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February 6 Week Challenge

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
93 messages over 12 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 8 ... 11 12 Next >>
Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 57 of 93
24 February 2014 at 11:59am | IP Logged 
I think "good faith" is an important principle in these challenges. However, it is a
bit difficult to take when someone getting a top spot may or may not be simply putting
music on in the background. It is pretty easy to do just to clock up extra time.

If you look at my tweets for these challenges, I also use a lot of music. But I have a
few rules I use for myself.

1. I don't count background listening.
2. If I am actually paying attention, I usually count half of the time for music.
3. If I am looking at the lyrics, fully singing along, using Lyrics Training, etc., I
usually count the full time.

There are only two activities which I don't count the full time for: music and gaming.
For gaming I have been playing Lego City in French, and I try to estimate how much
playing time actually involved language. Usually I give myself about 25% of the actual
time spent playing the game.

Others have questioned whether we should count the full time for things like watching
with subtitles, since movies often have down time. The end of that discussion was that
most people record the full time for watching, but people need to follow their own
conscience when they record their timings. Unfortunately, having a rule for every case
would just be too complicated.

At the end of the day, if you do an activity simply to rack up points, then the only
person who really loses is you.


8 persons have voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
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Germany
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Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 58 of 93
25 February 2014 at 12:33am | IP Logged 
I've been bothered about the music thing a bit as well. I can't imagine all that time is productive listening, but who knows. She could be looking up the words and memorising 100 songs for the challenge... :D

In the end, counting things that don't really make you progress only fools yourself. I'd rather have spent 20 hours on the 6WC and actually made noticeable progress than logging over 100 hours just staying in my language comfort zone and not progressing much.
5 persons have voted this message useful



csidler
Diglot
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Australia
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 Message 59 of 93
27 February 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged 
Just take the top scores as inspiration to push yourself harder!! That's what I do.

Rather than sleeping on the flight from europe to Australia I was pumping through the tv shows!
3 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 60 of 93
27 February 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
Just had a look at the tweets. Junesun made an attempt to bring it up gently, but it seems she doesn't care anyway, it's our problem not hers. I wasn't going to say anything more about the issue, but when someone takes part in a friendly competition and doesn't care what other participants think really bothers me.

I'm not saying she's wrong about what she counts. If she is indeed listening to 12 hours of music a day (she tweeted that she counts music 50%), I am very impressed! But I'm not impressed with the unsporting attitude.

Edited by Jeffers on 27 February 2014 at 8:00pm

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Serpent
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 Message 61 of 93
27 February 2014 at 9:58pm | IP Logged 
Everyone is different. I tend to hate unwritten rules, for example. Either make them official or make the peer pressure illegal.
1 person has voted this message useful



gregf
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Newbie
Luxembourg
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Speaks: English*, German, French
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 Message 62 of 93
27 February 2014 at 10:28pm | IP Logged 
From the competition description (http://6wc.learnlangs.com/howto ):

"However, please consider whether you are focussing [sic] on the language. If you're doing something where the language is not your one and only focus (e. g. ironing while playing a podcast in the background, or watching a TV show where you mostly focus on the native-language subtitles and don't intently listen to the target-language audio), please only award yourself a fraction of the minutes, corresponding to the percentage of your attention that you gave to the target language. For 60 minutes of studying to count as 60 minutes in this scoring, you have to be 100% focussed [sic] on learning your target language."

She gives herself credit for 6 hours about once a day. She also claims that it only represents half the time she actually spends. Which means she spends 12 hours every 24 hours listening to music. I think that's BS, but I'm not going to get riled up about it. ;)

Edited by gregf on 27 February 2014 at 10:32pm

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gregf
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 Message 63 of 93
27 February 2014 at 10:30pm | IP Logged 
[double post deleted]

Edited by gregf on 27 February 2014 at 10:32pm

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daegga
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 Message 64 of 93
27 February 2014 at 10:37pm | IP Logged 
gregf wrote:

She gives herself credit for 6 hours about once a day. She also claims that it only
represents half the time she actually spends. Which means she spends 12 hours every 24
hours listening to music. I think that's BS, but I'm not going to get riled up about it.
;)


More like 3 hours (which amounts to 6 hours) per day. There's nothing wrong with adding
up the hours instead of sending a tweet every day. If you travel a lot, 6 hours of
listening does seem realistic (think about sitting in a train, walking around the city
etc ... an ideal situation for listening practice). Don't judge a book by its cover ...
we don't know what's going on, do we?

Edited by daegga on 27 February 2014 at 10:37pm



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