The start of this year has been busy for me!
It’s time to check in on the goals I set for 2025.
⭐ Small Wins From January-June
Took the French DELF B2 Exam in June and felt confident after!
Realized I can do a lot more than I thought in French
I think that’s mostly it...
As was evident from my newsletters since January, I was focused on preparing for my DELF B2 French exam during the first half of the year. I shared a bit about how it went here.
While it is disappointing that I wasn’t able to make time for my other target languages, I’m proud of myself for taking on the challenge of a proficiency exam even though I didn’t have to take it. Once I get my results, I’ll share a full French progress update! For now, we’ll take a look at how the first half of the year went.
📅 2025 PLANS
When I made my 2025 plans/goals, I decided to focus on tasks and intentions with the help of my language project board. I’ll be honest, since I was so focused on my exam (and balancing other life responsibilities), I didn’t look at the board until a few days ago.
This is the current progress of my project board. I’m happy with what I was able to check off the list! Of course, I was able to check off Take a DELF exam, and the other tasks relating to using my target languages/different resources. However, none of the reading-related tasks have been checked off. Besides the articles I was reading to prepare for the exam, I have not done any proper reading.
I intentionally made each row and column on the board challenging so that it would take effort to complete. Visiting Iceland is likely not going to be checked off by the end of the year, but it was still fun to add it in the off chance it does happen. Other tasks are relatively straightforward, such as Read 开端. I own the physical book, so it’s just a matter of sitting down and reading it, but the challenge is making the time to read.
I’m really happy with the extras section that I was able to complete.
💛 Free Template
If you’re interested, I have project board templates for you to customize to your language learning needs!
✅ Mid-Year Language Stack
I may keep my language stack the same since it’s much easier to follow it than to predict what will change in the future. Now that I have completed the DELF exam, I can take things easy with French. I still want to improve, but I also have Take the N5 exam on my project board. If I plan to take it by the end of the year, I’ll need to shift my focus to Japanese. So, I’ll be switching things up, focusing on Japanese and having fun with French.
I haven’t done anything for Mandarin so far this year, but I’d still like to keep it in the Enhance category. If I can make time to read 《开端》, it’ll be a great way to maintain and strengthen my level.
Instead of limiting Explore to Icelandic, I’ve decided to keep it open to any languages I dabble in. Lately, I’ve been curious about Esperanto, so that might be the one I explore most. And if I do end up going to Iceland, it’d be fun to dabble in Icelandic, too.
Here’s the mid-year language stack:
Focus: Japanese
Japanese: Improving in preparation for the N5 exam.
Fun: French
Using the language to read, communicate and write!
Enhance: Mandarin
Maintaining and strengthening my current level.
Explore: Dabble Languages (Icelandic, Esperanto)
Casual dabbling just for fun.
When the year ends, I’ll go through the specific goals and tasks I had for each language. But for now, I’m giving myself permission to be flexible. There’s no point in stressing about what I haven’t done. At the end of the day, language learning for me is about acquiring knowledge and having fun.
There are still a few more months left in the year. I hope you’ve taken a moment to revisit your own goals, celebrate what you’ve accomplished, or make changes where needed. And if you’re feeling discouraged in your language learning journey, you may find these reminders helpful.
🥳 Subscriber Milestone
I’m also getting close to a subscriber milestone, so I’d love to answer any questions you have. Please leave your questions here, in the comment section, or send me an email!
Here’s a look at how far this little newsletter has come:
Thank you so much for reading and being part of this journey!
