My 2023 Language Learning Plans, Goals, and Resolutions (& 6 Month Plans)

It's time to share my 2023 language learning goals and plans! I'm doing things a bit differently this year and setting some broad year long and 6 month long goals and really putting an emphasis on monthly goals. I'll be sharing my monthly language learning goals and progress updates in my monthly recap videos on this channel as well as on social media (links below), so keep an eye out for those posts to see what I'm working on!
2022 Reflection Video: • 2022 Language Learning...
Thank you to my current patrons Andy R, Josh K, and Narwhal for supporting my content! I appreciate you so much :)
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Chapters:
Intro 0:00-0:53
Overall Goals 0:53-11:34
French 11:34-14:58
German 14:58-19:27
Spanish 19:27-22:39
Italian 22:39-23:57
American Sign Language 23:57-27:14
Bulgarian 27:14-32:38
Japanese 32:38-35:20
Dabbling 35:20-36:10
6 Month Goals + Plans 36:10-45:41

[@Ashikawahong]

Before watching I would like to say a few words: You are the only language youtuber I follow who is so honest about not reaching your goals and I love it because it feels like having a friend who is just as language enthousiastic as I am and not like looking at one of those god-like figures who have already accomplished everything you could wish for. You always analyse your mistakes and think about how to improve. I like this attitude a lot. Thanks as always for sharing your thoughts.

[@PolyglotProgress]

Thank you for this comment! This is honestly one of the kindest comments I've ever received. I'm glad I get to be your language friend

[@FrankieRae103181]

My Deaf friend always advised me to sign to myself in the mirror so you get used to doing the signs but also seeing them.

[@seeyoulater2493]

Hello how are you are you okay i want to study wiith you thank you see you soon 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

[@mikkareads]

Tracking stuff is my cocaine. Really, I have these hobbies: reading, tracking my reading, painting, tracking my painting, learning languages, tracking my language-learning. I've only decided to get serious with the latter pretty recently, though. An though I do know some Norwegian and used to be fluent in French 25+ years ago, I started both languages from scratch again, to hammer down the basics. I use Duolingo, LingQ, I watch movies and series for children in Norwegian and French, and I have bought a few books that I've already read in English in Norwegian (that's my main language goal).

[@gigglehertz]

My favorite Italian film is The Great Beauty.

[@MarchingBandsFromHome]

“No more KZbin videos in english Ernie.” 45 minutes later…😁My goals for Italian Reading, Speaking, writing and watching my favorite movies dubbed in Italian. I was going to pick up my Japanese but French has jumped in the picture. Great video. Thanks for the motivation. 👍🏼

[@agatastaniak7459]

Wow! New hair cut. Looks really cool!

[@eye2eye899]

It’s weird rediscovering your channel after so many years.

[@PolyglotProgress]

Welcome back!

[@pissgaming1]

fr

[@LanguageSimp]

I think I might pick up Uzbek this year

[@skorpi09irl]

Strangely, I’ve been listening to Uzbek songs lately…I don’t know how it happened, but it did…and it crossed my mind to spend some time learning the language.

[@PolyglotProgress]

I'll be waiting for the 10 hour livestream

[@sarak6860]

What I like is that you never give up on learning languages, though it is difficult to keep fitting it into your busy life. You are a good example for me and many others.

[@jj1818]

Scottish Gàidhlig! Woohoo, get some! We need as many speakers and learners as possible. Much like you, i have other languages i need to smack before i can focus on SG, but here's hoping we can both start in full this year! Slàinte!

[@alberthenrique3175]

My goals for this year are: - Improve my speaking and writing skills in English (maybe travel to the US ). - Put some energy to start German !!

