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Super challenge total info reference | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 17 of 76 23 December 2013 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with patrickwilken's analysis above, and I have some further thoughts. Counting
time to watch movies, etc. is easy. Reading is a nightmare to analyze, though, because it depends on so many things. The level of the learner is a big one, and is (we hope) a moving target throughout the challenge. But it's not just that: it's also the level of vocabulary transparency between the TL and the known languages of the reader. Some people read fast, and others read slowly (ooh, me! me!), just in general. And then there's the question of how intensively one is reading, i.e., do you ever stop to look up words. I hope we can agree that the SC is supposed to be primarily an exercise in extensive reading, of course. My experience was that it took about 5 minutes per page to start, and I had very low comprehension of those pages. As I improved, my comprehension steadily increased, but my reading speed stayed at about 5 minutes per page for a long time. I think it's somewhere around 4000 pages or so that reading speed started to get down to a consistent 3 minutes per page, which I could get down to 2 if rushed. This analysis and the ones above in this thread discuss balancing the time required for the listening and reading portions of the challenge. But SHOULD that be the goal? Do we need the same number of hours of listening and reading, or is changing the ratios just going to shortchange reading, with negative implications for the overall effectiveness of the challenge as a learning technique? I don't know the answer, but it seems like an important question. I felt that reading was the more effective learning tool, even if lots of listening was also important. I have no problem with making this an annual 12-month challenge, so long as we choose appropriate numbers for the targets. The current 10000 page target is indeed quite achievable in the 20-month timeframe, especially for someone with only one TL, starting from an advanced beginner or intermediate stage, where the TL has reasonable vocabulary transparency (which is a lot of people, I believe). Counting my Italian and German reading, I hit well over 10000 pages myself. I also think that lower targets can be useful as well--I chose only 50 unit challenges myself because I knew that a 100 unit challenge would have been so unrealistic FOR ME, that I would have been inclined to give up and ignore the target altogether. At the same time, I might worry about having a 2500 page target--strangely enough, I find myself wondering if it's high enough to feel like a stretch goal. What do other people think? Thus far, the top 17 ranked participants had at least one TL in which they completed at least 2500 pages, and 12 other participants have hit this number as well, with a few others still possible. IIRC, 15 total participants have hit 5000 in a single language, and probably at least 2 or 3 more will do so by the end. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 18 of 76 23 December 2013 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree that times are all over the place. When I first started reading it took me a month to read a 200ish page book, now it would take me about four days. What I have found over time is that I've found it more and more comfortable to read about 50 or so pages a day and aim for this, and if I have time I read more, but I have never found time to read a +100 pages as I get too tired.
What worked for me was to read first thing in the morning for an couple of hours (realize this won't work for lots of people) until I reached my reading goal for the day. I found it much easier to aim for a certain number of pages read/day rather than hours/read. When I started out I tried to read something like 10 pages/day and gradually increased over several months until I stabilized on about 50 pages/day. I tried to regularly watch something in the evening, so that worked out at about 25-30 films a month (with some off time). Of course if you don't have as ready access to films you could aim for 1-2 films per week or whatever. I also found the reading the most important of the two tasks, but I think regular listening is really important, so one film every other day or two for me was really helpful. From my own experience starting the Challenge at A1 I think the 5000 page challenge is totally doable for someone at A2 if they have time to do some heavier reading over summer (I read the last two Harry Potter books in a month in summer for instance). I would have finished the challenge months ago, but I kept increasing the complexity of the books I have read which has slowed me down as I've gone along. 10000 pages in 1 year = 200 pages a week (with a 2 week holiday) = <30 pages/day 5000 pages in 1 year = 100 pages a week (with a 2-week holiday) = <15 pages/day I agree with Geoff that I found the fact that the goal of the challenge was relatively high helpful. If the goal is too low there is a temptation to do "binge reading", whereas when you have a higher goal, even though 30pages/day is not so hard, the cost of not reading every day is, so it tends to force you into a regular reading habit (at least it did for me) which in itself is a useful byproduct of the challenge. Edited by patrickwilken on 23 December 2013 at 5:18pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5347 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 19 of 76 23 December 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Congratulations to all the participants and in particular to all those who’ve succeeded in the Challenge!
