in Texas this summer.

4. Run one 5K race each month and get a free goofy race tshirt from each event as proof.

[abcdefg]

My main language goal this year is to increase reading speed. Have previously formed the bad habit of grinding through text slowly, looking up every single word I don't know. Now, with the aid of my teacher here in Kunming, I'm trying to quickly get the gist of what I'm reading and then go back if necessary to attend to details.

In writing Chinese, I'm trying to learn how to construct those long, convoluted (often run-on) sentences, instead of just cobbling together a bunch of short expressions. It's counter intuitive, but seems to be the way things are done.

Conversation goals are unchanged; I seldom use English any more. It's "all Chinese all the time."

[icebear]

Mid-term objective: conversationally competent in most informal situations; comfortable both consuming and producing Chinese relevant to my area of work.

As with last year, most of my goals are process-oriented - focusing on improving my daily/weekly habits rather than setting lofty/distant goals. Within each category they are ordered by likelihood/ease/accountability.

Structured Learning

Goal: 1.5 hours of tutoring twice per week after work

Goal: 1.5 hours of review, revision and homework (which may encompass the below goals) at least 3 other nights per week

成功之路

Goal: one new lesson per week with the tutor (currently lesson 29, 进步篇3)

Goal: skim one lesson from a lower book per week (I'd like to cover the whole series, start to end) (lesson 1-10 of 进步篇1 so far)

Audiovisual Media

Goal: five episodes of a Chinese TV series per week (iPad while jogging at the gym)

Goal: watch more news (news reading first)

Reading

Goal: ensure that I can read out loud the week's content from 成功之路 smoothly/naturally

Goal: at least thirty minutes per day of fiction/nonfiction unrelated to a textbook

Goal: transition into more newsy/economic/societal type articles which will open up those types of books

Composition

Goal: complete all homework, including compositions/essays, for new lessons of 成功之路

Goal: post at least once per week to lang-8.com (initially essay prompts from 成功之路 that my tutor skips, later my own content/journal/blog)

Goal: write in greater detail and length, review corrections more diligently

Handwriting/Vocab

Goal: 5 minutes of Skritter (only characters) per day

Goal: clear Pleco Flashcards at least once per day, twice (evening/morning) if convenient

Goal: hand write weekly homework for 成功之路

Social

Goal: only date girls that speak exclusively Chinese (regardless of their English level)

Goal: prioritize social time with Chinese speakers (over English speakers)

Goal: continue developing network of Chinese friends

Bench marking

Goal: HSK5/6 - determine if I think this is worthwhile this spring with my tutor, revisit possibility in spring update. Best time to take would be fall, after the summer lull to study through.

[roddy]

Excellent to see yet another of these up. I'll make this one sticky and in a few weeks unstick the 2012 one.

[lechuan]

Overall Goal: Improve Speaking, Listening and Character Reading

Metrics: 2000+ word vocabulary, 3000 characters, Read graded materials (No Pinyin!)

Action Plan

PART 1

- Learn Characters 1200-3000 in Heisig's Remembering the Simplified Hanzi (Skritter).

- Go through all Chinese Learn Online (CLO) Podcast Lessons, reviewing relevant vocab (Pleco: English => Pinyin) [2000 words total]

PART 2

- Re-learn previously learned (pinyin) words with characters (Skritter)

- Read through all Chinese Breeze Books, adding all new vocab to Skritter

PART 3

- Learn remaining words, grammar, etc needed for HSK4

- Write HSK4 test

- Return to Chinesepod, Intermediate and/or Upper Intermediate levels, new vocab to Skritter.

Misc

- Keep watching CCTV's 快乐汉语

- Speak more chinese (instead of English) with family using recently learned words and grammar constructs.

[edelweis]

Goals for 2013

[hahahaha. This is what happens after two months of utter laziness. And it doesn't include my non-language related goals, and I did trim a few "other languages" goals. Anyway, it will be good for a laugh at the end of the year. Speaking of which, I still haven't done my 2012 report...]

Improve automation

I want to add further logging functionalities to my learning tools, and automatically launch tools or websites when scheduled.

Learn HSK vocabulary

Like I did last year: dictionary look-up, SRS, and podcasts for HSK5 vocabulary.

And study vocabulary in context with my old HSK book.

And read two novels that use such modern vocabulary.

And whatever. (chengyus? famous people? geography?)

And do HSK5 mock tests. But I won't be taking the test. I won't.

Have fun with characters (since they're the main reason for my studying Chinese)

Currently after about 3.5 years I have learnt/drilled about 2000 characters.

So, this year I'd like to add the achievable amount of 500 new characters, at the moderate pace of 10 per week,

and also catch up on reading traditional characters (I will now be testing myself on both),

and study a little calligraphy, and learn to read a little seal script (this is supposed to be the fun part ).

Additionally I'd like to read at least one book in simplified and one book in traditional characters. Comics qualify provided they're long enough

Production AKA Getting serious AKA Getting a teacher

Although I have used Lang8 and postcrossing and polyglot meetings and group classes in the past, I really need to find a more efficient way to practice writing and speaking.

