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Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 1 of 64 13 December 2011 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
Back to the roots! The first 6 Week Challenge was not about studying as much as
possible, but rather comparing what a similar amount of study time could achieve, if
people were all starting from scratch but using different methods. Well, the
participants of the 6 Week Challenge were too diverse, studying different languages
with different prior knowledge and different time commitment, so the 6 Week Challenge
adapted. Helping people find new ways to integrate their target language into their
lives, and spend more time on it, is a worthy cause; I am happy with the goal of the 6
Week Challenge as it is now and I have had nothing but good feedback for the addition
of Twitter and study graphs.
Anyway, recently I was talking with Arekkusu about the old idea, about how
awesome it would be to compare the effectiveness of passive-then-active Assimil
vs. speaking from day 1 vs. Listening-Reading vs. what-have-you, cramming vocabulary
with an SRS or letting it accumulate naturally... and we want to give it a go! I was
even able to drag 3 more language geeks into this madness: Volte, Doviende and
Ellasevia.
The plan is to spend 30 days studying Finnish (nicely unrelated to our previous
studies) in & around February, that is, concurrently with the February 6 Week Challenge
but ending early. In contrast to the 6WC, this challenge has a set amount of hours: we
want to do 45 hours of study in that time (or, in the case of Ellasevia,
complete his 45 hours of Finnish then), not more and hopefully also not less. Every one
of us will use whatever method(s) he considers most effective. Then, at the end of the
challenge, we will do detailed testing - reading comprehension, listening
comprehension, writing, speaking - in order to see where the benefits of each approach
lie. For this, we hope to enlist the help of an experienced teacher of Finnish, ideally
someone who has experience testing people according to the CEFR. If you know anyone,
please let us know. We'd also welcome the help of any native speakers who wish to
assist us during the challenge.
So, crazy or awesome? You decide.
Edited by Sprachprofi on 17 December 2011 at 12:31am
12 persons have voted this message useful
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 2 of 64 13 December 2011 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
This sounds like a very good idea.
1 person has voted this message useful
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5255 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish
| Message 3 of 64 13 December 2011 at 10:42am | IP Logged |
The most effective method varies from person to person
Good idea anyway
1 person has voted this message useful
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 4 of 64 13 December 2011 at 11:18am | IP Logged |
It is a very good idea but I'm afraid too few people will join. I won't because Finnish is not on my hit list (even the extended one) and my plans are already too wide. But I'll wish you luck and hopefully you'll get enough people for the experiment.
But the truth is that it would be nice to have a "main" language or two for the challenge again. Perhaps there could be two languages so more people would join and it could still follow the original perpose?
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*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 5 of 64 13 December 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
That sounds like so much fun! If February wasn't a terrible month for me, I might join, but February just isn't possible. I really like the idea though and think it would be nice if it could run several times a year -- with a different language each time. I like the idea of a set time frame and starting point, and then seeing who gets furthest in that time.
1 person has voted this message useful
| SueK Groupie United States Joined 4750 days ago 77 posts - 133 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 6 of 64 13 December 2011 at 3:08pm | IP Logged |
Awesome. As Diglot said, the best method will vary from person to person, but; I think this is a very interesting test nevertheless. It should provide meaningful learnings about the benefits and challenges of each method (which a person could use to better understand what will fit them best), give a true newbie like myself a idea of a starting point and where to turn if that path doesn't fit them (me), and be very telling about what methods to use if you want to teach or learn as a group.
I do hope you find more participants, it would be interesting with the few of you, but more telling with multiple individuals on each method to try to level set some of the person preference and capability concerns.
I look forward to watching to see how this goes!
Edited by SueK on 13 December 2011 at 3:09pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| Isabliss_27 Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4744 days ago 68 posts - 74 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Russian, Latin, French
| Message 7 of 64 13 December 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged |
Very good idea. I wasn't very sure what language I will do in February, then I read this post. It's awesome.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 8 of 64 13 December 2011 at 4:03pm | IP Logged |
SueK wrote:
As a3 said, the best method will vary from person to person, but; I think this is a very interesting test nevertheless. |
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There is no doubt that we will use different methods and will get different results. Our individual strengths likely lie with different skills and that's what's interesting! That's also why any testing will hopefully cover all skills. This is still a very limited amount of time and Finnish is a Level 2 language (should take twice as long to learn as cognate languages like French or Spanish).
Cavesa wrote:
... it would be nice to have a "main" language or two for the challenge again. Perhaps there could be two languages so more people would join and it could still follow the original perpose? |
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Others are welcome to start a similar experiment with another language. But if you are going to do so, I'd suggest waiting until after we are done so you can better evaluate what needs to be improved in the process.
1 person has voted this message useful
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