🏆2024 Recap: Post-JLPT Studies + Mandarin Progress🏆

Reflecting on another year of language learning: achievements and challenges faced

Happy new year, everyone!

As every year, it is time for me to reflect on how 2024 went and to assess how well I managed to meet my goals 😇.

Doing this helps me maintain my motivation because I can get a clear overview of all the things I accomplished this year. In return, it also enables me to understand why some goals I had set did not work out (i.e. being too ambitious given my full-time work schedule and commitment to maintaining an active lifestyle, or just simply not being as genuinely interested in working on that as I initially thought —ahem, like German 🇩🇪). This makes it easier for me to set more realistic goals that align better with my priorities for the next time.

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🇯🇵 日本語 🇯🇵

If you read my 2024 goals post, you already know that this year I planned to shift the focus from studying to immersing in this language. After two years of non-stop studying to pass the JLPT N3-N1, it was refreshing to prioritize consuming content in Japanese. And boy, was it worthwhile! This year I surpassed myself and beat my reading record 🥳

Nonetheless, I did do some studying on the side, but it was pressure-free. I did this to continue improving my vocabulary knowledge to get better at writing kanji from memory.

Finally, even though I could not meet most of my output goals, I finished the year with a new habit: writing a journal in Japanese. This is a big win for me, because I had been playing with the idea in my mind for a couple of years, but it always felt hard to implement due to the high “friction” I felt when I thought about writing in Japanese everyday.

In a nutshell, despite not having met all my goals, I am still very happy with how things turned out and I am very excited to keep improving on 2025!

Here is a breakdown of the goals I had set for this year:

🍿Immersion🍿

• ✅Read at least 10 books in Japanese:
  In total, I read 17 novels, 2 non-fiction books and 3 comic-essays 🔥 I will talk more in detail about these , how my 2024 reading bingo turned out and my reading stats in another post. 😘

• ✅Add to Anki all the 魔道祖師 and 天官賜福 words I mined.

• ✅Finish the visual novel Amnesia: Memories

  

• ❌(Optional) Read all the physical manga I own:
  I did read over 57 manga, but only 21 of them were physical. Still, I surprised myself and I am thrilled to finally have time to enjoy manga again. 😄

📚Studying📚

• ❌Reach 漢検4級.
  As planned, I focused on the 漢字検定 to improve my kanji recall while picking up new words along the way. Even though I did not reach my goal of passing 4級 (I failed the mock test I took), I am still proud to have completed the following resources:

  • ✅漢検漢字学習ステップ5級 (completed twice)

  • ✅でる順×分野別 漢検問題集 5級 (completed twice)

  • ✅漢検漢字学習ステップ4級

  • ✨🆕✨⌛でる順×分野別 漢検問題集 4級 (in progress)

  • ❌(Optional) 漢検DSトレーニング:
    I barely did this because I preferred working on drill books.

    

• ✅Finish 名探偵コナンの10才までに覚えたい難しいことば1000.

  

✒️Output🗣️

• Speaking:

  • ❌Do weekly language exchanges (1-2 h/week):
    Around 6 months into 2024, my exchange group members suddenly got all busy and we did not talk for a couple of months, but we are now hosting one exchange most weeks. 😇

  • ✅Take conversation lessons with my teacher (1 h/week):
    In total, I took lessons on 47/52 weeks this year, most of which lasted 1h30. Therefore, I consider this goal as completed. 😁

• Writing:

  • ✅Continue making book reviews on my すみっコぐらし notebook:
    Wrote a total of 17 reviews. 💪

  • ❌Restart practicing calligraphy 🖋️ with 本気で綺麗な字になるための美文字練習 (ペン字・筆ペン) :
    This is one goal I have been failing to do for the last two years because it is the one I prioritize the least 😅. I find doing calligraphy relaxing, but it is so time consuming it is impossible for me to do it daily. Maybe for the next time I will just fix one day per week to work on it (or not include it altogether).

    

  • ✨🆕✨✅Journal daily:
    Since the 21st of June (wow, I actually got surprised when I saw that it has been this long already!), I have been journaling almost everyday, writing down random thoughts or interesting things that happened on that day. I have been keeping it messy and stress-free to ensure I do not drop the habit. 😉 There is some room for improvement though, because I do miss some days from time to time and end up having to catch up later.

    

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🇨🇳 Mandarin Chinese 🇹🇼

With Chinese, the objective was to reach an upper intermediate level. Now, since I did not actually take an exam, I am not sure if I managed to achieve this. I should have set a more measurable goal for this 😂.

Still, this year I managed to achieve quite a few of the things I had initially plan and even decided to prepare for my first Mandarin Chinese certificate: the TOCFL! We will see how it goes, but at least I am very happy to have a clear goal to assess my level for 2025.

Immersion-wise it went better than expected, with the pinnacle of it being starting to read 天官賜福—one of the main reasons I began learning this language in the first place! Talk about doing something motivating. 🙈 That said, not everything was perfect (especially when it came to immersing through TV shows), so I am hoping to set better goals next time to keep improving. ✌️

As for output, I surprised myself with my progress

📚Studying📚

• ✅Finish Intermediate Chinese - A Grammar and Workbook.

  

• ⏳Complete 當代中文課程 (A course in contemporary Chinese) 3 & 4:
  I finished volume 3, but opted to leave volume 4 for another occassion, since I decided to wanted to try taking the TOCFL Band B next year.

