it is a brand new year. to nobody's surprise, the Earth is still turning, but for some reason, that
means we have to reevaluate our entire lives, our motivations, our goals.. specifically our language
learning goals. we're going to talk about goals today. now for 2022, I set zero yearly goals. I
was focused on other stuff like finishing college and maintaining my sanity, okay? so I was just
vibing the entire year. it was nice, but for 2023 I am all in. I have a very clear vision of what I
want to do, what I want to learn, what I want to accomplish, and I'm going to accomplish it, okay?
best bet. so today I'm going to be talking about the six languages that I'm studying this year,
the goals that I have for each of them, as well as like, general language learning goals. and how I'm
actually studying them, like my approach. and I'm going to be showing you guys all this stuff on my
Notion. I'm using my 2023 Plan-and-Track that I designed specifically for language learners,
so if you want to get that for yourself, I will leave the link in the description. by the way,
I use Notion not only for my language learning, but just for everything. like, I literally cannot
imagine.. I cannot imagine going back to my life before I started using Notion and even though this
video is sponsored, you know, back when I started using Notion it was just a legit discovery,
and like, mind-blow moment. everything is all in the same place, there's so many tools that
you can use without it being like, overly overwhelming to learn how to use, you know,
so many things that I normally incorporate into my language learning routine like progress updates,
diary entries, daily task lists, it's just so easy to have everything all in one place
instead of like a million notebooks that I've scattered around my house. just saying. and
it's just so fun to customize and make it your hub, your place that you come to at the
beginning of every day and just get sh*t done, honestly. so if you want to sign up for Notion,
I'm going to leave the link below. if you don't know where to get started, use my templates.
just saying they're pretty good. you know what? can I say-- so, I should say this first. just
because I'm doing this video in honor of the New Year, in honor of 2023, doesn't mean that I have
the entire year planned out. I do not. this year I have no yearly goals. what I'm doing
instead are quarterly goals. so January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to
December. I find this to be a lot more digestible for somebody like myself who fluctuates a lot,
has a crazy schedule, I travel a lot, and I also change my mind a lot. okay? I find
that I meet my goals more consistently when I plan for the short term instead of for like,
big-picture long-term goals. and essentially I feel like short-term success makes up long-term
success, so it's essentially just like a different outlook for the same thing. well I don't know,
I guess I do have yearly goals, but not in the sense of like "these are things that I
want to accomplish just by the end of the year." it's like, specifically planned out by quarter,
and as of now I only have the first and the fourth quarters for the year planned. it sounds
kind of weird, I know. just the beginning and just the very end, but it will all make sense,
okay? so I am studying six languages this year and they are... can we get a drum roll?...
French, German, Turkish, Arabic, Mandarin, Hebrew. okay, so first, just one general language learning
goal I have this year is to take a hundred italki lessons. I think that I only reached 100 italki
lessons last year, and that's not just for 2022. that's like for all the time since like 2017 or
2018 that I've been taking speaking lessons. that's not a lot! like, I want to really up my
speaking level in all my languages this year, but I think motivating myself to take a certain number
of lessons is going to help me pretty tremendously with that. and I think 100 divided by 12 is like
eight or so, so I think I can definitely manage seven to eight lessons per month. so next,
let's talk about some more language-specific goals. as of now, as of January, there are only
three languages that I have specific goals for. and those are French, German, and Turkish. French,
okay.. 2023 it has to be the year. 2023 has to be the year that I pass the C1 DALF exam. and
I know we talk about exam-taking a lot in the language community, and like, "Does it actually
do anything, does it mean anything, does it mean you're fluent?" and I think it does. right? it
just depends on how much you prepare for the exam. because there are some people.. Langaholic.. okay,
there's no beef he's actually a good friend of mine. but he's said to me before, "Exams don't
prove how good you are in a language. it proves how good you are at taking an exam." but my
philosophy with that is like, okay, but if I don't prepare that much for the exam and I kind of just
get to know the format and know what to expect from the exam, I feel like it's a pretty accurate
representation of your knowledge of the language. but that's just me. also like, since October,
I've been pretty heavily focused on French. and I'm really proud of myself because I have revived
a lot of the stuff that I thought I had forgotten like, forever. so I kind of just want to get a
certificate, I just want to.. I just want to put a lid on it and be like bam. I did that. you know?
