New Super Challenge Discussion thread2014 (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

New Super Challenge Discussion thread2014
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6590 days ago
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Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 121 of 766

11 May 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged

No, but this challenge is a big deal to me. It owned my life for 20 months, I'm not going to let this happen again.

And I always hear these arguments whenever people prefer what favours their goals and pace. You don't have to win, compete against yourself :-)

Edited by Serpent on 11 May 2014 at 11:14am
1 person has voted this message useful

PeterMollenburg
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AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: English*
Studies: French^B1

Message 122 of 766

11 May 2014 at 11:45am | IP Logged

patrickwilken wrote:

PeterMollenburg wrote:

But in my madness to read and read and watch and watch I began to wonder relative my
language level (French B1) how effective watching movies really is. It so happens this
article mimics some of my suspicions, adds a few more and elaborates in a balanced way
on how useful it actually is to your goal of improving in a language depending on your
level to watch foreign movies.

Hi Peter:

I started watching movies in my TL when I was A1, after 400+ movies I am at about B2. I
find watching movies/tv-shows in my TL extremely helpful.

I recently had a drink with a friend of my mother in Berlin who has been learning
German for many years (she learnt German at school and has continued into her sixties
in Australia to learn on-and-off). She reads German novels in Australia, but when she
was in Berlin she couldn't follow a lot of what people were saying, because everybody
was talking too fast. She hadn't learnt to hear the language properly because she
hasn't been exposed to the sounds enough.

It's obviously important to regularly hear the language as you learn: (1) because you
need to understand it when people speak; and (2) so when you read you are silently
enunciating the words correctly as you read.

Of course, you'll learn more complex syntax and more vocabulary from reading - books
are more complex linguistic vessels - but what you get from watching films/tv-shows is
extremely useful and can't be replaced easily in other ways.

That is very useful information Patrick,

Thank you for sharing that. I guess I became so enthused or swept up in the SC that I
went on a bit of a mission, then I began to have my suspicions about the benefit of
watching. The article supported my feelings. Jeffers, Expungnator and yourself have
offered some 'pro's' while the article offered some 'con's'. I think I desperately
needed to get into utilising native materials. This SC put a fire under my ass and got
me moving with that, but to the detriment of my courses and other materials. Now I've
decided to do it all- read, watch, courses the like. I've come up with a study plan
that will work and keep my applying myself in all of those ares.

It's reassuring that ppl like yourself have given me pro's and example situations in
which watching films has proven beneficial, and even unique in giving exposure to
language that other methods cannot provide. I just found myself doubting it, and for
good reason to an extent. But it seems for as many negatives that watching films may
have there are as many positives. I'll keep watching, just not as my primary source of
study. Oh and for me, personally when I read, most of the time i'm at home, so I
absolutely do pronounce every word I read out loud. If I don't know how to pronounce a
word I check it's phonetics. However not everyone does this I know.

Thanks again, very useful info Patrick. I'll keep watching :)
2 persons have voted this message useful

PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5469 days ago
821 posts - 1273 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: French^B1

Message 123 of 766

11 May 2014 at 11:49am | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

No, but this challenge is a big deal to me. It owned my life
for 20 months, I'm not going to let this happen again.

And I always hear these arguments whenever people prefer what favours their goals and
pace. You don't have to win, compete against yourself :-)

Serpent, Do you know why it "owned you"? It seems you're extremely competitive. I
challenge you to let go of the rules & regulations that someone else has chosen and let
go of the leaderboard and study the healthy amount that you feel is right for a
balanced life regardless of where that places you on the leaderboard, regardless of
whether your method of study disadvantages you, regardless of any awards, badges etc.
It's your life, get what you feel is right out of it, and it seems like you need
balance, don't we all. Winning a challenge is great, winning is NOT everything. hahaaaa
(evil laugh) damn you all, i'm faking it... i'm going to tell you all to chill out all
the while i'm running around frantically pulling my hair out and counting each hair as
a 90 minute movie- provided I write a word in French on each hair.... !!!