  

• ⏳Read all the Chinese Grammar Wiki grammar points for HSK 3 & 4:
  I read all the articles from A1 to B1 but, apparently, some HSK 4 points are in the B2 list, so I am not completely done yet. Moreover, to be completely honest, I feel like I need to work more on my grammar, so I might go through these again to take notes in Obsidian, like

  manda
  does. 🙈

• ⏳Reach 5k morphemes on Anki:
  I started the year at 2,669 and finished it at 4,692, so I learnt a total of 2023 morphemes. Despite having learnt 10 new words consistently for the vast majority of the year, it seems it was not enough to reach the 5k milestone. 🤡

• ✨🆕✨ ✅Complete 華語文能力測驗3 (The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Vocabulary & TOCFL Band B Level 3).

  

• ✨🆕✨ ✅Finish all the 中検検定３級 resources I got in Japan:

  • 絶対合格!中国語検定3級頻出問題集

  • 絶対合格!中国語検定3級

  • キクタン【初中級編】中検3級レベル

  

🍿Immersion🍿

• Reading:

  • ❌Read 3000 characters daily to read 1,000,000 characters in 2024:
    I read 291 out of 365 days, with an average of 2,622 characters per reading session. In total, I feel short of my goal, “only” reaching 763,057 characters read. However, one thing to consider is that after finishing the graded reader series I was reading, I read increasingly difficult content, which decreased my reading speed considerably. Thus, despite not having satisfied this goal with the numbers, I am very satisfied with my progress. 😇

  • ✅Finish the graded reader: The Journey to the West.

    

  • ✅Read two short web novels or one long one:
    I ended up reading 9 short web novels, and part of a long web novel (一不小心和醋精结婚了), which I later dropped. I also began reading one of the main novels that motivated me to start learning Mandarin: 天官賜福🤩. This is also the first novel I am attempting to read in simplified characters.

    

  • ✅Finish the manhua 暗恋.

    

• Listening:

  • ✅Watch 1 episode from a drama per week or 2 donghua episodes:
    Despite how inconsistent I was with this and how hard I found it to actually find the time to sit down and watch a TV show, I managed to watch 53 drama and 13 donghua episodes this year:

    • 隱秘的角落: 12 episodes. Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.

    • 開端: 15 episodes. Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.

    • 櫻桃小丸子: 13 episodes. Score: ⭐⭐⭐.

    • 不良執念清除師 (dropped): 2 episodes. Score: ⭐⭐.

    • 别想打扰我学习: 24 episodes. Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

      

    My listening comprehension still leaves much to be desired, so I am hoping to work more on this this year so I can get closer to my goal of watching Xianxia and Wuxia shows. 😊 I also need to get better at reading in simplified characters to better understand the subtitles, because I have found it very hard find traditional ones.

  • ✨🆕✨ ✅Listen to an average of 2 podcast episodes per day:
    A little bit into 2024, I realized my sole listening goal was not working. In order to not give up and continue making progress in this skill, I reassessed and set up this new personal goal. This went pretty well, and during the year I listened to a total of 350 different podcast episodes:

    • TeaTime Chinese (茶歇中文): 90.

    • Comprehensible Chinese: 95.

    • 說說話 Talk Talk Mandarin Chinese: 164.

    I listened to around half of these twice 👍. One thing I would like to do at some point is listen to these while reading the transcript, but I am not sure if I will have the time for this (I think I would rather use that time to watch more TV series).

✒️Output🗣️

• Writing:

  • ✅Take a Chinese lesson with my online tutor weekly:
    In total, I took lessons on 49/52 weeks this year. Since I made up for the missed ones by taking double lessons on some weeks, I am counting this as accomplished. 🤫

    For each lesson, I would write a 3-4 page text and correct it with my teacher, so this doubled as writing and speaking practice.

    

  • ❌(Optional) Complete my Chinese calligraphy book:
    The same thing as with the other calligraphy book happened, but I did do two pages of this one!

    

• Speaking:

  • ❌Read out loud an ancient Chinese poem per week:
    As life got overwhelming, this one quickly fell off my priorities list.

  • ✨🆕✨ ✅Shadow daily to improve my pronunciation using 口を鍛える中国語作文-語順習得メソッド【初級編】.

    

  • ✨🆕✨ ✅Participate in (almost) 1hr weekly exchanges with my new Taiwanese friend. (Started in mid-October.)

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🇩🇪 German 🇩🇪

Even though I completed a 80hr intensive A1 course, I almost forgot everything already from it. Learning German was not very exciting for me, and I think the fact that I had to skip two weeks due to my trip to Japan did not help.

I am unsure if I will continue learning this language in the future, but at least now I can understand a little bit of the things people say around me and I can greet them correctly. 😅

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🇫🇷 French 🇫🇷

A special mention goes to French because, after taking a long break, I finally read a book in this language: Le voyage d’Émy I: La forêt Cor de Bouc! I got this book signed by the author (Dimitri Olivier) when I was studying like crazy for the JLPT N3. I remember telling him I would read it later that year, but it actually took me over two years—whoops.

I also began re-watching the famous TV show Kaamelott, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out my listening comprehension has improved a lot. I still do not get some of the more obscure jokes, but now I can follow it for the most part without having to constantly ask my partner what is so funny about what they are saying. If you want to challenge your French I can really recommend it!

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And there you go! This was all I managed to do for 2024!

As you can see, I did not meet a lot of the goals I had initially set, but this did not prevent me to continue to push forward to improve. 😊 Life happens, and getting frustrated over unaccomplished goals will not get us anywhere. Sometimes it is just best to reassess and start again.

Hope this post helped you get a bit motivated and ambitious for this 2025! Next time, I will share with you what I am planning to do this year. 😉

As always, thank you for your invaluable support 🤗. All your messages and comments keep me motivated! ❤️ 今年もよろしくお願いします🙇‍♀️.

See you soon with more meaningful content,

~𝙽𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚊