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New Super Challenge Discussion thread2014

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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
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 Message 505 of 766
17 July 2014 at 12:40pm | IP Logged 
I think I still haven't made myself clear about excursions. I was going to take this awesome excursion, and I took it in St Petersburg too. You get earphones when you pay for the tour, you plug them in and you listen to a recording, available in many languages. I already have some great audio guides to Italy, which are basically audiobooks and I'm sure they count? So this specific excursion is the equivalent of that, for me. I understand not counting live excursions, but what about recorded ones? (and while we're at it - what about the audio guides to museums? I've never used them, but I always thought it would be some great Super Challenge material)

And, eh, you should've said that audio sports don't count about two years ago. Now I really hope Napoli will buy someone I like asap, because with them I'm more interested in the commentator than the visuals.
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rdearman
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 Message 506 of 766
17 July 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged 
PeterMollenburg wrote:

I see mixed messages and would like to be very clearly informed that the news and Yabla clips can count.
Solfrid? Someone recently quoted Solfrid saying " it all counts " . This is too much out of context and vague for me. Jeffers your diagram seems to indicate that these things do count. Yet I don't understand whey clips under 5 min wouldn't count. If I only watched 5 min via Yabla then I'd simply wait until i'd watched a more decent amount of clips before logging it all. Either way I've watched the material, what's the problem with snippets? It's video content, it's in my TL... ... confused ... ... confused some more... Solfrid, Solfrid... ?
Anyone seen my left arm? Shit where's my right leg... ? Ah... Ahhhhh ! Oh there it is, over on the windowsill, windowsill? Do window sills count? Dammit I have fleas!


Solfrid's quote was taken out of context. "It all counts" was directed toward someone who was asking about books, novels and if electronic version of Harry Potter counted or was it physical books only. They also asked about TV series vs 90 minute feature films.

News and fiction are two very different beasts even if they use the same medium. Newscasters speak in a uniform voice, they normally speak slowly and clearly, using textbook language with a high degree of accuracy and zero slang. A film on the the other hand will have people who mumble, scream, speak excitedly, use slang, and all the other nasty things real people do when talking.

So for a challenge a fictional film is more challenging than a newscast in terms of variety of speech.

If this was my challenge I probably would have just made the rule: film = audio & visual fiction of 60+ minutes. I wouldn't have allowed exceptions for football, or documentaries, or audiobooks. But I'm not a particularly nice person. :)

Really it doesn't matter much why she doesn't want newscasts in her challenge. It's her challenge to you, so you have to abide by her rules or fail the challenge.

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die!"


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Iolanthe
Diglot
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Netherlands
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 Message 507 of 766
17 July 2014 at 1:01pm | IP Logged 
So what counts for the reading portion? Just books (fiction or non-fiction) and
comics/mangas? Or absolutely everything (books, newspapers, blog posts, Ikea manuals...)?
1 person has voted this message useful



PeterMollenburg
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AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 508 of 766
17 July 2014 at 1:02pm | IP Logged 
rdearman wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:

I see mixed messages and would like to be very clearly informed that the news and Yabla clips can count.
Solfrid? Someone recently quoted Solfrid saying " it all counts " . This is too much out of context and vague
for me. Jeffers your diagram seems to indicate that these things do count. Yet I don't understand whey clips
under 5 min wouldn't count. If I only watched 5 min via Yabla then I'd simply wait until i'd watched a more
decent amount of clips before logging it all. Either way I've watched the material, what's the problem with
snippets? It's video content, it's in my TL... ... confused ... ... confused some more... Solfrid, Solfrid... ?
Anyone seen my left arm? Shit where's my right leg... ? Ah... Ahhhhh ! Oh there it is, over on the windowsill,
windowsill? Do window sills count? Dammit I have fleas!


Solfrid's quote was taken out of context. "It all counts" was directed toward someone who was asking about
books, novels and if electronic version of Harry Potter counted or was it physical books only. They also asked
about TV series vs 90 minute feature films.

News and fiction are two very different beasts even if they use the same medium. Newscasters speak in a
uniform voice, they normally speak slowly and clearly, using textbook language with a high degree of
accuracy and zero slang. A film on the the other hand will have people who mumble, scream, speak excitedly,
use slang, and all the other nasty things real people do when talking.

So for a challenge a fictional film is more challenging than a newscast in terms of variety of speech.

If this was my challenge I probably would have just made the rule: film = audio & visual fiction of 60+
minutes. I wouldn't have allowed exceptions for football, or documentaries, or audiobooks. But I'm not a
particularly nice person. :)

Really it doesn't matter much why she doesn't want newscasts in her challenge. It's her challenge to you, so
you have to abide by her rules or fail the challenge.

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die!"



