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The Super challenge! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 649 of 713 21 July 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
For me, it's different reasons. For Russian, it's because I haven't started learning it yet. But if Cristina can do a Super Challenge in 20 months, then I should be able to do a half challenge in 12-15 months. :-) I am planning to start studying it in September or October. Until then, I have other language commitments. For Portuguese, it's basically the same reason. Although to be honest, I think I could do a full Super Challenge, with the Spanish, French, and Italian transparency. I haven't decided if I'll do a Half or a Super yet. (I actually haven't registered for Portuguese yet, anyways.) For Turkish, I just want to watch Turkish dramas. And if I have a Half Challenge in films, then I have an excuse to take a break from the rest of my obligations without feeling guilty. Turkish IS on my long-term hit list, and the exposure will be useful, I'm sure. But I have no intention of chasing after progress in this language until I'm solid in the four Romance languages, plus German and Russian. For Croatian, it is simply a lack of resources. It's easy enough to find movies online - there are some with Croatian audio, but there are Croatian subs for lots of stuff available. I haven't been able to find many books, though. Besides which, the language just flies right over my head. I have never been so discouraged (with regards to language learning) than I am with this language. I know that if I put the proper time and effort into it, I could make it work - and I will. But my focus right now is on the Romance languages and German, and I can't commit to active (daily, or near daily) study of more than four. I have tried, and even in my superwoman moments, it is too much for me. For German, I am aiming for the Half Challenge by the end of 2013. German is harder (for me) than the Romance languages are, and I am learning at a much slower pace. I have it listed as a super challenge until (if) the bot gets changed to add writing to the half challenges. I will finish a full challenge in German, but it probably won't be by the official end of the challenge. But, now that I have spelled out all my excuses for Half Challenges, I am still planning to complete full Super Duper Challenges with Spanish, French, and Italian. (And I still feel like a wimp compared to those of you who are doing Advanced Challenges, especially those of you doing more than one of them!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 650 of 713 21 July 2012 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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These are not excuses <3 Thanks for answering!
Hehe same here with super duper German. it's on the to-do list though, so sooner or later it should be done. Aww, I can imagine, about Croatian:/ good luck with it!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cortical Tetraglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 30 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, SpanishB1 Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 651 of 713 22 July 2012 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Hi everyone,
my buddy signed up for the challenge, which I couldn't leave unanswered. If I did everything correctly I should be registered for Spanish, French and Russian. That will hopefully motivate me to read some French, I learned it pretty much only by speaking with / listening to natives, so my reading/writing skills are very poor (I can basically only write colloquially and with horrible spelling). And as for my Russian, it'll probably still take me a while to get it far enough off the ground, to be able to read and watch content in sufficient quantities, but I got 18 months I believe, so there's plenty of time. My twitter account is CorticalVortex, not Cortical like my forum name, I hope that doesn't matter. And as I don't feel like reading 82 pages, I'll ask here the following, at the risk of asking what has already been asked: Do news/wikipedia articles count for reading, and if so, how much? Thank you, and happy reading/watching everyone :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 652 of 713 22 July 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Welcome! It would be hlpful if you stated the exact type of challenge you have undertaken in (did I understand you correctly that you have chosen three languages:-) Wikipedia articles count too, you just estimate the approximate length, and then count page for page ( an article of approximately 1/2 a page = 1/2 a page, 2 pages equals 2 pages etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cortical Tetraglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 30 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, SpanishB1 Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 653 of 713 22 July 2012 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Signed up for the standard challenge (100/100) in all three (es/fr/ru) languages even though I'm pretty sure the reading part is gonna be a hell of a difficult challenge, as I'm a very slow reader ... The watching part however is probably gonna be a little easier (managed to watch some 150 hours of Spanish in march within about 2-3 weeks) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 654 of 713 24 July 2012 at 7:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The other night, I was watching this Spanish movie, Mar Adentro. (from IMDb) Life story of Spaniard Ramón Sampedro, who fought a 30-year campaign to win the right to end his life with dignity. Film