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Kerrie TAC 2015 Team Caesar SP BrPT ASL | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 209 of 246 31 August 2014 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So tell me...should I watch Aguila Roja? I've heard such conflicting reports!
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5397 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 210 of 246 31 August 2014 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's entertaining. There's lot of plot holes, but I think it's fun to watch anyways. Plus, David Janer is nice to look at. :D
You can watch it for free on DramaFever, with or without English subtitles. Watch a few episodes and see what you think. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5397 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 211 of 246 06 September 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have decided to drop out of the Super Challenge for everything but Spanish for the time being. There's a few reasons for this.
First of all, when the "elite" (those who cry foul when the rules get changed a smidge, because they've been training their whole lives for this event) are reporting 45 minute TV episodes as a complete movie - when it only counts as "half" for the rest of us - well, suffice it to say that... well, that it bothers me. No use ranting. There is someone at the top of the list with 10 stars. They have over 250 "films" listed. Of course, since his/her most active language is one I am studying, I naturally like to see what s/he is watching. Unless s/he isn't going to tell us, which seems to be the case. Last time I checked, that person was "at the top" of the ranking list. Now, I honestly don't care what the rankings are, but if there is going to be a ranking list, then someone who has completed the full 100/100 super challenge (including books) should be at the top. (As of this writing, that's been fixed. Thank you, Surrealix!) Then, I find the little badges, that are supposed to be an incentive, to be distracting. I find myself doing something in each language "just" to go and update my Super Challenge list, so I don't forget at the end of the week. That's not how I want to learn. It doesn't help me with my goals, when I do that. Now, I'm keeping track of everything on a spreadsheet, so if/when I decide to, I can include what I've done up to this point with my other languages. Which brings me to another point. My other languages. I have been thinking long and hard the past few weeks of long-term goals. Some of these are language-related goals, but I've been thinking in a broader perspective. Now that I've gotten out of the situation I was in before, I really have the world at my fingertips, and I really need to decide what I want to do and where I want to go with my life now. More on that later. However, in regard to languages, I asked myself - if I could only choose 5 languages to learn, and then have to stop, what five languages would I want? If I look at it that way, I am (maybe) learning the wrong languages. So, while I'm working on figuring other stuff out, this is one of the things I am pondering. And in a similar vein - if I could "give" my kids two or three languages, which would they be? This is something that could (potentially) guide me in what I decide to do and pursue over the next year or two. At any rate, I will continue with my Spanish Super Challenge for the moment, and we will see what else I come back to. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 212 of 246 06 September 2014 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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if you happen to mean me with TV episodes, then we must've seen different versions of "el tiempo entre costuras". i mean the same content, but divided into 11 longer episodes instead of 17 short ones.
thanks for the rec btw, I loved the series and so did my mum. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5397 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 213 of 246 06 September 2014 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Apparently, Águila Roja was just a recap this week. Maybe next week we will have a brand new episode!
Pillars of the Earth 
I have just finished reading Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth (Los pilares de la tierra), which was a monumental undertaking. Over 1400 pages of something completely new and different. I love epic stories, and I had heard of this before. I love historical fiction, and I had been tossing this one around on my "to-read" list for awhile. I had a hard time getting started with it (but really wanted to read it), so I actually read the first twenty or so pages in English, to get an idea of the story first, then went back and read it from the beginning in Spanish. I think when you completely change genres, time period, settings, and put yourself into a strange new (to you) world in a foreign language, there is so much new vocabulary that it's hard to follow the story. I think I learned a lot of vocabulary in Spanish about masonry, cathedrals, sheep shearing, and medieval life that I would not even know what they mean in English if I happened across them! 
The story is about a cathedral, and the lives of the people who build it. It is epic in scope, yet the storyline is ultimately simple. It is a "spellbinding epic set in twelfth-century England, telling the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known... of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect-a man divided in his soul... of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame... and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother." 
They made a mini-series of the book a few years ago. I should have waited until I finished the book before I started watching it, but I watched the first few episodes after I'd gotten halfway through the book. It was really well-done, but it was not as faithful to the book as I was expecting. I think they would have done a better job if they'd made ten or twelve episodes, instead of just eight. I felt like there was a lot of story missing - the parts of the story that explain why people do what they do. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the rushed feeling. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who enjoys epic stories, and the mini-series as well. Edited by Kerrie on 06 September 2014 at 11:15pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4624 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 214 of 246 07 September 2014 at 6:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Doing the SuperChallenge in multiple languages is really hard. Much harder than doing it in one, and doing one in an A1 language is also much more of a slog (don't know if the languages you dropped were at that level?), so I totally understand why you have chosen to just focus on one.
