Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5340 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French
| Message 57 of 387 14 December 2014 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
Serpent wrote:
[...] This year we've experimented with the observer status. Thoughts, opinions? (especially from team leaders) This was meant as something for the learners aiming for passive skills and for those who can't commit to learning a specific language but can commit to reading about it. Observers are/were allowed to participate in challenges, and especially the Scandinavian team did amazingly well to keep the challenges observer-friendly. [...] |
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I’d recommend to do away with the two different designations: in Scandinavian team Asgard, you as an “observer” were one of the most present and engaged members anyway. Most people who signed up as “active” simply disappeared without trace after a few weeks/months, so it’s not like offering the chance to opt for one status or the other guarantees that people will stick around longer.
As you’ve noticed, in our team the aim of the challenges was to be inclusive even for “observers” or beginners. That’s probably because we were studying different languages (though somewhat transparent with one another) at different levels which made it difficult to create challenges suitable for everyone.
Add to that my personal philosophy that the point of the challenges was more to keep people “doing something” in the context of the TAC every month for a year rather than pushing everyone to improve as fast and as dramatically as possible and to prove it month after month – which in turn risks to scare away too many people.
That’s why I opted for easier and comparatively freer challenges, which meant offering alternative challenges or challenges which required only passive skills.
In the end, I think that the result wasn’t too bad. Team Asgard is a relatively small team. Even though we’ve ended up with just 6 regular members, as a team we’ve posted 60+ (and still counting) challenges from January to November. That seems like an achievement when compared with how many teams ended up dead in the water by spring.
All this is to say that I don’t think the “observer” status is very useful in the long run. Maybe we had better reconsider the role of the “team challenges” and try to adapt them to the real people with real lives that are on the teams and not the other way around.
If you don’t have a group of super-achievers that can devote a huge amount of time to studying consistently and progressing quickly, it’s hard to imagine how “challenging” challenges can succeed for most people in most teams. I know this is a contradiction of the spirit of the “Total Annihilation Challenge” but we don’t live in an ideal world. Usually, come January we have to make do with far less than what we dreamt about in December. Even though as a New Year’s resolution we all set the goal of annihilating our TLs, I’ve come to appreciate that plodding along for an entire year is actually a worthy accomplishment in itself: it’s certainly on a smaller scale but not to be sniffed at.
EDIT: typo.
Edited by Emme on 14 December 2014 at 7:56pm
6 persons have voted this message useful
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sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5384 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 58 of 387 14 December 2014 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
anamsc2 wrote:
I'd also be interested in joining some sort of advanced learners team
(my advanced language is Spanish, but I'd like to be on a team with advanced learners of
other languages). I think that could be fun / interesting. |
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Ok, I put an entry for an Advanced Study Group on the list and we'll see how many sign
ups we get. Indicate the language you'd be studying in addition to any languages you
have a decent enough comprehension in that would allow for cross-language interaction
(such as in my case I can understand articles and many audio materials in Spanish with
minimum amount of work).
1 person has voted this message useful
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redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3835 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French
| Message 59 of 387 14 December 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
I'm happy to do Indonesian in a separate group (with Bahasa Melayu) or in Team Rare.
This being my first TAC, I'll leave those judgements up to others who have a better idea
of what would be best.
I've updated my
log title to reflect TAC 2015
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carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3982 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 60 of 387 14 December 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
I signed up on the Wiki thread, but then saw a later post saying to provide a link to your log in this post. This is my first TAC so I hope I'm doing everything right.
My log is: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=39698&PN=1
I hope I can keep up my end for the German team. :)
Edited by carlyd on 14 December 2014 at 11:39pm
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4866 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 61 of 387 14 December 2014 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
I'd love to join this year as well, but I don't really feel like logging. If a
relevant team would have a lot of challenges, I would love to participate in those,
but keeping a log feels like a waste of time to me, because from an outside
perspective, my language studies are monotonous and boring.
Is it possible to join a team as someone who just hangs around without actually
keeping a proper TAC log?
2 persons have voted this message useful
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Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6054 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical)
| Message 62 of 387 15 December 2014 at 12:36am | IP Logged |
stifa wrote:
I'd love to join this year as well, but I don't really feel like logging. If a relevant team would have a lot of challenges, I would love to participate in those, but keeping a log feels like a waste of time to me, because from an outside perspective, my language studies are monotonous and boring.
Is it possible to join a team as someone who just hangs around without actually keeping a proper TAC log? |
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Hanging around and participating in challenges is actually above the average for this thing, and your logs are not boring.
But you should do whatever feels comfortable.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4658 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 63 of 387 15 December 2014 at 12:39am | IP Logged |
I've registered for the East Asian Languages, although I hadn't seen the "please append
to the end of the team" directive earlier in this thread. Sorry!
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4902 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 64 of 387 15 December 2014 at 12:43am | IP Logged |
stifa wrote:
I'd love to join this year as well, but I don't really feel like logging. If a relevant team would have a lot of challenges, I would love to participate in those,
but keeping a log feels like a waste of time to me, because from an outside
perspective, my language studies are monotonous and boring.
Is it possible to join a team as someone who just hangs around without actually
keeping a proper TAC log? |
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The log isn't just for you, it is for your team-mates. I've only done one TAC, but it seems to me the point of being part of a team is sharing what you do, and reading other team member's blogs. If you think your own language studies are too boring to write about, will you still be willing to read other team members' boring blogs?
If you just want to follow a team, with occasional participation, just subscribe to their team log. But if you want to join in a team, then you should start a blog, and you must read the blogs of your team-mates.
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