My language learning progress: 2025 wrap-up and 2026 goals
2025 was my third full year of language learning (more info on my origin story here). Portuguese and French were new additions, and since they’re similar to Spanish, which I’d already been learning, I was able to go (almost) straight to native audio. And they say there are no shortcuts!
In Spanish and Japanese, which I carried over from last year, my main focuses were reading more books (Spanish) and listening to more native audio (Japanese).
Now, let’s get into the details.
Spanish
Achievements
- 770 (start of year) -> 900 hours (end of year) CI audio (+130h gain)
- 5 -> 14 books read (+8 books)
- Started journaling
Best finds
- Books
- Podcasts
- TV and movies
- Los sustos ocultos de Frankelda
- YouTube channels
Psst, go check out my Spanish Favorites post for the list of my all-time favorites, including stuff from past years.
Thoughts
Dragged myself across the finish line for my goal of reaching 900 hours of comprehensible input (CI) audio. (Download the Google Sheets template I use for tracking here.) This was honestly a very dry year in terms of audio discovery – I mostly just watched YouTube videos.
Read a lot of good books, and found genres I enjoy! Give me all the short story collections, female leads, and societal criticism. My reading list is bursting at the seams (post upcoming!).
Output has begun! In December I started using short answer journaling prompts a couple times a week, and it’s been fun so far. I don’t have much trouble coming up with what to say, which was a fear. Take that, imposter syndrome! Taking this as a good sign and valuable stepping stone for spoken and written conversations in 2026.
Japanese
Achievements
- 200 -> 480 hours CI audio (+280h)
- Transitioned from a mixture of native and learner’s content to purely native content
Best finds
- Podcasts
- ANA WORLD AIR CURRENT
- 聞く健康習慣 Hana博士の体調最高ラジオ (TW: alcohol, diet, exercise, mental health, weight)
- 海外とミニマルとわたし
- TV and movies
- 名探偵コナン
- YouTube channels
- TBS CROSS DIG with Bloomberg
- 河原
- あかね的日本語教室 (learner’s content)
(Check out this post for more learner’s content recommendations.)
Thoughts
Didn’t give up even though Japanese is by far the most difficult language I’ve started learning!
Basically stopped watching anime (which I was doing a fair bit in fall 2024) to focus on podcasts instead. I think they give me more value for the time spent, especially since I count TV and movies as half the runtime in my CI audio tracking to account for the time when no one is speaking. This led to trying out a bajillion new podcasts, plus surfing YouTube for comprehensible news and lifestyle channels. So much trial and error. 😪
Portuguese
Achievements
- Started! 🥳
- 0 -> 100 hours CI audio (+100h)
- Started watching TV (I love that this is an achievement)
Best finds
- Podcasts
- TV and movies
- YouTube channels
Thoughts
Got serious about listening practice! I started practicing very sporadically at the beginning of the year, and hit June with less than twenty total hours. Yikes. I realized I had to either lock in or crash out, so I locked in and began a much more consistent routine.
Slowly started watching tv shows, and it’s been going pretty well! The best find so far is Pôr do Sol, a soap opera parody. I died laughing from the pilot on.
I find European Portuguese slightly more difficult to understand than Brazilian Portuguese, but at this stage they sound pretty dang similar to my ears. I will probably stop tracking the amount of each next year. The reason I tracked it in the first place was I had the impression that European Portuguese would be much more difficult to understand. (It’s not.) I also almost certainly over-counted Brazilian Portuguese. A lot of YouTubers and amateur podcasters don’t state where they’re from, and I ended up guessing that the vast majority were Brazilian.
French
Achievements
- Started! 🍾
- 0 -> 50 hours CI audio (+50h)
- Transitioned from learner’s content to native content
Best finds
- YouTube channels
Thoughts
I can pretty much only understand newscasters, documentaries, and video essays at this point, but I’m happy with my progress so far! Can’t wait to get into tv shows.
The majority of my audio input was from France, but I got a sprinkling of Quebecois and Belgian French as well. As with Portuguese, I can’t really tell the differences between the accents yet.
2026 goals
In general…
Rapid progress 🤞
Spanish
- Advanced -> conversational 🏁
Japanese
- Intermediate -> advanced 📖 (i.e. learn how to read)
Chinese
- START!
- Beginner -> intermediate 🏃♀️ (i.e. prep for native audio input)
Kicking the can down the road
Portuguese
- Intermediate
French
- Intermediate
To be specific…
Spanish
Passive listening
This goal is basically getting discarded! Whaaaaat?!