I think like you do, I find the "streak" thing kind of a mixed or even negative feature, because I feel like I should log something every week in every language and try to balance out the languages instead of just powering through with one. In my weakest language (Russian), I have only managed to read 3 "books" so far, and I did a back of the envelope calculation that at my current reading speed, I'd have to spend something insane like 14 hours a week reading in Russian to finish the SC. Aint going to happen, no way, no how :( I'm not quite ready to drop Russian completely yet, though again because my level is so low, I really wonder if watching movies with subtitles really is the best use of my time. I should probably just *study* :) And yes, I also get that it can be annoying that some people are not following the rules to the letter. I was looking at someone's list to see if there were any interesting things there I might check out and saw Assimil...yikes! If I counted the textbook type stuff in Russian, I'd have a lot more pages read, but I think the point is to read non-instructional materials so that just doesn't feel right to me. What's kept me sane is to really not focus on where I am in the rankings, but to just keep doing my thing regardless of what others are doing. Each one has to answer to his/her own conscience. I don't even really get how the star system or ranking system even works since I was avoiding the SC discussion thread when it was being discussed. Good thing I'm ignoring it ;) I look forward to reading about your thoughts on multiple languages and which ones to focus on. My Spanish and German are at a good enough level to maintain, but I started with Russian in January (will be a multi-year project since I'm going slow), and very recently started with Turkish. Since I have an invitation to actually go to Turkey in the future, (and no plans to visit Russia in the foreseeable future), I'm really tempted to set Russian aside and focus on Turkish, but then my pride and the time already invested tell me to try to juggle them both. I'm afraid I'll forget all the Russian I've learned if I put it aside for a while. Sorry, I don't mean to hijack your log with such a long post, it's just that I think we're kind of facing similar issues at the moment...so I look forward to reading your thoughts on this topic in future. And a huge thank you for your recommendations, if I haven't said that already. I really enjoy your updates and thoughts on language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4667 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 215 of 246 07 September 2014 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I thought reporting what you've read/watched via tweets was optional? (I'm assuming that's the mechanism you're talking about). I think it would drive me up the wall to tweet every time I watch an episode of something just to report the details, so I tweet once a week and report total minutes (usually with some idea of what it was, but rarely individual titles) and pages read (usually with the title, because I've only ever had one book on the go at once).
I don't know what the stars and badges mean, although some of them will tell me when I hover over them, so I've never let them bother me too much. I've always treated it as "can I reach this target, so my progress really only means something to me. Similarly, the rest of you could be logging anything you like and I'd be none the wiser, so I don't really care where I am in the rankings, and I'm not sure I could compare what I'm doing to someone studying a different language or studying multiple languages or holding down two jobs or whatever ... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5397 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 216 of 246 07 September 2014 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is completely optional. But it's nice to see what other people are doing. If you are watching movies, it's nice to see what movies you are watching, especially if I am studying the same language. If you have 250 movies logged in French, and I'm studying French, I would love to see what you're watching. It might give me an idea of what to check out.
To me, it's not about comparing myself with other people, it's about being encouraged and motivated by others.
See, I don't mind this kind of thing. We are all doing our own thing, like dampingwire says. If you are studying Russian and are a beginner, reading your Assimil lessons is still reading. It might not be in line with Cristina's original idea of the challenge, but it has morphed enough that most of what people are doing doesn't fit with the "original" idea (as I understood it,) anyways. See, for Spanish, I will only count books. And maybe subtitles, if I watch Kdramas with Spanish subtitles. (I know, we're not supposed to do that. Don't tell Cristina! LOL. I figure if I am using that as the only way to understand the story, then I am focused completely on reading.) Against the rules? Yes, but it's more in line with the idea of the challenge than what a lot of people do, I think. But I was actually considering doing something similar (regarding the Assimil thing) for Korean. It's a completely new language to me (as far as being a beginner, anyways), and if I can read a page of Assimil exercises, then I am one step closer to my goal of actually reading. To me, the Super Challenge is something different for everyone. I don't really care what other people are doing, and what "rules" they follow, or not. I do like to see what other people are doing, though. It's nice to see what other people are reading and watching, because it gives me ideas, and I really love when people actually review what they do in their logs. I actually started writing a little more about what I read (and sometimes what I watch), because I really like to see that with other people's logs. A lot of us are reading translations of popular books, so target language is less important when I'm looking at stuff people are reading. Radioclare is reading the Chronicles of Narnia. Stelle's reading the Hunger Games. I just finished Pillars of the Earth. Everyone and their mother is reading Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Gray, and Twilight. All of these books are available in most of the SC languages. One of the best things about the SC is that there are enough people doing it this time around, it's great to get ideas for the level you are at in your target language. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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