The answer is obviously getting a teacher. So I will try do that. I will.

And I might also try to participate in a Chinese-language forum.

And (almost forgot) I will resume studying grammar, with the teacher if possible.

(get ready to) Use it for work

Units 2 (maths) and 3 (computers) of 科普汉语听记 total 12 chapters. Seems auspicious, if only from a scheduling point of view. I will add the vocabulary from this to my SRS deck too.

In addition I want to read one technical book from cover to cover and learn both the Chinese vocabulary and the contents. (using books on the same topic in other languages to better understand the contents is allowed).

(I did read technical stuff in previous years, just not that seriously).

Keep other languages active

This is one thing that worked not too poorly last year, although my motivation went down in the 2nd semester, I did manage to review a little Arabic and read part of a Spanish book.

Do more of this kind of thing this year!

I'd like to do some shadowing of British English from BBC podcasts too - and risk becoming one of those show-offs that speak English with any accent that remotely sounds like proper pronunciation and accentuation to French ears - in other words, not pronuncing English words and sentences quite like French words and sentences. This will, or should, actually be helpful for work since I have to communicate with British people these days. On the other hand, in addition to the cultural issues and expected self-consciousness, there's the practical issue that my English might become unintelligible to "English speaking" French people, without any guarantee that it will become any less unintelligible to the Brits

And I will record one short book (or a few chapters of a longer book) in French for either a public domain archive such as Project Gutenberg, or a private archive of non-public-domain books for blind users. There's a selfish goal hidden here.

This is enormously overambitious Never mind... let's add another one:

following laurenth's example, find time and ways to share some activities and interests with my family of non-language learners.

[peterlkj]

I realised this year more than ever that if I am going to build my career here in China, truly fluent Chinese is going to be essential. Over 2012 I made significant improvements in both vocab and listening comprehension, and have at last reached a point where consuming Chinese media is a pleasure rather than a pain. When I got to the same level in Portuguese some years ago, I saw an exponential improvement in my language ability, and so I hope the same may happen over the next few months with my Chinese.

In general I think my experience with Portuguese has fundamentally shaped my Chinese learning philosophy: do whatever it takes to get to the comprehension level required for native written and AV materials (in my case, years of Pleco flashcards to build vocab, as well as all the more conventional classroom, private tutor and language partner approaches), and then leverage the language knowledge gained to effectively immerse in the language. With a (passive, reading recognition) vocab now of 20-30k words (depending on which tool you believe) this is clearly make or break time for my approach.

Goals for 2013

Overall objective: Progress to ability to fully communicate in professional situations, including project management and client presentations; participate comfortably in large group discussions; deepen understanding of contemporary China

Metric: HSK 6 by mid-year

Breakdown by skill:

Vocabulary

Goal: Achieve passive vocabulary of >30k words (listening & reading); active vocab mastery of relevant business / professional terms

Methodology:

Continue daily SRS drills for max 30 mins/day, complete the current 26k word list in Pleco, add more words from reading as I come across them; develop a list of business, news and technical specific vocab to add to SRS

Reading

Goal: At least double reading speed; become comfortable browsing Weibo and other Chinese social media for pleasure; comfortably access modern Chinese fiction and non fiction writing

Methodology: Read minimum 45 minutes Chinese modern fiction/ day (target 2 novels/month) - start by finishing the 圈子圈套 series; read minimum of one news or business article/day (Caixin/HBR etc); spend 15+ minutes using Weibo

Writing

Goal: Pass HSK 6 writing requirement

Methodology: Minimum of one HSK 6 writing section practice question/week; blog (anonymously!) once a week in Chinese

Listening

Goal: ~100% comprehension of modern dramas and the TV news; start to watch / understand period dramas

Methodology: Watch/listen to daily news on CCTV or eg 将将三人行; try to watch an episode of a drama daily

Speaking

Goal: Improve confidence speaking in large groups; improve overall fluency when talking on a wider range of subjects including technical & business topics

Methodology: Aim to speak Chinese 90% of the time at home, not fall back to English; speak more Chinese in the office with colleagues; work with a tutor to discuss a wider range of topics weekly

[Lu]

- Translate a book (still).

- Actually study Chinese instead of just using it. To this end, set up a serious SRS deck.

- Keep reading books in Chinese.

- Figure out what to do with rest of life (again). Alternatively, accept that I won't figure this out, and instead make a resolution to spend good times with friends, family and other cool people.

[querido]

Well, last year's main goal is still very practical and I still think I can do it. I'll just give myself another year. Compared to some previous years this is good news, as I won't have to overhaul my methods, flush my flashcard decks, or anything like that, but just carry on.

1. Have "four skills" mastery of all of CSLPod through Intermediate.

Also: as time permits look at SanZiJing, all of my old children's books, and a little newbie Cantonese.

[OneEye]

Happy New Year, everyone!

