I just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. I hope you’re all ending 2019 in good spirits and feeling good about your language learning journies.
I’ve been doing a bit more Chinese reading recently, and while I haven’t made any formal goals, I look forward to doing a lot more of that this coming year. My current mindset is an unwillingness to let my Chinese book collection continue to collect dust!
What are your language-related goals for 2020? Let us all know below!
Here’s to another year and a brand new decade!
Best,
Jake
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Happy New Year!
I just purchased a new subscription, so my goal is to make up for lost time and add words like crazy. I’ve been reviewing for the past year and I’m bored of it. I just added all words from my Pleco search history to a custom list, and the old HSK list. I couldn’t find an “official” old HSK one so if anyone has a better one, let me know.
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Started HSK from scratch recently. Done with HSK1. Goal is to be done with HSK3 by end of 2020!
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I have two goals, one which just requires me to review handwriting more regularly and one which is more tentative:
- Reconquer the ~6000 unique Chinese characters I have on my account
- Learn vocab up to and including JLPT N3 passively (i.e. reading/listening)
Some context: I have only actively maintained handwriting for fairly easy characters (say most common 2500 or so) in recent years, but since I want to use the app more and feel a bit bad over having forgotten many characters, I want to go through my whole due pile, which is at around 2500 unique characters at the moment. As those only include fairly rare characters, it’s going to take some time, but as I already have learnt them once, it shouldn’t be that hard.
The Japanese learning goal is somewhat tentative and a bit ambitious, perhaps, considering that I’m just studying occasionally when I feel like it. I’m not even through JLPT N5 yet! Still, it would be great to learn enough words and grammar to be able to read and listen to simple stories, dialogues and so on.
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Happy New Year!
Nice suggestion to come up with language goals for the year.
I’ve let my handwriting deteriorate, as I have been going for speed and word acquisition as quickly as possible instead. So now I am slowing down and fixing my sprawling characters. Skritter is excellent for this, and I am paying close attention now to the star pattern that allows us to lay out proportions and proper positioning of character components. Angles and spacing matter!
I am also going to be hand-writing letters to my friends more often, and thus working on grammar and “real” vocabulary a bit more.
I’d like to finally tackle books and readings bought years ago in a bout of wishful thinking. I think I can handle working through them now.
I’d like to break through 3500 characters but character acquisition really slows down even as vocabulary increases so may have to be content with fewer.
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Loving all the goals, everyone!
Best of luck in 2020. I would love to hear your progress on these goals as the year progresses. Also, be sure to stay tuned for some additional study challenges coming a little later on in the year. @SkritterOlle and I have been chatting and we’re thinking of some fun and interesting ways to potentially link some Hacking Chinese challenges with Skritter if possible. We’ll be sure to post them on the forum and newsletter, and the blog once we’ve sorted out a few more details!
On January 1st I wrapped up reading Mandarin Companion’s Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Curly Haired Company, which wasn’t a hard read, but it was on my Kindle, and my daughter enjoyed listening to me read in Chinese, so I’ll take it 
For those of you studying beginner to early-intermediate material, Mandarin Companion books are a fantastic resource, and a great compliment to some more traditional learning materials. Honestly, they’re a fun read for any level! Many of the books have Skritter decklists, so be sure to search for them on Lists if you’re reading them or thinking about giving them a go.
Next up for me is either《基础》(Issac Asimov’s “Foundation”), or 《黑暗森林》(三體系列的第二部).
我們一起加油吧！
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