Hi everyone! Since the new year is upon us, I would like to take the time to set some goals for myself for this coming year.
2020 assessment
The goals I set for myself in 2020 were purely progress-based goals. That is, I estimated my level in each language I wanted to study and decided which level I would want to achieve by the end of the year. The languages I intended to study were Spanish, French, Dutch, American Sign Language, Irish, and Cantonese, the last three being new additions. I also ended up having the opportunity to learn a little Spanish Sign Language during the time I was studying in Spain.
2020 was the first year where I decided to study so many languages because in the past, I had been very casual with my language learning and was not doing very much to improve. Because of this, I thought that having progress-based goals would be effective for me because I would be able to have a bit more tangible measure of how close I was to achieving those goals. Well, long story short, I failed terribly. I made a video talking about why that is and the lesson that I learned from it, which you can watch if you are interested: https://youtu.be/dTHohXRXCBs
2021 goals
The goals I would like to make for myself for 2021 will be habit-based. Of course, I would like to improve my levels, but I have learned that that is not the best motivator for myself. I saw in 2020 that I made the most progress in my languages when I had good routines with plenty of opportunities for varied types of practice. So, I will break this year into smaller chunks and choose a focus for each chunk of 3-4 months, and I will try to turn language study into a part of my daily routine.
For the first few months of 2021, my main focus will be on improving my Dutch. I would estimate that right now, I am around a B1 level overall. However, much of how I learned Dutch was through media consumption, such as YouTube videos, films, and music, which means that I can speak and understand far better than I can read or write, particularly in an academic sense. Because I have never particularly studied grammar and vocabulary consistently for Dutch, I want to try to make that a daily habit and use this time to learn the most effective ways for me to learn and which ways are not so effective. For example, I know that I struggle with rote memorization in any language, so I am going to try instead to read articles and books and transcribe songs, and then I will make vocabulary lists from there. I think that having context for all of these words will make the learning easier for me and will be in such a way that I actually remember the words later. In my previous post, you can see that I have already started this process with a song called "Weg van jou" by Fource, which I transcribed and compared with the actual lyrics.
A secondary focus I would like to have is to continue improving my vocabulary in American Sign Language. I have been studying for about 6 months now, and I took accelerated classes for ASL 1, 2, and 3. I will be taking an ASL 4 class that will be over a period twice as long, which I chose to do so that I have more time to refamiliarize myself with the vocabulary from previous levels and so that I have more time to watch native signers on YouTube to improve my comprehension.
For now, I will have to allow my other languages to take a back seat so that I have the chance to create new habits for my language learning and not be overwhelmed by trying to balance too much at once. I will consider the first part of this year a success if, after the first 3-4 months, Dutch grammar and vocabulary study has become a daily habit, I am watching ASL videos a few times a week, and signing has become more natural to me. I will be using Journaly as a way to help maintain my other languages, as well as to respond to any articles or other media that I find particularly interesting during my studies.
I am excited to hear any feedback on my plan for habit-based goals in 2021, and I would also love to see how other people did on their 2020 goal and their new goals for 2021!
Beautiful reflection on setting goals and goal-setting! May your 2021 bring all that you wish for and more. Reading your post reminded me that sign language would be a good thing to learn, so I might have to add that as a goal for this year.
I love how different each of the languages you're learning are! I also find habit-based learning to be the most effective and it avoids burnout, which is really important. And ASL is fascinating, isn't it? I had the chance to study Brazilian sign language last year, but I'd love to learn ASL someday, too :D
Great reflection on your goals. My goals for 2021 are also habit-based more than progress-based and I am trying to avoid over-loading myself with too many expectations. After all, I can always add more goals if I find that I'm able to achieve the ones I've set already. And I am also changing my vocabulary-learning approach to include more context. So far, so good with that one (I started in December).- Great to see that you have been studying ASL! I studied it in school years ago, and for a few months last year I tried to refresh my knowledge using YouTube and doing some video chats with people I met on Discord. Video chatting was a really nice way to practice, although I'm very introverted so I didn't do it very much.
@AshaCole Thanks very much for your comment; I wish you the best with your 2021 goals as well! And sign language is definitely a good goal to add, as the basics tend to be quite easy to pick up :) @juliana Thank you, I completely agree about the burnout, which is partially what happened to me this year (life burnout that ended up causing language burnout haha). And it absolutely is! I had been wanting to learn ASL for quite a while, and I got to learn some Spanish sign language while in Spain, which made me all the more motivated to learn ASL! It's something I've become super passionate about, and because of some accelerated classes, I've already reached a low intermediate level :D @July23 Yay for more habit-based goals! I feel like a lot of us have made the sort of realization this past year that progress-based goals aren't always the most effective can end up affecting us negatively like you said. And I 100% agree that we can always add more goals later. I think that is much more motivating than realizing a few months later you failed all your goals haha. So cool you studied ASL before! I have tried to find signing partners on language exchange apps, but I would love to attend some Deaf events in my area after the pandemic, since I know there's a pretty nice Deaf community here.