In my opinion, I’ve reached enough hours of audio input (900+) that I’m getting diminishing returns from each additional hour. In 2026, my goal is conversations! Real-time interaction with people will help me in a much bigger way, and also help get me out of a rut. I struggled with the monotony of my daily audio input goal in 2025. I’m tired of this, Grandpa!
I’m not gonna stop passive listening entirely, but I’m deprioritizing it, and taking an intuitive approach. I’m also not tracking hours anymore. Spreadsheet, begone!
Reading
Continue reading daily (but with no page minimum).
This might sound like a lot since I’m supposedly cooling down the input goals, but I do daily reading goals even with books in English that I’m reading for pleasure. It helps keep the ball rolling, and I don’t get sick of it (yet). This is also a relaxation of my 2025 reading goals, since in 2025 I aimed for 3-5 pages a day in Spanish (which paid off!).
I think I’d be happy if I finished at least four books in 2026.
Writing
Continue journaling ~3x/week (no word count minimum).
Right now I use prompts, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Seeing the question in Spanish helps shift my brain into gear. Like, we’re in Spanish mode now!
In terms of new goals, I’m interested in having real-time text conversations with language exchange partners. Additionally, an asynchronous pen pal (digital or physical) that I could send longer messages back and forth with, more on the level of 250-500 words apiece, would be great.
I could see wrapping up the journaling once I have a conversation network in place (unless I decide it’s too much fun to quit).
Speaking
Find conversation partners online and do language exchanges 2-4x/week. I’m still not 100% sure the route I’ll take to achieve this, but here’s my current plan to address my concerns:
- Concern: Speaking with incorrect pronunciation (mainly r/rr)
- Solution: Practice with YouTube videos (at least 3x/week), engage an online tutor if I feel it’s necessary.
- Concern: Speaking with incorrect grammar
- Solution: Continue reading, solicit corrections from conversation partners.
- Concern: Losing my train of thought / vocabulary slow recall
- Solution: Continue journaling, start with conversations over text.
- Concern: Dealing with bad language exchange partners (creepy, flaky, boring, selfish, straight-up scammers…)
- Solution: Vetting through text conversations before moving to video/audio calls, hiding personal information, avoiding men.
Japanese
Passive listening
- Reach 675h CI audio (40min/day -> ~200h listening progress).
Reading
- 20min/day reading/transcription.
- Stage 1
- Learn stroke order for all the kana
- Learn how to use the 12-key flick input keyboard
- Memorize all the kana
- Stage 2
- Stage 3
- Read without furigana
- Practice stroke order (cont’d)
I’m not sure how realistic these goals are since I haven’t done any reading yet, so we’ll find out together.
Portuguese
Passive listening
- Reach 200h CI audio (20min/day -> ~100h listening progress).
- Consume more fiction (i.e. TV, radio dramas).
French
Passive listening
- Reach 200h CI audio (30min/day -> ~150h listening progress).
- Branch out to other topic areas besides news/current events.
Chinese
Passive listening
- Reach 300h CI audio (1h/day -> ~300h listening progress).
- Get to the point of dipping my toe into native content (automatic subtitles may offer a leg up if I do well with Japanese reading).
How do I choose the next language to start learning? Why Chinese?
Chinese’s biggest competitors for the position of next language to learn were German, and Russian or Slovak. Generally, I’m interested in languages that have:
- Lots of free content available online (for both native speakers and learners)
- Lots of speakers
- Multiple similar languages
I don’t think I can clearly explain my decision-making process for choosing one language over another. It’s pretty emotionally-driven. Two years ago, my plan had been to start Chinese before Japanese, but I impulsively started Japanese instead. I also hadn’t planned to start French in the same year as Portuguese, but we saw how that turned out. No regrets yet!
Beyond 2026
I will almost certainly be staying with these same five languages through 2026 and into 2027, since (per my own rules) I won’t be able to add another one until Japanese (or Portuguese or French) is conversational and Chinese is intermediate.
I could even see holding off on adding an additional language until 2028, since I predict a massive Japanese reading backlog in 2027 as I try to progress from advanced to conversational. (In Spanish, I read 10+ books before deeming myself ready to output.) Not to mention I’ll be approaching advanced level in French and Portuguese in 2027. My future self is drowning in written input. And who knows how I’ll fare in understanding Chinese audio?
On top of all that, there’s also my work and other life stuff. Thoughts and prayers, please.
Love this! I want to improve my Spanish, and you’ve inspired me to start tracking my exposure to comprehensible input.
I’m glad you found this useful! That makes me so happy!