Goals Update — Beyond the Halfway Point

It just hit me a couple days ago that we’re already over halfway through the year 2017.  Crazy how time flies.

I thought I’d look back at my original goals for the year (found in detail here) and check in with how things have turned out after the first half of 2017.

---

• Finish my 재미있는 한국어 3 (Fun Fun Korean 3) textbook/workbook – While I have made some progress, I’m still a long way from finishing.  I’m on Chapter 6 out of 15 in the Textbook, and I haven’t really done anything with the workbook.  I’ll keep slowing chipping away at the textbook, and eventually I’ll probably review old chapters with the workbook.
• Decide on a new textbook series and buy a textbook – Since I’ve only made a little progress on my current textbook, I haven’t been looking much into new textbooks yet.  Right now I don’t really feel like spending money on new materials, so I might focus on free materials and the other various books that I already own.
• Renew my 이야기 (Iyagi) studying on a regular basis – I’ve made a lot of progress towards this goal recently.  For the first 6 months of the year, I basically forgot Iyagis existed, but throughout the first couple of weeks in July I’ve been on an Iyagi kick :D.  I love listening to the natural conversations and then reading through the PDF transcripts hunting for new vocabulary to learn.  I’m hoping to continue my enthusiasm into the rest of the year, because I know my listening skills have improved tremendously.
• Read through 3 children’s books – I talked about my progress in an earlier blog post (found here), but I’m on good track to finish this goal by the end of the year.  I’ve read through (and re-read) the first book, 준비물 챙기기, and now I’m about 40% of the way through with the second book, 어느 날 갑자기, although my reading has tapered off a tad recently.
• Study at least 12 News in Korean articles – Heh heh.  Nope.  My goal was one article per month, but after successfully studying January’s article, I haven’t looked at another article since.  Right now my interest is in other areas, so I don’t really care that I’m not meeting this goal.
• Study Korean Grammar in Use – Intermediate – I think I’ve only studied one grammar point this year.  It was 2 days ago.  Again, not my primary focus right now, so I’m okay with that fact.
• Write more with Lang-8 – I’ve only written two entries this year so far, but this is one area that I’d really like to improve.  I don’t do nearly enough with the “output” side of language learning, which needs to change.
• Occasionally review Mandarin and Japanese – I haven’t done much here either.  I do get daily emails with a Mandarin word of the day that look at, and there was a brief period where I reviewed some Japanese kana (I somehow never fully learned katakana, so the little bits I did know flew out of my head as soon as that class ended).  Another thing I’d like to improve throughout the remainder of the year.

---

Overall, I think it’s fairly obvious I haven’t been acing my goals for the year XD, but I already knew that wouldn’t be happening after my internship made my life crazy.  I’m just glad that I’ve been consistently spending at least 1-2 hours per day working on Korean for the past couple weeks.  Throughout the second half of the year I’ll maybe try to re-introduce some of the goals that I’ve been ignoring back into my studying routine.