The end of the old year is a natural time to reflect on the past twelve months. It’s also a time when many of us want to make a fresh start and do some looking ahead.
In the last week, two friends have separately drawn my attention to a free tool to help with this.
It’s called Year Compass.
I’m late to the party with this one, as it turns out that it’s been around for several years.
In case you hadn’t heard about it either, it’s a 20-page booklet you can print and fill in by hand.
It contains a series of important questions to help you reflect on the good and, erm, not so good, across your whole life over last year. It’s structured so that you see the negative stuff as a learning experience. The idea is that you draw a line under 2023 and leave with a positive mindset for the coming year. There are then questions to help you focus and plan for 2024.
If you’re interested in doing the full, “whole life” Year Compass, you can get the .pdf in the language of your choice (there are many) here:
It’s guaranteed to get you thinking, even if (like me) you instinctively tend to push away some of this reflective stuff a lot of the time.
Be that as it may, I thought it would be useful (or at least fun) to pull out what seem to me to be the most relevant sections from the full Compass and adapt them to help us to reflect on and plan our language learning life at the beginning of 2024.
Let’s call this the Language Learner’s Year Compass!
If you’d like to give it a go, here’s what I came up with:
Reflecting on the last twelve months
1. What was the wisest decision you took in your language learning in 2023?
2. Write down any place that your language had in 2023 in these aspects of life:
- personal life, family
- friends, community
- physical health, fitness
- habits that define you
- career, studies (aside from studying the language)
- relaxation, hobbies, creativity
3. List three of your language learning accomplishments of 2023.
4. What did you do to achieve these? Which resources did you use here and did anybody help you?
5. What was the biggest challenge you faced in your language learning that you didn’t manage to overcome?
6. How did you try to overcome it? Why don’t you think you succeeded?
7. What is the best thing that you discovered about yourself in connection with your language learning in 2022?
Looking ahead to the next twelve months
1. First, dare to dream big. What does your language learning year ahead look like? Why will it be great? What would happen in an ideal world?
2. What three specific (and realistic) things do you most want to achieve in your language learning in 2024?
3. Which three things will you change in your language learning in 2024?
4. How will your language learning fit into some or all of these different areas of life in 2024:
- personal life, family
- friends, community
- physical health, fitness
- habits that define you
- career, studies (aside from studying the language)
- relaxation, hobbies, creativity
5. List three strengths you have to bring to your language learning in 2024.
6. List up to three things you will stop doing (or do less of) in 2024 to make more time for your language learning.
7. Decide on one little thing that you can do every day to make progress with your language. Here you may find my post Four language learning mini habits for big results in 2024 useful.
8. List three places connected with your language that you can visit or find out more about in 2024.
9. List three other things in the culture around your language that you’d like to explore in 2024 (e.g. a book, a poem, a song, a food recipe, a specific tradition or annual event).
10. List three rewards you will give yourself for your specific language learning successes in the course of the year.
Ways to use your Language Learner’s Year Compass
You could use this little Language Learner’s Year Compass to guide some private thinking about how things are going.
You could also go through the questions with a fellow language learner.
You could even have a go at the exercise – or bits of it – IN YOUR NEW LANGUAGE with your teacher / language exchange partner.
If you work through the Language Learner’s Year Compass questions on your own and you’d like to share your results (or even fancy some feedback on them), share your thoughts in the comments below. I’ll do my best to respond.
Best wishes for 2024!
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