[@chadbailey7038]

A quick way to find out a rough number of How Many words you know in Bulgarian, you could print out a 1000 Frequently Used words list and just scratch out what you know for a rough idea, and a guide to what to look for next! 👍🏾 I’m between A1-A2 in Russian and I hope to read my first Russian book this month. I found some awesome Graded Readers 🙌🏾

[@martiniewinska]

So inspiring. My biggest language goal is Portuguese BC IM MOVING TO PORTUGAL!!! and I've just started my KZbin channel bc I also want to make video about languages progress and productivity

[@melaniegrace7707]

I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say after watching this video but firsttt

[@christieap]

I can’t recommend enough finding a certified hand therapist if possible. Their specialization makes SUCH a difference compared to regular physiotherapists or occupational therapists. I have severe hand problems due to hypermobility, and it’s the one thing allowing me to have use of them.

[@michaelhayes4927]

14:32 I’ve found it useful to find political parties and politicians in my target language countries that resonate with my own beliefs and follow their KZbin channels, etc. I do still watch the news for a more general perspective, but I’ve noticed that my ability to discuss politics in those countries and my own (in any language) has improved considerably the past two years. Huge fan of your videos!

[@SomedayKorean]

I also love this time of year and seeing everyone's visions for their language learning! I just posted my 2023 language goals video a few hours ago :) I already enjoy your videos whenever you post, but I'm super excited for whenever you do end up studying Japanese so that we'll have a language in common -- even if that ends up being in the distant future haha

[@PolyglotProgress]

lol I added yours to my watch later as soon as it came out! I'm also excited for that, I feel like there's so many people I follow who learn Japanese and I'm excited to understand what they're posting and have a use for resource and book/tv recommendations!

[@stiiinkyray]

My reading goal this year is to not buy any new books until I've read the ones I have, I keep buying books in my TL any time I get the opportunity and I haven't read any of them :>

[@nanjorgensen5524]

It's a pleasure to listen to the focus, organization, motivation, and flexibility you have. Two thoughts- Does Austin have a good library? (Ours is exceptional and offers hundreds of foreign language books and films.) Saves $ & time. Spanish - If Venezuela would be on your radar Bruce or/ and I could be resources. Go girl!! You've amazing.

[@polyglotjake]

Ive recently found myself falling into the pattern of reading books/consuming content/studying the languages that come the easiest to me, instead of going outside of my comfort zone, and your video is motivating me to change things up

[@agatastaniak7459]

If you want to watch Italian tv series, maybe not newest ones but I liked "La ferrata negra (black arrow)" and "La dama svelata (the lady under the veil)". First one has Robin Hood-like vibe to it, another one has a fin de siecle atmosphere as it is set in XIX century and has both a mixture of romance, feminism movement struggles, secrets involved. There was a time when I have read a book on Italian baroque era painter - Artemisia and I think RAI has made a mini tv series on her as well. I watched some epsiodes from it and it looked good too. It' s based on her biography and she was quite amazing woman, one of very few female painters at that time dealing with realistic portrays ( ladies if ever painted were only painting landscapes, not humans), also including studies of female body.

[@NataliaGarza]

That German novel about crimes that happen in different areas of Germany sounds so interesting~ I wonder if there's an English version for non-german learners like me haha

[@laowyn4414]

Setting a strong foundation for Japanese writing systems is SO important!! Even if all you do for Japanese this year is learn hiragana and katakana that would be worth it because it will be essential in the long run. Also here's a list of (recent) Italian movie/series that I like: - perfetti sconosciuti - strappare lungo i bordi (heavy on Roman slang) - Skam Italia - le 8 montagne - Vatican girl Also I haven't watched these but heard good things about them: - è stata la mano di Dio - l'isola delle Rose

[@sheeliekittie9298]

Hi I will like your advice how to read and write faster in a script not using the latn based alphabet such as chinese or arabic?

