This page is to keep track of my goals, both for this year and beyond.

Languages

English: my native language, so why set a goal for it, one may ask. You can always improve your language skills, even in your mother tongue, so my goals for English are: acquire a larger vocabulary, especially with regard to idiomatic expressions. (Sometimes I have trouble translating idiomatic expressions from Russian to English because I do not know the equivalent English expression.) I also want to improve my writing in English, which will help with my book. (See below.)

Russian: my first foreign language, and one of the languages most dear to my heart. My goal for 2011 is to increase my vocabulary (it’s pretty poor right now) and improve my pronunciation. Eventually, I would like to take the Test of Russian as a Foreign Language (Тест по русскому яызку как иностранному) and pass with Level 4 (Fluency).

Ukrainian: a lovely language, but I don’t know if it will ever be able to compete with Russian for my affections. I would like to achieve a high level of fluency–perhaps not as high as in Russian (though that would be nice), but enough to understand people, read both the news and literature, and converse with Ukrainians.

Polish: I’ve acquired a recent obsession with Polish, so I would like to learn it someday to the same level I want for Ukrainian.

French: I studied French once, long ago. I don’t have quite the feelings for Romance languages that I do for Slavic languages, but I still like them (i.e. Romance languages). Being that I am considering a UN job someday, I need to learn French to a decent level. I would like to achieve fluency in reading, writing, and listening, and be able to speak it decently (though perhaps not at the highest level).

Spanish: another language that I studied and then abandoned before achieving fluency. (Hey, cut me a little slack: both Spanish and French were languages I was forced to study at school, and we all know that no one learns a language properly at school.) With Spanish, I would like to achieve a C2 level on the DELE.

Writing

The novel: by the end of 2011, I would like to have a completed, coherent first draft of my novel at least 80,000 words in length.

Other writing goals: Write as much (both fiction and non-fiction) as possible.

Translation

Finish the first part of my current translation project. (I haven’t talked about it on the blog yet, but I will.)

Academics

Research my honors thesis (by September 2011). Write two-thirds of it by December 2011. Get top marks in my courses at my US university.