explores Ramón's relationships with two women: Julia, a lawyer who supports his cause, and Rosa, a local woman who wants to convince him that life is worth living. Through the gift of his love, these two women are inspired to accomplish things they never previously thought possible. Despite his wish to die, Ramón taught everyone he encountered the meaning, value and preciousness of life. Though he could not move himself, he had an uncanny ability to move others. Very good movie. I highly recommend it. The movie is in Spanish, and I watched it with Spanish subtitles. I'm still not good enough to hear and process everything fast enough to keep up with full-speed conversations, but I had no problem following the movie with Spanish subtitles. When I watch something with English subtitles, I don't usually hear as much, so I wanted to try without, but I know my comprehension isn't good enough to follow unfamiliar territory by ear alone. There were two parts where I had to re-watch a scene with English subtitles because I didn't completely follow the Spanish. (They were both in legal jargon.) It's the first Spanish movie I've followed almost completely without relying on another language, and I didn't feel like I missed anything. My reading is still much better than my listening comprehension, but I think after another 80 movies, I will get it. It was quite an accomplishment for me, though. If I can follow a two-hour movie without getting lost, that means my Spanish isn't that bad. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| surrealix Diglot Groupie New Zealand languagechallenge.su Joined 4604 days ago 66 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish Studies: French | Message 655 of 713 24 July 2012 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Hi Everyone,
I figured it was time for a status update from the direction of the Twitter Bot. I've been reading the comments here, even if I've not replied. There have been a few blink-and-you-miss-it updates and bug fixes, but nothing major recently because I've been tied up with other things:
Yes, and this is eating up more of my time every day - probably continuing all the way into next year. So my apologies in advance for when something goes wrong and I'm not there quickly to fix it (it's going to happen sooner or later!). However recently I was actually on my mid-winter skiing holiday, where I read lots of books toward my language challenge and didn't think about dissertations or twitter bot code all month. Thanks for being patient!
This is highest on my priority list, but unfortunately I didn't plan things out very well at the start and it's been more of a headache than I expected getting this working. The problem with a long-running challenge like this is that you can't just reset everything and do it correctly from the beginning again :-/. At an estimate, it'll be maybe another month or so before I have this up and running. Hang in there!
Plus it's like trying to compare apples with oranges (with cucumbers, grapes and an elephant). Next time (oh help, next time?!) this is the sort of stuff we can talk through before kicking off.
Titles are easy for me to fix up. If you want your listings to look correct, just drop me a line with the details (the time/date from the tweet, and the title you forgot) and I can put them in for you.
I think the problem here is that you used 'mins' as an abbreviation ('minutes', 'minute' and 'min' all get counted). I'll fix that in a future update, but until then stick with the longhand or drop the s. In the meantime, I've changed that 90 minutes back to 20 for you.
I think Serpent answered this well, but I'll add a bit. There was a lot of debate about how we should "rank" people on the twitterbot page (or even if we should - if you finish a challenge you finish a challenge). I'm not sure where in this thread it is, but at some point I'll dig it up and put it up on the twitterbot pages, because this does come up occasionally. The percent you list is more of a personal metric - how much of your goal have you reached? The ranking on the other hand is based on how much work people have done - the people crazy enough to read 200 books in each of 7 languages really have put a lot of effort into the challenge, and in my opinion it's fair enough for them to be up the top. I'm not against tweaking the algorithm as things play out, and I imagine things will change close to the end again as well. However at the moment it seems to be working the way it was intended. A glance at the list shows people who have read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies are at the top, and entries with only a couple of books (or none at all) are at the bottom.
I've really begun to appreciate how content can keep you grounded after working through grammar exercises and getting your head tangled up in participles or particle verbs. It really helps cement things in context and "real" use. Thanks again for such a wonderful excuse to read books when I should really be studying, Solfrid! I'm about halfway through the backlog of questions, part 2 to come later :). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cortical Tetraglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 30 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, SpanishB1 Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 656 of 713 25 July 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
maybe you could implement a way to add negative achievements for the time being, that'll allow people to undo mistakes sort of "manually" and it should be way easier to implement. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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