Comments on: Intermediate Goals, Mini-Dreams

By: Don’t Have High Standards, Have Wide Standards | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:24:02 +0000

[...] to score, and from further away. On the soccer pitch of your Japanese life, you want to make the goal so wide that virtually any ball you kick can get [...]

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By: RyanSharif

RyanSharif — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:22:14 +0000

I tend to have the opposite feelings on setting goals. To each their own.

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By: Chagami

Chagami — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:58:01 +0000

I like this article, but I’m not sure about the last third that mentions one month goals and such.

I love making intermediate goals and having mini-dreams. Getting to (n)-hundred/thousand Kanji brings out such motivation. But I find that as soon as I put a deadline on these goals, it becomes work and the wheels fall off the cart.

Japanese shouldn’t be, “Okay, by next month, I’m going to have watched 250 episodes of anime”, it should be, “Time for a marathon of my favourite anime!”

And what’s even worse is if you get through your month of dutifully watching those 250 episodes, you feel that next month, you have to do the same or better. Inevitably, you won’t do your quota, and you’ll feel like a failure, burned out, and that you don’t have the “will-power” or determination to learn Japanese.

Mini-Goals = Sense of Achievement
Mini-Goals + Deadlines = Inevitable Sense of Failure

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By: Travis

Travis — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:43:30 +0000

The graph in my opinion is rather accurate. I’ve noticed in my learning experience where my output, in particular, will “rubberband”. Rather, my input will exceed my output by a lot, then my output will quickly catch up and it’ll start over (at a higher level of course).

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By: Unclean! Why Would AJATT Do A Tie-in With Other People’s Stuff? | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 02:27:14 +0000

[...] you, giving you traction and providing workable, enjoyable intermediate goals on your way to a more comprehensive, native-like [...]

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By: Ron Wren (hatman900)

Ron Wren (hatman900) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 04:26:24 +0000

I think this comment is relevant, so here it is.
I like to use concept maps to display this kind of idea. I never make any though, just imagine ‘em. But they’ve got branches that go like: Immersion – Music – Rock – LM.C – Punky Heart – Chorus – Chiisa na tsubasa o hirogete – tsubasa – wing. They’re kinda like that. I think it’s pretty cool. I would’ve typed some of that in Japanese but I’m using my Grandma’s “compy” witch doesn’t have the font support or whatever it’s called. (WAH! I want my reps to be kanji and not blocks… *sniff)

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By: Mitch

Mitch — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:08:45 +0000

I like the idea of setting goals. I never really thought about it until I read this page though. I remember when I was younger and skateboarding that’s exactly what I’d do. Things like “I want to ollie off the ground” turned into “I want to kickflip” then into “I want to Kickflip smith that 8 set rail”. I never did that last one, but I could’ve!

Same thing applies to this. Right now I’m at about 150 kanji after a week. By the time school starts I want to be at 400. And although I don’t quite understand full sentences yet, I’ve started mining things I personally say using the kanji that I’m studying at the moment. Soon I’m going to be getting me a dictionary and volume 1 of Kenichi. Thanks for the advice Khatz. It’s helping a lot!

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By: making goals « Language Fixation

making goals « Language Fixation — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:45:27 +0000

[...] i’m going to take Khatsumoto’s advice about short term goals. I’m just going to pick some raw numbers for this month for all of the language tasks i want [...]

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By: Edna Deary

Edna Deary — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:18:26 +0000

Have you heard of this school’s method – www.paulnoblelanguages.com – it sounds similar to what’s being discussed here. Do you know if it’s any good?

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By: Two Months of Chinese | Jacob Job

Two Months of Chinese | Jacob Job — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:53:51 +0000

[...] months of work, I need some different goals. (Khatzu has a good post about intermediate goals at this link.) We’ll go big to [...]