[@laowyn4414]

@@sheeliekittie9298 HI! The key to getting fast is practice. The thing with Chinese and Arabic is that without studying you can't even attempt to read it beacuse you either need to know how each character is pronounced (Chinese) or you are only showed the consonants of the word (Arabic). Therefore I'd say learn the foundations then practice a lot! For non Latin based languages that have their own alphabet like Russian or Korean it's easier to get into reading without knowing the meaning of all the words because you can at least read them and move on without interrupting the pace. I can also suggest a technique called shadowing: you get a text and an audio reciting it, then play the audio and read along with the speaker (at the same time). It can be confusing at first but it helps you getting faster and adjusting to the rhythm of the language

[@AmbassadorSoriano]

Congrats on all you've accomplished, and I hope you can accomplish most everything you've set out to do. I was supposed to read HP Book 4 in Italian by the end of 2022, but stalled mid way through. My goal is to finish the series this year. I also bought 3 courses of German Uncovered. I finished the Beginner level, and I'll go through Intermediate the next few months. I will attend meetups in French and Spanish as well. Other than that, I am dedicating more time to pass the CPA Exam, and to go through a jazz music course. So language learning is lower on my priority list. But I still like your videos, so post when you can.

[@joreneelanguages]

Oh I posted a goals video! Hashtag promo 😂 I also decided to stick with annual and monthly goals as well, although I don’t think I’m doing 6 month goals. Quarters felt both too long and too short. Hope your 2023 is great!

[@sonjah.6209]

Recommendations for Italian: If you want mainly to be entertained, I recommend three series: Guida astrologica per cuori infranti Fedeltà Generazione 56K For something a bit more serious, I reoommend these films: Una casa nel cuore Dafne Bar Guiseppe Il filo invisibile Any film by Nanni Moretti

[@donraitan]

Best of luck! I just want to do a little bit more this year and to be a bit more methodical, tbh.

[@Ashikawahong]

I normally don't set concrete goals at the start of the year but I will try to write them out for you ;) I spent most of last year studying Japanese, my most advanced language, because I wanted to take the JLPT in December. Instead of boosting my motivation, the upcoming exam had the opposite effect. I didn't really feel like studying Japanese at all. At the end, I managed to spend some time reviewing grammar patterns for the JLPT and I reading a lot of native material. Now that the exam is done, I feel a lot more motivated to continue in 2023. I... quite unexpectedly had the opportunity to study abroad in France for the past few months which definitely helped my French, but since I was busy studying for the Japanese exam (= procrastinating) I didn't really study intensely. However, I did take some Japanese lessons in France and I had one particular course where we were trained to actually write by hand which is something I haven't had to do at all in the course of my Japanese studies. I can read Kanji but I have a hard time writing them because I didn't really have a reason to write by hand and, more importantly, to not check how the Kanji looks like on my phone. Being forced to learn to write some Kanji, I noticed how good it felt to be able to write like a functional adult and how it improved my overall understanding of the texts our teacher dictated. So one of my goals for 2023 is to learn to write my Kanji without having to look them up. It's hard work. Other than that I want to get back into the habit of using my Anki deck daily. My reviews are piling up because I stopped reviewing a few months ago... *sigh* It's gonna be hard to catch up. I want to get used to the more advanced grammar structures, again by using Anki... And my last goal is: Reading even more! I am currently reading the Berserk manga (I'm at volume 7 and up until now it's surprisingly easy compared to other manga I've tried) but I also have a few novels and history books waiting to be read. With this I'd like to vary the difficulties of the stuff I read. Maybe I could also try some visual novels (unfortunately I don't have a console, so I could only use my laptop for that, which is a little inconvenient). Oh and I want to find a better resource to study Classical Japanese because everything I have used thus far hasn't been very fun. No concrete plans for French other than studying Old French for an assistant job at uni. For the same job, it will be necessary to relearn Latin. Despite having studied it for 8 years at school, I don't know Latin. I've started going through a Latin deck on Anki but I will have to look at grammar as well. This is already a lot but if I have the time, I would like to squeeze in some Finnish and Russian. I have studied both languages to some extend before (read a full novel in Finnish and... understood the gist of it!; some graded readers in Russian), but I have forgotten basically everything. Both languages need a lot of work before I can start using them again. I don't think I will have much time to intensively study them, though. Oh and I bought an Korean manwha in an international library in France. I had quite some fun reading it and translating all the unknown words and grammar concepts to Japanese. It's more of a dabble but it's fun, so I can see myself continuing this way and familiarising myself with this language.

