I love this goal. It makes me super excited as its really ambitious and challenging. It's long term and has to be worked on every day of the year. If I miss a week, I regress. This forces me to be consistent over a long period of time. Another thing with learning languages, which is also true with strength training, is that it never gets easier. If it's not hard then your pushing yourself enough and you will plateau.
Im so passionate about this topic that I could go on forever about how learning languages ties into peronal development. But enough of that and lets take a look at my Mandarin goals for 2015 and where im currently at. Here is what I set out to accomplish this year when I started learing chinese back in January:
Learning Chinese Year 1:
- Learn 500 Chinese Characters
- Finish Pimsleurs Mandarin I, II & III.
- Being able to read "Little Bear Lived in a Mounatin Cave" Mandarin short story.
These goals where revised during the year when I learned more about the language and the aim for this year is now:
- Learn 750 Chinese Characters
- Finish pimsleurs mandarin I, II & III
- Learn HSK 3 Vocabulary & Characters
- Learn all Radicals
- Being able to read "Little Bear Lived in a Mounatin Cave" Mandarin short story.
This might not sound very ambious. I mean, if I was a full time student in China I would expect I lot more from one year of studies. The thing is that this is something I do on my sparetime. Having a baby, like we got in the beginning of the year removes most of that time. To find time for studies I had to restructure how I use my time. I had to cut Instagram, video games, Facebook and the news.
So where am I at? Let's look at each item.
- Learn 750 Chinese Characters
I'm a at about 680 right now, but the progress has slowed down as I mostly learn words with combinations of characters I already know. But this goal will be met this year
- Finish pimsleurs mandarin I, II & III
Im on the third part of this audio course right now, lesson 10 of 30, and I think I will make this one! This course has been really good for improving prenounciation.
- Learn HSK 1-3 Vocabulary & Characters
HSK is standardized test for chinese proficiancy. My goal is to finish 1,2 and 3 this year which in total is about 600 characters. I have about 80 more to go this year. Hopefully I'll get there!
- Learn all Radicals
Done! Radicals are the buildingblocks of chinese characters. One or several of this buildingblocks makes up a characters and by knowing the meaning of these parts hints on a charachters meaning and how a might be prenounced.
- Being able to read "Little Bear Lived in a Mounatin Cave" Mandarin short story.
This is a weird goal. I guess the reason have this on my list, was so that I don't forget to practice my reading skills. Naming a certain text like this was just make the goal clear and the definition of completion understandable.
Thats it! I'm pretty happy with my progress so far and it's been fun. Chinese felt impossible to learn when I started. But I'm breaking it down one piece at the time. My biggest challenge for learning Mandarin will be to stay motivated and keep doing what I'm doing for a few more years.
I would love to hear about your experiences from language learning in the comments below!