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Super Challenge/Adv, Cha. Reg, Upd, 2013 | ||
Tags: Organization | Super Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4680 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 137 of 199 18 August 2013 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think I ever saw any discussion on whether the proficiency limits were meant to apply to languages where the proficiency as a whole is at or above the level, or if it was meant as "don't do a reading/listening challenge if you already read/listen at this level," irrespective of speaking/writing proficiency. There's no enforcement mechanism of course so we can all do whatever we think is appropriate, but I wasn't even sure what the spirit of the rule was. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4881 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 138 of 199 18 August 2013 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
This would be my strong preference, and 20 months again would be nice for the reasons others said - it'll be nice to have a break, and we'll need 20 months to finish. The benefit of having 25 books at 250 pages (or any other breakdown) is that it would be much easier to explain to non-HTLAL folks. I could just say, 25 books, without the qualifications of explaining the 100-page rule. But it's all the same thing in the end: 10,000 pages. And having a metric for words/page is 100% necessary for those of us who use kindles or ebooks. Mine won't count actual pages, even when it says it will - but it will give # of words. Those with hard copies can ignore it, 'cause you'll have actual pages. Having conversations, writing, podcasts, audiobooks, etc - the 'make your own challenge challenge' (or I think Serpent once recommended a '100 of anything' challenge is cool, but it would make sense as a separate thing from the Super Challenge. edit: I must've had too much coffee this morning; I didn't mean to end every sentence with an exclamation mark. I've gone back and replaced them with periods. edit 2: it was google searches that were given me such a wide variety of potential page numbers to choose from. Significant ones, too: the spread for Germinal was between 490 and 605 pages. So, defaulting for 250/wds/page sounds like a good rule. Edited by kanewai on 19 August 2013 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5387 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 139 of 199 18 August 2013 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you're reading it on the Kindle, you can do a fairly quick search on Amazon and find the number of pages. Or type the title of the book into Google plus the word for "pages" (in the target language) and usually find that information easily. And if that doesn't work, I have also found the number of pages in the English version and used that. It's not exact, but it's bound to be in the right ballpark. I really don't think it's important to get down to the "nitty-gritty" with this kind of stuff (again). General guidelines are fine. Pretty much everyone will figure out what works best for them. Tadoku rules are a good guideline, too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4525 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 140 of 199 18 August 2013 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
My Kindle 2 and my new Kindle 5 (e-ink) both give page numbers for books. The estimates tend to be on the low side though. I read somewhere that Amazon uses an unusually high number of words per page, which is annoying self-publishing authors as it makes their books seem unusually short. For my estimates I just take the paperback page count off Amazon, which works well for German, but I guess is a problem for many other languages. From a practical point of view I would keep the challenge to pages (though call it books if people want that - perhaps in units of 250 pages so it's a more realistic book length). I would definitely offer a longer movie units. I would say 50 - 250 page books and 300 movies would be of roughly equivalent. One problem I had with the challenge, which others have mentioned, is that movie part finished too soon. I am already past the 200 movie part of the challenge, while only 60% complete on the book side. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 August 2013 at 9:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5387 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 141 of 199 18 August 2013 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have a Paperwhite, and I don't think it gives pages anywhere. I read somewhere that the "location" they use varies greatly in regard to number of words, based a lot on formatting. However they seem to do it depends on characters, but that will include formatting stuff as well. But it is usually easy enough to look up the page numbers on Amazon or Google. Of course, I normally wait until I've finished a book to record it, whereas others often will record how many pages they read in an evening. I personally don't think it's worth worrying about exactly how we count pages. Each language is different. Each person is different. Serpent is counting subtitles on Disney movies as 50 pages. LOL 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5001 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 142 of 199 18 August 2013 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, there was such a discussion and "rule". The SC was originally meant to get you past the beginning and intermediate stages so the ceiling was B1 or B1/B2, something like that. For those wishing to participate with their advanced or fluent languages (after all, such an amount of exposure is very useful at any level), the Advanced SC was introduced following the thought that twice the amount shouldn't be a trouble for someone who no longer needs to search in a dictionary much or replay pieces of video. Well, it is difficult because it still takes a lot of time (especially when you are stupid like me and take two :-D ) but it is still fun and very helpful. Remember, B2 is still far from perfect. :-) So, thinking about the next round with the experience from this, I believe the best would be to remove the ceiling and have one menu for all participant: 100+100, 50+50, and separate reading, movies. It is already a list of 6 options, that is quite a lot. I believe maintenance doesn't need a challenge (after all, the point of being already able to understand is to have access to things we find fun by themselves,isn't it?) and the active skills can have their own challenges if people feel the need. I even have a few ideas of what I'd enjoy (and I believe others as well) but I have enough on my plate now :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5219 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 143 of 199 19 August 2013 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don’t fully understand the complaints about creating more flexibility in how many things we want to do for each category and language. Almost none of us have the same common goals right now as it is. Take a look at the Twitter results page--almost everybody is doing different combinations. Right now, what the page does is rank everybody based on overall total work (which is one thing that makes us a group rather than just individuals studying), but still on a more individual level it awards stars if you’ve reached your own challenge goals (which vary greatly from person to person depending on challenge, categories, and number of languages). We can still have both of these metrics of judging (both very useful in my opinion for long-term motivation) if we have challenges that are more customizable. That need not change at all.
However, even with this, if we want, we can still say that the overall goal for those doing the super challenge is to reach a 100 books and 100 movies total (or 50 if preferred) regardless of language, without removing all the flexibility that brought so many people to the challenge. I’d be fine with a 100 book, 100 movie total rule across all one’s languages as a minimum requirement for the challenge. So if someone wants to just do Russian, he could sign up for 100 books and movies in Russian, but if someone else wanted to do German, Spanish, and French, for example, she could sign up for German: 50 books, 100 movies, Spanish: 25 books, 50 movies, French: 25 books, 50 movies. This would make 200 movies, but the baseline goal of at least 100 books and movies would be met. No one could just sign up for 25 books and movies grand total, which really wouldn’t be much of challenge over such a long time, much less a super one. It would be getting back more to the roots of the challenge, while still allowing us to divide up our languages better according the goals we have for each of them. Wouldn’t that work as a compromise? Mind you, I’m not complaining about having to read 10,000 pages all together; I think that’s a great goal. It’s having to do at least 5,000 pages per each and every language you’re doing, matched with a mere--and inadequate for developing proper listening comprehension skills--50 movie units (films, TV, talk radio, audio books all together) that bothers me. This really makes it hard for anyone who’s studying more than one or two languages. Why don’t we set a real overall standard, but still keep a great deal of flexibility in how we reach--or if we want, surpass--that baseline standard? Whatever the case is, however, I think the idea of limiting everybody’s choices even further just because some people personally may not want to do certain things is a bad idea and moving in the wrong direction. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marikki Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5487 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Spanish, Swedish Studies: German | Message 144 of 199 20 August 2013 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don’t know how one is supposed to react when someone on the forum randomly insults you by questioning
your honesty and integrity, so forgive me if I’m making someone feel uncomfortable.
So I read 954 pages in 8 days. Kanewai questions that, and possibly my whole Advanced Challenge performance so far. At first I thought that maybe I shoud explain, tell about the circumstances and my background. But no, I really don’t owe any explanations. What I did isn’t even that exceptional. I take solace in knowing that all the reading I did was worth it, something I can be happy about for the rest of my life. No bully can take that away from me. Edited by Marikki on 20 August 2013 at 6:10pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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