[@kerenlikud]

I wanna give up to learn French because I think it has been very complicated for me because of the pronunciation. Sometimes I feel stuck in my language journey 😔 (English and French) I don't know what to do 🤷‍♀️ haha I will set some realistic goals for this year.

[@nendoakuma7451]

I don't think anybody ever achieves all their goals in a year so I wouldn't worry too much. You seem like you're doing great. I'm not sure about your motivations for learning ASL, but if it is giving you Carpel Tunnel Syndrome issues, I'd suggest giving it a rest if possible until you can talk to a doctor about it (if you haven't already). I think you said elsewhere that you have cut it back. I'm not an expert or anything, but these kinds of things can come back and suddenly bite you really hard when you're older.

[@splitirshov23]

Una recomendación que te doy de película en español es "Una Abuela Virgen".

[@jenalinguaphile]

Usually I come up with more concrete goals, but this year is more relaxed... but that's probably because I haven't been studying as much lately. My main language goal for next year is to read 12 books in foreign languages. I'm hoping that it'll mostly be in Korean, but we'll see 🙈 For Spanish I'd like to work through my subjunctive textbook and to immerse in it at least once a week. Korean is largely focused on building my reading comprehension by actually reading, but I'd also like to work through a few Ewha textbooks to refresh my grammar. I'll be using Speakly for German, so getting to their advanced levels would be neat. If I don't get there though that's fine. I'd like to read Holes in German too. French and Czech are both working through one textbook each. But that's about it. I'm mostly hoping to regularly spend time in other languages again

[@mchobbit2951]

I'm surprised that people think that reading 50 books and watching a good amount of movies a year is "so many"? Or maybe it's just that I'm super introverted and most of my free time is reading, watching movies and listening to audio books while doing art, plus some creative writing. Maybe I'm just weird. I really love what your channel has become as you moved from college to "the real world". Good luck with all of your goals.

[@mandiepitre8063]

Really great video and love your video style! Just discovering you and so excited to watch through your other videos. For my language goals for 2023, Brazilian Portuguese is my main yearly focus, and I'm hoping to get to somewhere around a B2 level, where I can have general, everyday conversations easily. For quarterly goals, I am looking to continue working on a language I feel I developed at least a good basis in, or decidate more time to another language I know I'd like to take seriously. For this year, this includes French (Q2) and German (Q3), and one other language (leaving myself room for spontaneity, but possibly Russian or Turkish). Finally I have dabbling "goals" for every two months, where I really just want to explore a new language, be able to recognize the language when I hear it spoken, and learn some basic terminology - but really, the goal is to just have fun with them and see if I would like to consider serious study them more in the future. The languages are Norwegian (Jan-Feb), Afrikaans (Mar-Apr), Indonesian, Icelandic, Croatian, and then one other (Mandarin? Hungarian?).

[@francegamble1]

I need a list of fiction French novels. Something in modern French. Every time I look, I get the list from older 1800 French

[@PolyglotProgress]

I've definitely run into that. It helps to search in French for specific genres/topics (like looking for best sci-fi books or best books of 2022 etc) because then you'll find blogs, youtube videos, goodreads lists, and other lists that are more modern than just "French classics everyone should read" and whatnot.

[@TheMarinettes]

« Recently » I loved : l’art de perdre, Alice Zeniter ; Les impatientes, Djaili Amadou Amal ; La passe-miroir, Christelle Dabos (4 tomes). Et en BD : broderies, Marjane Satrapi ; l’odyssée d’Hakim, Fabien Toulmé. If that can give you some ideas.