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By: 1Mw: 31000 german words read « Language Fixation

1Mw: 31000 german words read « Language Fixation — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:41:45 +0000

[...] 31000 german words read I’m making good progress towards my goal of reading a million words of german. I’m starting to get really caught up in the novel [...]

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By: will

will — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:26:12 +0000

I started learning Japanese after I was challenged reading this
japansugoi.com/wordpress/so-you-want-to-learn-japanese/
but although its been difficult, its well worth the effort to be able to communicate in Japanese

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By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Processes Not Results, Or: Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned Washing Dishes

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:01:09 +0000

[...] We’re always trying to get somewhere…Sometimes that makes sense. And things like intermediate goals can be very useful. But often, if the goal is too far away, or the task is cyclical, perhaps it [...]

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By: TheOtaku

TheOtaku — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:05:50 +0000

Anyone have tip for what your goal should be when using anki (reps, new cards added to the review pile or time/day)?

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:14:02 +0000

“So, if the pressure of “10,000″ and “Native-Level Fluency” is getting to you, if you’re feeling some “cognitive dissonance”…”

I have some cognitive dissonance now and then, I think “man, becoming NATIVE level fluent is probably ridiculously hard”, but then I remember I’m thinking that in my third language (English), in which I’m very fluent. Not to brag (too much), but I’ve had English teachers ask me if I have lived in the USA (because that is the only way to become fluent, remember? ).

Thinking back at how I did it, it was via All English Most of the Time (tv, movies, music) for a couple years.

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By: madmerse

madmerse — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:35:20 +0000

I haven’t made much progress in the past year after learning my kanji, but lately I started putting money into my hobby buying some comics (and video games soon when I get more money). As it turns out, this gave a big boost to my motivation because I now had something concrete on my hands that is enjoyable and I can use it to measure my progress. It’s easier to set goals: I can read x amount of pages or dig up x sentences in a day. My daily goal is 25 sentences a day, but since I spend a lot of time poring over the dictionaries, I end up looking up 5-6 words for each sentence I input. This usually happens because of referencing definitions and looking up new words that I don’t know.

I haven’t made a habit of putting in a new card for each definition I look up although that might be nice to do. I find as my vocabulary count gets higher, I have to spend less time looking things up because I find words in the definitions that I already know. It’s a great feeling understanding something new… almost like magic really.

I’m currently at 642 sentences and 2243 kanji. I will be picking up RTK3 soon for more kanji, and I also pick up new characters from sanseido and infoseek when I look up definitions there. Because of my recent investments and putting in the time to refocus and find new goals, I’ve made quite a bit of progress in the past month or so compared to the last year I spent limping along. I’ve put in 400 sentences and 200 kanji and I feel like I’m getting somewhere again.

In the future, I’m going to try some more sophisticated techniques for managing my time, but for now I just use to do lists. I’ve also had to learn/relearn how to set goals and stay focused. It still doesn’t feel entirely natural, but I’ve got old habits to break.

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By: TheOtaku

TheOtaku — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:05:38 +0000

Setting goals has defiantly helped me, like setting a bunch of small deadlines to make yourself more efficient. Rewarding yourself when that deadline is met is also helpful (no matter how small it maybe).

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By: Is It Easy To Learn The Language Of Japanese?

Is It Easy To Learn The Language Of Japanese? — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:32:59 +0000

[...] How to learn Japanese And this can be discouraging, because it’s easy to talk in big time scales — months and years — and talk about long-term residents in a country having the “social responsibility” [...]

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By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:55:40 +0000

I talked about something similar to this on my blog recently. I call it a “Macro Timebox” (MacTimes?), as opposed to “Micro Timeboxes”(MicTimes?). Micro Timeboxes would be the short spans you spend daily on your language studies, while Macro Timeboxes are relatively longer goals, but with predetermined spans of time.

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By: sleepyday

sleepyday — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:38:56 +0000

@Amelia

Thanks, I’m glad you like it. ＾＾ Lucky wording I suppose.

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