It is great how you have looked at how you learn and have applied it to help us to learn a foreign language. My spouse has also asked to show him what I am learning so he can learn along with me. Regards Wendy

I like how HC focuses neatly on how to learn Chinese rather than providing direct learning materials, as it’s something the Web is slightly lacking at the moment, I think.

This is a very dynamic process and hard to put in numbers. Most of the time, long-term goals are pretty obvious for me. For instance, when I moved back to Sweden in 2010, my goal was to bring my Chinese to a level where I would survive a master’s degree course in a language-heavy subjects taught with native speakers in mind rather than foreigners. That kind of goal is easily split according to the five areas I discussed in the article. For instance, I need to be able to read university textbooks in Chinese, listen to lectures in Chinese, write exams (probably by hand) and reports in Chinese and express abstract or fairly complicated concepts orally in Chinese. That’s not the kind of goal you finish in a semester or two, so most of my mid-term goals were simply generated by this long-term one.

The interesting thing right now is that I have no explicit long-term goals (since I passed both first semesters with 90+ on average, I consider the previous long-term goal to be accomplished). This is mostly because I haven’t collected my thought enough, but if I did, it would probably be mostly related to teaching. I also have a vague notion that I want to be able to play tabletop role-playing games in Chinese (or, preferably, game master). Since I have no explicit and instrumental goal at the moment, I mostly try to fix the most urgent problems. For instance, I’ve long thought that my immersion efforts aren’t enough (even though I arguably read and listen to much more Chinese than other students I know), so I’m trying to read more, the goal is 25 book this year. I could go on, but i think you understand what I mean.

Where do the broader goals come from them? I seem to grab the next shiny Chinese thing I see (story telling, a song, some chengyu for some past examples) and work toward those in relatively short sprints. What does the timeline usually look like for your these skill improvements versus these current goals?

Good question! I do roughly what you said, but it could be separated into two categories, one based on overall assessment, trying to strengthen the weakest link in the chain, the other based on what goals I’m currently working towards. So, it’s not necessarily about what my weaknesses are, but what I currently lack to be able to reach whatever goal I’m working towards. For instance, during my period in Taiwan, I didn’t do much handwriting, simply because that wasn’t part of what I wanted to achieve back then (I found it better to focus on speaking, which would be much harder to achieve in Sweden; writing ability can be acquired anywhere without too much problem). So in essence, yes, it’s an analysis of what I’m worst at, but weighted according to my current goals.

-Kelby