[@georgex5959]

With writing do you check for accuracy in some way or not? I really admire your abilities- wow!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I usually try to by posting it online to social media or a site like journaly or sharing it with a tutor. Sometimes I just use it as a piece of my study for the day to work on recalling words or continuing to drill a certain grammar point I'm starting to get more comfortable with and I don't have it corrected, but often times in those cases I try to use sentences from the entry in conversations next time I meet with a tutor so they can correct any errors or unnaturalness!

[@whitneyszypula5539]

I almost exclusively listen to/watch the news in French and it's great. If you want a more interesting channel with brief daily news in French, I highly recommend Hugo Decrypte if you don't already watch him. He also has a podcast. It has helped my French a lot and is less "dry" than some other news. For standard news delivery I also like France 24. It is in French of course but they also have France 24 in German, Spanish, Italian... There is also euronews francais, RT France, TV5Monde, L'Obs, TF1 Info, LCI, France Bleu, 20 Minutes France, France Inter, and BBC Afrique if you want to hear French-African accents. I subscribe to all these on YT and check my feed every morning to watch or save videos for later. There is also the slow news in French podcast, A la Une podcast (5 minute episodes daily), and RFI French podcasts for many different subjects. I subscribe to like 9 of them. Good luck, enjoy :)

[@agatastaniak7459]

Arte has amazing documentaries here in youtube. Last one I have noticed was about the power of colours. They cover so many various topics that everyone can find some compelling topic.

[@michaelrichards669]

At the library.... I found a book. I believe it has a few prints. Called..... 1,001 movies to Watch before you Die. It covers 1920s or a bit before 1920s to 2019..2020...2021. So a good list of movies one person might have missed over the years

[@PolyglotProgress]

I think I've seen those before! I know a lot of those books have been turned into lists on letterboxd too :)

[@Gigusx]

Do you read much non-fiction in the languages you're learning, Abigail? Got any recommendations for books/authors (for Spanish, but not necessarily!)? ;)

[@sheeliekittie9298]

Hi Abigail! You really inspired me with ASL. A question I always have. IS asl considered a foreign language? Is one considered bilingual if they know both? I'm curious to know more about this:)

[@PolyglotProgress]

Someone who knows ASL and another language is definitely bilingual! It's its own language with its own grammar/phrases/etc. I guess whether it's a foreign language or not sorta depends on where you're from/what you consider a foreign language! I wouldn't consider it one since I'm in the US and so it's not really "foreign" for me.

[@sheeliekittie9298]

@Polyglot Progress wow so interesting and you made me get an asl book:) from the library. It's called ASL demystified :) I think this is going to be my next new language! Are you an interpreter or just learned for fun?

[@MarchingBandsFromHome]

For ASL have you seen Bill Vicars on KZbin? He has some great videos for ASL.

[@PolyglotProgress]

I have! I've been working my way through the ASLU course he made to review what I learned in the classes I took since it's mostly the same info with a few new grammar notes and signs, but I definitely should watch some of his other videos because I'm sure there's a lot of new stuff for me there!

[@MarchingBandsFromHome]

@@PolyglotProgress That’s great! After French/Japanese I will jump back to thoroughly study ASL.

[@athinaboumpoureka9400]

Hello ! Where are you from and how did you decide learn Bulgarian ? 😊❤ now you should learn Greek 🇬🇷👌

[@seeyoulater2493]

Hello how are you are you okay i want to study english with you thank you so much 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

[@EliasOjeda-mv6cg]

what happened to your twitter ? i wanted to follow you but it says it doesn't exist that account

[@PolyglotProgress]

It definitely still exists! It looks like the link in the description is still redirecting to my old handle though so thanks for pointing that out so I can fix it! I'm here: twitter.com/polyglotprogres

[@danielgutierrez5522]

Nothing new,girl🙄