I know you hate me :)
8 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6590 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 124 of 766

11 May 2014 at 11:58am | IP Logged

Just reminding that monolingual textbooks count :)
And the current ranking system favours excessive movie sprees. We have 599 days left, watching one movie per day is only necessary if you're participating with several languages. Watching more is not necessary for anyone.

edit: it owned my life because language learning is my life. THIS isn't going to change.
Continue moving the goalposts and imposing new restrictions all you want. I will rise like a phoenix :-)

Edited by Serpent on 11 May 2014 at 12:00pm
1 person has voted this message useful

rdearman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Joined 5229 days ago
881 posts - 1812 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin

Message 125 of 766

11 May 2014 at 12:05pm | IP Logged

@PeterMollenburg:

Hi Peter. I read the links you posted with interest and while I agreed with a lot of what the author said I have found that watching Italian Television helped me tremendously when I visited Rome last month. Previously it was difficult for me to construct sentences with any speed and it was very difficult to follow a native speaker when they were "on a roll" and talking a mile a minute.

For me watching hundreds of hours of TV taught me some things a book never could have. The most important thing I learned was you don't need to understand every word in order to pick out what people are saying. The next thing I learned was not to obsess about knowing every word because there is another one being fired at you already.

Reading gives you the luxury of looking up words and checking the grammatical construct and then getting the full intended meaning. Watching TV allows you to "get the gist" of what someone is saying and be able to construct a reply to questions. You also get words that don't show up in writing, things like slang and "pause" words like in English you might shrug and say ehh. Try finding that in the Oxford English Dictionary.

:)

Also I personally think it makes more sense to watch TV series rather than Films. Films are one offs mostly, so you don't get used to the accents or speech patterns. But if you watch 120+ episodes of a TV show, you'll soon learn how some characters speak and maybe even pick out accents.

3 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6590 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 126 of 766

11 May 2014 at 12:10pm | IP Logged

I agree about getting used to the same people, that's a great thing about football matches too. I watch certain matches just to listen to the commentator :-)

Edited by Serpent on 11 May 2014 at 12:12pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Jeffers
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United Kingdom
Joined 4902 days ago
2151 posts - 3960 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

Message 127 of 766

11 May 2014 at 12:13pm | IP Logged

Thinking a bit further about the ranking on the bot: I don't think it was actually discussed at all (at least that I can remember). But as there is a list of people there are only a few possibilities of how that list can be displayed:

1. Alphabetically by user.
2. By percent of challenge completed.
3. By total completed.
4. By percent of best language completed (and when that gets to 100%, percent of 2nd language, etc).

According to the way Cristina designed the challenge, 2 could be the most fair. That would obviously "disadvantage" those of us who are doing more than one language. It seems to me, therefore, that option 4 is a nice compromise between 2 and 3.

Serpent wrote:

And I always hear these arguments whenever people prefer what favours their goals and pace.

That's probably true. I, however, think that option 4 (what surrealix has implemented most recently) is the closest option to the spirit of this challenge as conceived. It will disadvantage me in comparison to the average user, but it still seems reasonable.

There's one more possibility (which will also disadvantage me) which I would love to see implemented regardless of which ranking system is used. The ranking should be based on an average of the books completed and the films completed. This will prevent people from watching for hours on end to get up the ranks, and will give us an additional incentive to get moving with our reading.
2 persons have voted this message useful

rdearman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Joined 5229 days ago
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin

Message 128 of 766

11 May 2014 at 12:14pm | IP Logged

I signed up for this challenge not to complete with anyone else or to get on the leader board. I signed up in order to force myself to CONSISTENTLY touch on my languages each day. For me the problem has been that life distracts me, and then I've not done nothing with Italian or French for weeks or months and I've then got to climb back to where I was and try to make progress.

It becomes disheartening to keep digging yourself up out of the hole, only to slide back down and start again.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because for me the ONLY scoring system which I have had any interest is the weekly consistency score. That is the thing which interests me the most, if I can just look at a graph which showed me that I'd got a consistency metal every week for 60+ weeks would be amazing!

I love Jerry Sienfelds Productivity Secret.

Edited by rdearman on 11 May 2014 at 12:17pm

3 persons have voted this message useful

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