Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 537 of 902 18 December 2012 at 2:58pm | IP Logged |
I'd like to join the Greek TAC team, "Team Sparta" :)
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stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5835 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin
| Message 538 of 902 18 December 2012 at 6:44pm | IP Logged |
Put me down for the Greek TAC team, "Team Sparta", and also Kofoholici Czech. Thanks.
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Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6623 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 539 of 902 18 December 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
Update:
poliglota:
Added to Turkish team
stelingo:
Added to Kofoholici, and Spart
Spanky:
Moved to French team
Quique:
Moved to Romance #2
Hidden:
added to Asian team
Jinx:
Added to Romance #2
Crush:
Added to Sparta
SomeGuy:
I don’t know of anyone studying Vietnamese or Burmese in particular. I could put you down on the Asian team if you want.
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Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6623 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 540 of 902 18 December 2012 at 8:11pm | IP Logged |
Other than a very few people, I have received mostly positive responses to my previous announcement. However, I’ve decided to modify it in response to those objections.
Each team may set its own limit as to how many members it wants as a maximum and inform me of that limit. When that team reaches 5 less than its maximum, I will start a new team. The reason for this is that if only a few people sign up after that point, they can be moved over to the old team without that team going over its limit, and if more than a few new people sign up, they will have enough people to have their own team. You may choose infinity as your limit, but I still wish to be informed. Otherwise I will assume you wish to keep the old limit of 15-20.
Should anyone find that the team they are on has become uncomfortably large, they may ask me to create a new team.
I will continue to strongly recommend that teams limit the number of members they take and that individuals limit the number of teams they join.
I understand that some people might think that a larger team means they will have more members at the end. However, I and many others believe that larger size would have the opposite effect. The purpose of TAC-teams is to help, encourage each other and to learn from each other. On joining a team, you are making an agreement to do so. In order to be able to do that, you have to read each other’s logs and comment where appropriate. A team that is too large will have difficulty doing that and will have difficulty in creating the unity that is required in a team.
I must also disagree with the argument that it doesn’t matter how many people are on a team or how many teams one person is on as long as one would be studying languages anyway. It is important to remember that being on a team means reading the logs of one’s teammates and offering advice and encouragement. Doing so however, reduces the amount of time one can spend on learning languages. One must weigh up the benefit of receiving advice and encouragement (and of giving it, for that also has a benefit) against the time used on reading and commenting on logs which otherwise might be used on actual language study.
The idea that one doesn’t have to read all the team members’ logs goes against the definition of a team. A team is a unit working together toward a common goal. Reading only the logs one chooses is no different than what is done outside of the TAC. Many people keep logs here without being members of any team. People who are interested might read and comment on them at times, but there is no one with an obligation to do so. I was very surprised to find out recently that there are people outside of my team who read my log. I hadn’t received comments from other people, so I’d assumed that no one else was interested in reading my log. I agree with Solfrid Cristin who said that she finds it very demotivating to write five posts without anyone commenting. I struggled with a number of things this year and receiving encouragement from my teammates helped a lot and I doubt that I would have made as much progress in Japanese as I made this year had I not received the advice and kind words they gave me and I’m sure that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
To summarize: Choose a leader. Decide on a maximum number of members on your team. Leaders should inform me as soon as possible of the limit and always let me know in the cases where someone signs up on the team thread rather than the sign-up thread so that I can keep a record. I would also appreciate if you could send me links to member’s logs as they are created and let me know of any other important changes.
Thanks for reading and I hope this goes some way to clearing up any issues.
Note:
There are a number of teams that have not chosen a team leader. I would like all teams to do this as soon as possible because it would make my job a lot easier if there were someone from each team to inform me of changes. Beyond that, it is up to each team what a team leader should do. You can be as much of a cheerleader and organizer for your team as you wish. You might want to look to team Sputnik/MIR for an example of what makes a strong team.
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Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5133 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer
| Message 541 of 902 18 December 2012 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
I might be interested to join the TAC 2013 with Thai, but I don't see anyone learning Thai or any other Asian
language from the region. How does TAC work if there's no team to support you?
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 542 of 902 18 December 2012 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
@Brun Ugle: GREAT!!! Works better like that for sure:)
I'm the team leader of Slavic+Romance and I really don't think we'll reach a point when it's time to start a new team. There's a lot of potential overlap between us, teams Mir, Spanish, French, Romance, Croatian, Czechoslovak and *jäŋe/*ledús. If it's decided that the team is about to get too big, I'll let you know.
That's up to Julie but I think the same is true about Team Viking. most Scandinavian learners also learn German and/or Finnish, and also there wasn't even a Scandinavian team this year. I can't imagine this team actually having more than 20 members.
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Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5051 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese
| Message 543 of 902 18 December 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged |
@Brun Ugle: Just a snippet from what you wrote
Brun Ugle wrote:
larger size would have the opposite effect. The purpose of TAC-teams is to help, encourage each other and to learn from each other.
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It seems like you really know what you're doing! o.o I'm glad you're the one organizing TAC '13! :)
Brun Ugle wrote:
Hidden:
added to Asian team
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Weird stuff happens.
Hidden Linguist wrote:
Hi (again). I am the poster formerly known as Hidden. ;)
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Bakunin wrote:
How does TAC work if there's no team to support you? |
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You can join as an individual.
Edited by Takato on 18 December 2012 at 8:49pm
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Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5133 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer
| Message 544 of 902 18 December 2012 at 8:50pm | IP Logged |
Takato wrote:
Bakunin wrote:
How does TAC work if there's no team to support you? |
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You can join as an individual. |
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I know... but what's the point in joining as an individual? Isn't it all about the team?
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