The Super challenge! (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

The Super challenge!
Tags: Super Challenge \| Movies \| Fluency \| Time to learn \| Reading
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Woodsei
Bilingual Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Woodsei
Joined 4796 days ago
614 posts - 782 votes

Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian

Message 297 of 713

29 April 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged

Brun Ugle wrote:

Woodsei wrote:

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

Brun Ugle wrote:

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

I have noticed though, that for me this "reading a language you do not really
understand" (I am only at A2 in Russian) only worked when I can sit undisturbed over a
longer period. I have tried to do it on a 10 minute train trip, and it is impossible
for me.

I agree totally. When I first sit down and start to read, I really struggle, but if I
have an hour or so, it goes quite easily. Also, it is better to try to read more
quickly (within reason) as somehow that seems to increase comprehension. I think maybe
it's because it forces you to understand each sentence as an entire unit, rather than
one word at a time. That is especially important in a language like Japanese where the
syntax is completely backwards and inside out when compared to English.

I am so happy to hear you say that, as this is exactly how I feel too!

Yeah, I
notice that lengthy periods have something to do with increased comprehension. I guess
it's because you brain starts picking out patterns unconsciously after some time and
starts to make sense of them. The human brain is really amazing :) And I noticed that I
too understand better when I listen to fast audio or read faster. I guess it like
Brun_Ugle said about understanding a sentence as one unit rather than individual words.

I SO can't wait to start reading, and for hours at that! It's going to be really
interesting to see how things turn out....

Interestingly/ironically enough, the better I get, the slower I get. Now that I know a
lot of words, I read them all. I understand better, of course, but I now read more of
the words which does slow me down a little. Of course my speed is bound to increase
again as I get more practice.

There is also the problem of teaching my eyes to go from top to bottom instead of left
to right. When you know the meanings of the words, reading speed depends a great deal
on eye-movements. Having moved my eyes left to right since I was a tiny child, I'm
having a bit of difficulty getting them to work properly in another direction.
Sometimes I have to use my finger, otherwise I often hop over a line or start rereading
the same line.

You know, I think the reason one gets slower is because you start to focus more on the
things you're aware of. If an unknown word jumps at you from a bunch of words that you
know, and you don't seem to get it, you'll start focusing more on the unknowns and
that slows you down. It happens with our native languages too, sometimes. Like when
you're reading a highly technical article with a lot of unfamiliar jargon.

I know what you mean about having it easier to read horizontally. I speak two languages
as my native languages, and Arabic goes from right to left. I don't feel odd at all
about reading Japanese vertical text from right to left, and I think that may be the
reason. As for vertical text, strangely enough, I find it easier to comprehend the text
and remember the readings (yes, I can see them in my head after I close the book) than
if I read horizontally. I didn't read vertical much, just a short story from a graded
reader, but that's how I felt about it. But yeah, your head starts to hurt after a
while from all so much focus, it definitely does.
1 person has voted this message useful

Moniker
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4601 days ago
14 posts - 15 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Esperanto, French^B1

Message 298 of 713

29 April 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged

Oh boy...I think I'm actually going to sign up for this.

100 films I can easily imagine completing, but I'm not sure if I could even manage to read 100 English
books in 20 months. Yikes that's steep.

Has anyone covered the topic of target-language newspapers yet? What system are you using to count
them? I'm thinking if I read the newspaper at
least 5 mornings a week, I'll count that as one extra book per week. That's definitely over-estimating how
many 'pages' I'll be reading, but it makes the challenge much more manageable for me.

SO. 20 month super challenge in French. I'm...in?

What have I done to myself.

Edited by Moniker on 29 April 2012 at 1:07pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4908 days ago
2151 posts - 3960 votes

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

Message 299 of 713

29 April 2012 at 1:08pm | IP Logged

I thought I would test the bot a bit before the challenge starts. I copied in the example from the webpage, and it didn't work. Anybody know what went wrong?

My tweet:
@langchallenge I just finished reading a #hi #book with 60 pages. It was called "The Invisible Book" and I kept losing it. Just testing

The response:
@jefflehman68 I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Perhaps there's a mistake or a missing hashtag?

EDIT: I tried a simplified tweet, but I haven't gotten any reply at all. The new tweet was:
@langchallenge #book #hi 60 pages

Edited by Jeffers on 29 April 2012 at 1:35pm
1 person has voted this message useful

wv girl
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5238 days ago
174 posts - 330 votes

Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish

Message 300 of 713

29 April 2012 at 1:57pm | IP Logged

I've been tempted by this challenge since I saw it, but couldn't commit. When the prospect of the 1/2 challenge
came, it felt more possible, especially since I'm NOT OFFICIALLY studying Italian, even though I have finished
Pimsleur I & bought my first Assimil, which I'm working my way through. Think I'm still in the denial stage with my
newest interest ...

So I'd like to do it in Spanish. Even though I finished several university courses & may officially be above a B1 level,
I'd really like to improve my listening comprehension and reading skills.

I have never tried Twitter, so I will look back through the threads how to record them some other way. Now, after
listening to a new day's lesson of that language that I'm not really studying, I'll go find my copy of Escalofrios in the
bookshelf & get started with something not too hard.
1 person has voted this message useful

Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
Joined 5394 days ago
1232 posts - 1740 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 301 of 713

29 April 2012 at 2:06pm | IP Logged

Jeffers, I tried to test it with the book tags too, and I got nothing either.

I thought I was just a twitter-idiot. Tweet-iot? :D

Edited by Kerrie on 29 April 2012 at 2:07pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Brun Ugle
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
brunugle.wordpress.c
Joined 6619 days ago
1292 posts - 1766 votes

Speaks: English*, Norwegian^C1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

Message 302 of 713

29 April 2012 at 3:27pm | IP Logged

I just tried it with the book tag too, and it didn't work for me either. It worked when I did it a couple of days ago, so I assume he is probably in the middle of fixing something and this is just a temporary problem.
1 person has voted this message useful

fiziwig
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4864 days ago
297 posts - 618 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 303 of 713

29 April 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged

I just sent: @langchallenge #book, 127 pages, "Spanish Stories for Beginners"

and got back: @_fiziwig_ I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Perhaps there's a mistake or a missing hashtag?

So it's not just you.

ON EDIT: I sent: @langchallenge #lang8, 200 words, "Snow White" and it worked fine.

Edited by fiziwig on 29 April 2012 at 6:42pm
1 person has voted this message useful

surrealix
Diglot
Groupie
New Zealand
languagechallenge.su
Joined 4603 days ago
66 posts - 152 votes

Speaks: English*, Swedish
Studies: French

Message 304 of 713

29 April 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged

Hi All,

Sorry about the problem with submitting pages! (But thanks for the quick heads-up,
otherwise I doubt I would have noticed this quickly.) It's all fixed now - if you re-
post your tweets they should be counted.

Brun Ugle wrote:

I just tried it with the book tag too, and it didn't work for me
either. It worked when I did it a couple of days ago, so I assume he is probably in the
middle of fixing something and this is just a temporary problem.

The cause was unfortunately simple oversight when doing the last update. I added a few
more options for hash-tags when submitting tweets (eg, #read, #watch, #speak) but
completely forgot to put the old ones back in!

Globe-trotter wrote:

Could you also add Thai to the bot?

Done :)

Edited by surrealix on 29 April 2012 at 7:04pm

2 persons have voted this message useful

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