On Reaching Your Language Goals

So we have reached July, and hopefully I am not the only one wondering where the first 6 months have gone. Now is as good time as any to look back on the first half of the year and review any targets you have set for the year.

Do you remember what your new year’s resolutions were?

Have you not got round to setting them yet?

The problem with new year’s resolutions is that they are often too big and too vague to actually achieve. I suggest that if you are reviewing your resolutions or setting goals for the first time this year to do two things:

1) Break them down into smaller, more concrete goals

2) Work out what steps you need to take to achieve them

For example, if your goal this year was to learn Japanese, I want you to think about what it is about Japanese you want to master. Do you want to be able to understand an anime, travel to Japan, read a Murakami novel in the original language or something completely different? It is important to think about this because the nature of your goal will ultimately determine your approach to learning Japanese. All of the previous examples would require would require a different emphasis on listening, speaking and reading respectively and reflect varying levels of proficiency in Japanese.

Now that you have thought about what it is you want to achieve, think about the timescale you want to set to achieve these goals. Some goals will have a more clear cut end date – If your trip to Japan is to see the cherry blossoms in Kyoto then you probably have until next March to study, and if you’re sitting the JLPT then you would be looking towards the next sitting of the test in your country.

If an end date for your goals is not clear cut, then I suggest looking at a monthly check in. If your goals are language related, keeping a journal of what you have learnt will make it easy to review what you have learnt at the end of the month and to set targets for the next month. This is especially good where your target is a longer term goal (like learning to read Murakami).

With your smaller goals in mind, you next need to think about how you are actually going to achieve it. This is often the trickiest part, but is also the step that will ensure you keep on track. In regards to learning Japanese, this would relate to which resources are you going to use to learn basic phrases, kana, kanji and grammar.

Fortunately even lazing around on Netflix can count as language learning 😉

The great thing about language learning in general is that there is a great range of activites that double up as language study. However the type of language learning activities you focus on need to be targeted towards your goal – learning kanji isn’t going to be necessary for a short trip to Japan but is essential for understanding Murakami! Do you have a Japanese friend that you can practise with? Is there a Japanese class in your area you can attend? Are there beginners textbooks you can lend from a local library? This may feel like an expensive endeavour but there are lots of free resources out there – most of the resources I recommend on this blog are free.

Finally consider when in your day you will realistically be able to fit in language learning activities and work around this. Make it your aim to fit in at least one activity a day, because consistency reaps the most rewards with language learning. I find that bullet journals or to do list apps such as Bright Todo are useful for keeping yourself accountable for maintaining, although setting daily reminders in your preferred calendar app works just as well.

If you can set yourself small goals and put together a realistic plan of how to go about achieving them, the world really is your oyster when it comes to learning Japanese, or any language for that matter. I’ll leave you with one last quote which I think ties in really well with today’s topic:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”