OK, I'm going to set goals for each month like I did last year, so for January, they are:

MA Preparation

Finish 《文字學概要》

Finish my 自傳 and start writing the 留學計劃 for my MA applications

文言文

Finally finish Unit 1 of 《古代漢語》 (selections from 左傳, 2 per week)

Read 過秦論，鴻門之宴，答夫秦嘉書、典論論文、登樓賦 from the high school 國文 reader (1 per week)

Japanese

First 5 lessons of 大家學標準日本語 (1 per week)

First 25 lessons of Assimil Japanese (5 per week)

First 25 sentence patterns from 日語200句型 (2 per week, not sure if I'll stick with this one)

Other

Make significant progress on, or finish, 《流星·蝴蝶·劍》

Carry around Spoken Hokkien in my backpack, in case spare time strikes

[tismeau]

Having just started learning Chinese my goals for the year are (in no particular order):

1. Complete all Level 1 Chinese Breeze books (I am thinking that one every 6 to 8 weeks is doable, and I have a buffer if it takes longer)

2. Investigate if Anki would be better to use than Pleco for flashcards (still playing with Pleco)

3. Listen to podcasts and understand them, not just pretend I do.

4. Keep attending weekly classes at my local Conducius Institute.

Also to get to the gym at least 3 times a week consistently.

[rmpalpha]

Where I am now: I took and passed the HSK 4 exam last October. I also went to Taiwan to study Chinese last summer. At this point, I think I'm at an intermediate level of Chinese. It is here that the real work begins, I think, because it takes a great deal of effort to get out of the intermediate stage and really be functional in Chinese. To this end, my goals for Chinese for 2013 are as follows:

1. Sit the HSK 5 exam and (hopefully) pass it. I think I have most of the grammar down from my studies in Taiwan last summer, but the 1,300 additional vocabulary items relative to the HSK 4 word list makes preparing for the HSK exam quite an initimidating task. I see that there are two test dates for the Level 5 test in San Francisco: 3/24 or 10/20. I don't know if I'll be ready for the 3/24 sitting, but I'll probably sit the test then. My teacher in Taiwan felt last summer that I would be able to pass the test, so that is encouraging.

2. Take a Chinese course at the university where I currently teach. This spring, I've made arrangements to take the third year, second semester course where I work. It looks like they use "The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries" as their main textbook. At this point, I'm not sure how challenging the course will be to me (or not), but it will definitely give me a structured opportunity to practice expressing myself in Chinese with actual feedback!

3. Possibly go to Taiwan again this summer to study Chinese. This is completely up in the air, though, and depends on how much work my school can offer me for the summer term. If they offer me enough summer work, I'll probably stay and work, but if they don't, I'll go to Taiwan. I found my experience working one-on-one with a tutor for seven weeks to be immensely beneficial, as I am forced to use my Chinese language skills to communicate with her. If I go back to Taiwan this summer, I definitely need to do something about actually interacting with my Taiwanese friends in Chinese, since they all seem to use English with me, possibly for my "benefit".

4. Do something about actually communicating with people in Chinese. Based on Cummins' language acquisition philosophy, my cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) is not too bad, but my basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) are severely lacking, and it shows when I try to speak Chinese with native Chinese speakers. I really don't know what to do about this, since all of my native Chinese speaker friends have quite good English - since they are very practical-minded people, they prefer to use English for maximum communication efficiency. This does not help my Chinese at all, though. Maybe I should find a Chinese language tutor that is local to the San Francisco Bay Area. We'll see.

Other goals:

5. Go to the gym at least three times a week - I have 20 pounds that I should lose!

6. Do something fun on a regular basis - go to an art museum, see a theater performance, make a weekend trip to someplace new, etc.

7. Maintain and strengthen the connections I have with friends and family, both locally and abroad.

[laurenth]

OBJECTIVES FOR 1Q2013

I'm most certainly going overberboard here, but I'll see how far I can swim:

READING

- Read and finish a novel for which I have no electronic version (i.e. no way to use Pleco reader, a wonderful tool that tends to make things a bit too easy). The novel might be 亦舒's 早上七八点钟的太阳.

- Read a children edition of the 论语: 1 paragraph/week + comments and vocab

LISTENING

- Chinese Learn On Line: 2 podcasts/week (I've started at level 4, which is quite easy for me).

SPEAKING

- Continue 2 Skype classes/week

- Each day use 1 sentence extracted from Chinese Learn On Line for shadowing, parrotting, substitutions, etc.

WRITING HANZI

- Skritter HSK4

AND MORE

- SRS 10 new words/day (from reading and HSK 5 - almost finished - and HSK 6) + 2 new characters/day

- Prepare for HSK4: 3 mock tests

OTHER LANGUAGES I WANT TO USE

- Spanish: read and finish one contemporary novel during the quarter; listen to 1 podcast/week about China

- Finnish: read 1 short text/week using Learning with texts (probably texts from selkouutiset)

- Latin: read chapters XLI-XLV of Oerberg's Roma Aeterna

AND REMEMBER

- Read the (French) books and comics my wife and daughters offered to me

- 6 pm - 10 pm is Chinese-free time