Regrettably, I couldn’t take part in this Super Challenge because my level in my TL required me to take part in the Advanced Super Challenge (200 books + 200 films), whose goals I deemed unrealistic for me when they were introduced. After twenty months, as nobody has managed to finish the Advanced Super Challenge, we can safely say that those goals were too demanding. So I hope that this time around there won’t be different levels (normal vs advanced), and/or that the requirements are drastically cut, and/or that we will have the possibility of choosing one’s targets, and/or that at least there won’t be too many restrictions in choosing which challenge is the “reasonably challenging” one for oneself. As many have stressed, it’s important that the targets we’re aiming for are challenging but fundamentally achievable. And while the Advanced Super Challenge requirements seems really out of this world, the original Super Challenge targets (100 books + 100 films) are already borderline impossible for most people. After all most “average” people don’t read 60+ books a year, let alone in a foreign language and on top of all the other reading one may want to do. PS. I too would favor a 20-month Super Challenge starting in May (May 2014-December 2015). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4889 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 20 of 76 23 December 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think HTLAL is eating my posts! If it suddenly reappears, my apologies for the
double post. I like the pace of the challenge. It was hard, but achievable. I underestimated how much time it would take, but I think a lot of people did. I read regularly every week The only real drawback to the pace was that I didn't have time to read much outside the dchallenge. 20 months worked for me, and it gave me time to take risks, and choose harder material, than I would have otherwise. However, I think we lost a lot of people. 12 months might be more realistic, though I don't feel strongly about it either way. I do strongly prefer a May starting date, though. HTLAL is a bit overwhelming now with all the TAC talk. It'd be nicer to start when things are a bit more stable. Also, it might help energize some of the TAC teams - the enthusiasm tends to fade by spring. A 12-month Challenge with the same pace would be 60 books. Just to keep it even, say 50? Or 5,000 pages. Either way. I got lost with all the mega / multi / super challenge variations. I'd just stick with super and half challenges. I don't know how well the writing / speaking parts went; people didn't discuss that much here. I loved the twitter bot graphs. Edited by kanewai on 24 December 2013 at 12:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 21 of 76 23 December 2013 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just repeating my suggestion. I'm all in favour of more flexible goals, one-star-per-25-items etc.
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4889 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 22 of 76 24 December 2013 at 12:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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I forgot about that. I like the one star / 25 books idea (or even four shades of one
star) - especially since we could than keep this as one single challenge. I don't know how you would judge difficulty, though. It's so subjective. I tried to rank the books I read by difficulty, and couldn't even figure that out, as my skill levels fluctuated to dramatically. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 23 of 76 24 December 2013 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course it's subjective! I think it's enough to just honestly say how difficult the book is for you at the time of reading it. For example, a beginner can totally list a children's book as "difficult" and that's okay. By default I would say medium difficulty is 80-90% comprehension, below 80% is difficult, above 90% is easy. If you have a low tolerance for ambiguity, you can decide that you need 95% for it to be easy. For advanced learners, complicated grammar/word order/structures can account for the difficulty if they know 95% of the vocabulary.
Basically, I agree that we need to move away from the level-related requirements, but at the same time having to specify the difficulty would hopefully encourage everyone to push their limits. As for 50 shades of grey... The suggestion was made not only to make, for example, 75 books "count", but also to give some meaning to recording 150 movies without switching challenge type (do we even need them?). edit: Cavesa summed this up well in her log
I'm grateful to Cristina and the first challenge, but I'm definitely not going to aim for 200 in any language. Edited by Serpent on 24 December 2013 at 4:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 24 of 76 24 December 2013 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Originally I really liked the idea of an N number of book challenge for its simplicity. Having participated in the challenge I much prefer to count page numbers even though this is a bit ambiguous (paperback pages? kindle pages? hardback pages? what about the random blank pages at beginning/end of book??).
The challenge is hard enough that I am not going to want to count a 600 page book as equivalent as a 200 page book. ------------ I get the impression most people want to do a longer challenge. Why? I think there are problems with a 20-month challenge that have become apparent in the last challenge. First, it encourages people to set unrealistic goals which ultimately leads them to not finish. I get the impression that some people want a 20 month not 12 month challenge because they can then put off really starting to read for the first six months or so, or because they want to sign up to three different super challenges at the same time which looks (but isn't) realistic in the longer time frame. Second, it makes it harder for others to join the challenge later. If you miss the May 2014 start date, you'll presumably have to wait two years before the next full challenge starts (given we have another four month break between challenges). Third, 20 months is just too long for me at least to plan ahead effectively. If I get a different job, ill, have a child etc I am probably going to have to change my study schedule. I can sort of plan one year ahead, but 20 months is just too long for me. Anyway those are just thoughts. I worry a bit that we are trying to create a challenge by committee, where no one is going to be happy. I am very grateful for the original challenge. My German is much better now (B2 vs A1) and it's taught me extremely valuable study habits. My personal goal next year is to read 10000 pages (perhaps 15000 pages if that's feasible so I'll have read a total of 25000 pages by end of 2014) plus watch 300 films. I don't know how well that will fit into whatever form of challenge comes up, but perhaps at this point it's better for me to work on my own personal challenge. Edited by patrickwilken on 24 December 2013 at 10:02am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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