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A great deal of the research around New Year’s resolutions suggests that 88% fail. According to studies, one large contributing factor tends to be that the goals are not measurable enough. For instance, it is easier to track whether a goal of “lose 10 pounds by May 1” is met than it is to concretely measure whether “spend more time exercising” is something you can check off your list.

Learning languages is no different. Olle Linge from Hacking Chinese discusses at length the importance of goal setting and motivation in the achievement of language acquisition-based goals. Linge discusses setting objectives from microgoals, for instance, what might be achieved during a particular study session, to long-term goals, achievements that might take a year or more.

Inspired by this collection of research and writing, I’ve decided to make my goals explicit in the hopes of making them more attainable.

It’s important for me to admit a few of the reasons I’ve avoided making goals up to this point. For starters, I was convinced that if I didn’t commit to a particular, measurable goal, I couldn’t fail. I can also say that I wanted to make an extremely ambitious goal to garner more attention, thus increasing the pressure on myself and—with any luck—my chances of achieving the it. It calls to mind Sufjan Steven’s grandiose goal of recording 50 albums, one per state, an announcement which, though since left behind, effectively put him on the map.

Still, I want to set realistic objectives for myself, given that I’m working a full-time job, am married, and have other interests vying for my time. That said, without further ado, on to my goals. Starting from scratch, these are my goals with respect to the Chinese languages.

Four Months: Recite a Simple Chinese Poem

I’ll be in search of a short nursery rhyme or poem that I can recite from memory. At the end of four months (that is, by January 1, 2014), I’ll record myself reading the poem or story. The aim will be to pronounce all words such that a native speaker would understand 80-90% of what is said.

Nine Months: Translate the Top Story on BBC Chinese

One of the first exercises I made for myself in my learning was to take a few of the radicals I learned through Chineasy and see if I could recognize them in a real-world application: a Chinese newspaper. Obviously, I knew very few. But for the first 2–3 years of my French education, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the French I was learning and the French found in the wild were two different languages. So the goal I made for myself was to translate one of the top stories on BBC Chinese.

I’ll definitely need to make use of a dictionary, but my hope will be to grasp the main point of the article without one, only resorting to an aid to help sort out the specifics.

For the sake of creating a perfectly measurable goal, I will summarize the main point of the article in English, and translate at least 50% of the words in the article without a dictionary on the first pass.

One Year: Have a 5-Minute Conversation With a Native Speaker

In the beginning of September, 2014, I plan to find a native speaker and have a five-minute conversation with him or her. In order to truly test my versatility as a Chinese speaker, the conversation will have to be completely organic and unplanned. Ideally, I would find someone on the street, but it might help me beforehand to come across a willing participant whose accent I can understand. In any case, I plan to conduct a five-minute conversation entirely in Chinese, without asking for any words I don’t know. In my mind, this would be the very beginning of conversationally fluent. Thus, my goal is fluency in twelve months.

Closing Thoughts

Needless to say, I’ll be reporting my progress on these goals, and I’ll recap the moment of truth: when the date arrives and I attempt to meet my goal, no matter how far along I am in my Chinese learning.

What do you think of these goals? Too hard? Too easy? What are, or have been, your goals as you learn your target language? Sound off in the comments about hopes you had when you began and success stories of what it felt like to achieve your linguistic goals.