it's just more of like a curiosity thing for me, and a first time experience for me, because I've
never ever ever ever taken a language exam. just for myself, like not for school not for like some
job thing, you know. this would be the first time. so I don't know, I just want to have that new
experience. so with that great setup, we should talk about my German specific goal for this year,
which is: to pass the B2 Goethe exam! so yeah, I don't know, I think that if I really really pushed
myself I could maybe pass the C1 exam. but I think you should err more on the side of caution. I've
never taken one of these exams before, I'm gonna have to prepare myself for that, and I think I
should just yeah be a little bit safe. B2 is still a really good certificate to have, and you know in
the future, if maybe I decide to do a masters in Germany, live in Germany, or get a job in Germany,
I don't know. B2 is still a pretty good.. well, I think B2 is the the requirement for a lot of
those. I could be wrong, but you know. B2 just seems pretty cool, seems chill. and for Turkish,
I hope you're relieved to hear that I'm NOT planning to take an exam for Turkish. I don't
think.. I'm.. that's not really like my vibe with Turkish right now. with French and German, like,
it's been such a long time coming and I'm just like "I need some validation" but for Turkish,
like, I'm still very much in my just having fun phase. but my goal for 23..23? for 2023 with
Turkish is to reach a B1 conversational level. I really want to be like, speaking focused this year
with Turkish. I think that writing and grammar are still super important, but like I said before,
with my 100 italki classes goal I want a lot of that to be Turkish as well. I think that I
already have a pretty good accent people have told me, and I think that a lot of the ease of
writing and grammar comes with a lot of speaking. so yeah, B1 conversational this year and honestly,
I think that's still kind of an incomplete goal. I'm still.. I don't like just saying like,
"oh I want to reach this level" and like, have that be the goal. I think it has to be a lot more
specific than that, but I think it's a good place to start. and I'm still kind of the process of
fleshing out the activities and the things that I'm going to do to reach B1 one conversational
in Turkish. but yeah, there's gonna be a lot of italki lessons at least. so now if you'll follow
me to my Notion lair... so this, my friends, is the 2023 Language Plan-&-Track. I mentioned
earlier that I've designed this specifically for language learners that just want a little bit of
help like organizing their language goals and studies for the year of 2023. and you can use
this every year like you could also use this in 2024, 25, whatever. but yeah, like I said before,
link is in the description if you want to use it for yourself. so let me give you a little tour..
this is just the home page, we have a lot of stuff here like the quarterly pages, because I
did say I'm studying by quarter. so these pages are where like my plans, my goals, everything,
like the resources that I'm going to use for those languages, that's where those live. and
we also just have a quick sidebar with my yearly and monthly goals. these are both drop downs,
and I'll just go ahead and talk about it now. for the month of January, I am only focusing
on German. and that's because next month I'm going to be on the Easy German podcast!
oh that's so crazy for me to say. anyways, since I'm gonna be on the podcast, I think I really need
to like, sharpen and refresh my speaking a little bit, because I think I haven't spoken or like,
really focused on German since August of last year. so this month, these are my goals for
German. that's specifically just January, not like the whole quarter. what else do we have here?
so I have like a daily to-do list, this is from yesterday so I should go ahead and uncheck these.
and also, like, a weekly habit tracker. I don't put it upon myself to do all of
these specific things every day, but it's kind of just the daily things that I like
to incorporate into my routine. so if I doodoo that thing.. if I DO do this thing on this day,
I'll check it off. uh, we also have just like a little progress tracker for the week the month the
year and also the quarter which I find useful since, once again, I'm studying in quarters.