My main issue was that I was not clear on whether the news counted or not. I know that it's her challenge and
whether I agree or not with her decision, a clear response along with some justification would be nice.
Whether I agreed or not I intended to go along with the rules. I'm just wanting clarity really. It seems that you
feel that my main issue is my gripe with the rules. Yes I may be a little baffled by the rules, I give you that but
does the news count? You seem to believe it doesn't.

Okay I totally disagree with your comments on the news in comparison with movies. I find the news harder to
follow and always have. I don't understand why others don't find it challenging. Movie dialogue can be slow
but more often than not it's one continuous journey or theme that often contains dialogue that if not at first
understood will suddenly come to you when inferred from the context and surroundings. News on the other
hand is fast as they attempt to present as much as possible in each news edition and on a wide variety of
topics. That is much more difficult in my opinion.

PM
3 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 509 of 766
17 July 2014 at 1:04pm | IP Logged 
PeterMollenburg wrote:
Thanks Jeffers,

I see mixed messages and would like to be very clearly informed that the news and Yabla clips can count.
Solfrid? Someone recently quoted Solfrid saying " it all counts " . This is too much out of context and vague
for me. Jeffers your diagram seems to indicate that these things do count. Yet I don't understand whey clips
under 5 min wouldn't count. If I only watched 5 min via Yabla then I'd simply wait until i'd watched a more
decent amount of clips before logging it all. Either way I've watched the material, what's the problem with
snippets? It's video content, it's in my TL... ... confused ... ... confused some more... Solfrid, Solfrid... ?
Anyone seen my left arm? Shit where's my right leg... ? Ah... Ahhhhh ! Oh there it is, over on the windowsill,
windowsill? Do window sills count? Dammit I have fleas!


On the graphic, green is the core concept, yellow are the main exceptions, orange are borderline cases (similar to yellow, but a step removed from "films"). You can count orange if you want, or you might want to say, no I'm sticking to the core. But the items in red are out.

Just to be clear, video news counts, but not audio news. The change I made in the graphic was to add the category of "Video for Learners" which would be videos essentially in your target language, but made for learners. Solfrid said (to me) that she would accept that addition since we accept TL textbooks, but they would need to be over 15 minutes. So if Yabla has long enough clips, they would count. Short clips may add up, but that's a bit to far away from the concept of watching a film.

There will always be people who feel that, "if X counts, why can't I count Y?" Cristina created the challenge for people to watch films. Right away people began to ask if different things could "count" as a film. After a lot of backing and forthing, she accepted the idea of audiobooks. It wasn't long before people began to ask, if we can listen to audiobooks, why not podcasts? Can you see where this is going? I can count French in Action, because it's 100% French video, so why not FSI, which is 100% French audio?

The purpose of my graphic was to show clearly what was the core of the challenge, what was close, what were borderline cases, and what was out. The things that are out were things that are just a step too far from the core concept to "count as a film".

I hope the graphic will clarify things, especially for newcomers. If you can think of anything which I left out, let's discuss it.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4910 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 510 of 766
17 July 2014 at 1:18pm | IP Logged 
Iolanthe wrote:
So what counts for the reading portion? Just books (fiction or non-fiction) and
comics/mangas? Or absolutely everything (books, newspapers, blog posts, Ikea manuals...)?


This post by rdearman, which Cristina accepted, makes it quite simple for reading:
Quote:
Books = 50 pages (1 pages equals 250-350 words). There didn't seem to be any exceptions; all reading counted, but you have to calculate the number of words in an document and determine the page count as above.
-- Manga count as 1/4, aka 4 pages of manga = 1 page of a book.


I remember there was some discussion about things like poetry and plays. Initially Cristina hesitated, because of all the blank space, but I believe she accepted them based on word couts.


rdearman, regarding documentaries: The "Times 100 List of Great French Films" includes "Le chagrin et la pitiƩ", a documentary. Oscars are given for best documentary. In my opinion, documentaries are films. In any case, they are allowed.

1 person has voted this message useful



rdearman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5237 days ago

881 posts - 1812 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin

 
 Message 511 of 766
17 July 2014 at 1:55pm | IP Logged 
Somehow I think PeterMollenburg, Jeffers and I are all in violent agreement with everything except the ease of listening to newscasters.

I know documentaries are allowed. I was just saying if I were going to do a challenge I would define a film as fiction of 60+ minutes. It would just make my life as moderator to the challenge easier, and I just want an easy life. ;-)

Moderation of books is easy, like you quoted above they are just word counts. But the definition of a film is more ambiguous and therefore more open to debate. So if you define it as a work of fiction only, and with 60+ minutes it gets around all the objections of "I want to listen to my aunt Nessie speaking in Gaelic with FaceTime on my iphone.", or "I want to count watching my tutor on skype".


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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4910 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 512 of 766
17 July 2014 at 2:22pm | IP Logged 
I agree that we agree, rdearman. Can't argue about that! ;)


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