and here is a calendar where I just log my studies. so I haven't studied yet today,
but yesterday I did. and this is my entry for yesterday's. so it was pretty much just like a
passive day, I wasn't, like, practicing speaking or anything. I just did a crossword puzzle,
Quizlet vocab, I just listened to a podcast while I did the dishes. and yeah, that's how much time I
spent studying. all that good stuff. so anyways, I just wanted to give you a little tour of this
template before I go specifically into like my goals for the quarter. so on the quarterly page
it basically just holds the languages that I'm learning for quarter one. so you can see this
breaks down into each month so for January, like I said, just focusing on German. next month I'm
gonna switch over to French and Turkish, that's probably gonna be after I record the podcast. and
for March, it's going to be French and German. so I do kind of have the same three languages on deck
for this whole quarter, which are French German and Turkish, but I'm kind of just moving them
around. but we'll see how stuff goes, honestly. I am pretty capricious. I change my mind a lot,
so who knows what's gonna go down. and down here is where I set my goals. so I have a little
reminder here about how I set goals like what do I want for myself, what do I need to improve, and
what I'm going to do to achieve that. if you've used my other template, the Cozy language corner,
I think you also will recognize this. but I just wanted to import it and bring it over here too,
just for my reminder purposes. so yeah. I'm kind of just ignoring French and Turkish for now,
that's just for like the later months, and the quarter like February and March um for January all
I really have to focus on is these specific goals. so these are like the specific actions I'm taking
to get to where I want to be with German, so recording myself, studying conversational phrases,
listening to podcast episodes, taking classes as well. so that's kind of just where I, you know,
keep my little reminders of the things that I actually need to be working into my routine
every day. these are the resources that are most useful for me for German... why's Turkish open?
so since my goal is speaking for next month with German, I need to listen to a lot of podcasts,
TVs and movies, take conversational classes, use social media how I can, also listening to
YouTube videos. and I like using LingQ just for vocab acquisition. so yeah, that's where
I do that. and this is kind of like, a lofty routine that I stick to with German for now.
so this is kind of my January routine since today is.. what is today? today's Tuesday,
so normally I would have an italki class today. but my tutor was booked up, so.. not my fault.
but yeah, this is basically how things are going for quarter one. I told you guys that I only have
quarter one and quarter four planned out, so this is quarter one. let's move on to quarter four. oh
actually? okay.. before we talk about quarter four, we need to talk about quarter three. so
quarter three is when I plan to take my exams for French and German. I think that quarter one and
quarter two are going to be leading up to that, but at the end of quarter three, I'm gonna take
my exams. and then, for quarter four, which I'll click on right now.. it's gonna be a party month,
okay? we're not focusing on anything serious, we're just doing some serious dabbling. and that's
Arabic, Turkish, no.. Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew. so very luckily, I have three other languages that
I wanted to study this year, and I have three months left over at the end of the year to study
them. so I'm just gonna do one language per month. I might switch these around depending on what I'm
feeling at what month, you know, but yeah. each one of these languages is going to get one month
at the end of the year. and I think that's a great plan, because after all the prep, after
all of the stress of like, getting through these exams, I think I'm just gonna want something fun.
I'm not going to want to touch French or German for a long time, like no matter the outcome. no
matter if I do really well, or if I do poorly. I'm just gonna need something to kind of like,
let go of all that. so that's kind of the plan for quarter four. now, for quarter four I don't have
any solid like.. goals? but I do have plans. so I have a rough idea of what I want to study for each
language each month. Arabic is definitely going to be like an alphabet, pronunciation focus month,
Chinese... if you're a real one, if you've been here for a long time, I'm talking like,
over three years, you know that I studied Chinese for a couple of months at the beginning of 2020
before [redacted] happened. I don't really remember where I left off with Chinese,
I think it's going to be a lot of like vocabulary rediscovery, practicing characters, making it
more enjoyable, because I feel like I was so HSK focused, exam focused, that I didn't have enough
fun with it. so yeah. and Hebrew, definitely gonna be also kind of the same thing as Arabic,
like script, pronunciation, and basic grammar. which is a good kind of pattern to have, because
Arabic and Hebrew are very very similar. so that's basically it my friends, that's not all my goals
and all my plans for 2023.. I think that I'm gonna be doing a video like every three months at the
beginning of every quarter to kind of update on my progress and what my plans and my goals are,
but for now, this is one that I can tell you about. quarter one and quarter four, so that's
what I have presented to you. I'm super excited. I think that I have a lot more mature view of my
goals and what I want to accomplish this year, I think I'm trying to not like overwhelm myself.
I'm being very realistic, sticking to what I know about myself, the way that I study,
what I actually follow through on. so yeah. I'm also excited to know what your goals and plans
are for this year! do you have yearly goals? do you have monthly goals? do you have quarterly
goals? I'm very excited to know so please let me know down in the comments. I just get so excited
hearing everybody else's plans, and knowing that we're all in this together, you know? am
I getting sentimental? too soon? maybe. that's okay, you crazy kids. anyways, have a fun 2023,
study a lot. if you want to sign up for Notion, I will leave the link down in the description. use
my templates if you don't know where to start... just saying. Good luck, see you next time. bye!