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Rdearman Super Challenge Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 89 of 158 27 November 2014 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Eh... Jobs come and go. But it does mean less opportunity to practice French, so I could just use the time and kill the Italian and get that to a very high level. I just feel like I'm spreading myself to thin at the moment. Mandarin was mostly a commute thing, so if I'm not commuting then it might fall by the wayside as well. 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 90 of 158 04 December 2014 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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--- Weekly Update ---
Yesterday was my last day of work, so I've got a fair bit of free time to divide up amongst what seems to be an ever increasing amount of things to do. With regards to the super challenge I'm hoping this period of time without a commute will allow me to get some reading done and I can catch up with all the movies/audio stuff I was doing on the commute. Last week the number of pages read in French can be counted on one hand, only managed a few minutes of a cartoon in French on youtube, and 1/2 a Spirals episode. Italian was better for films, I did a full 90 minutes, but zero pages of reading. --- SC Statistics --- French : 33.1 books : 84.4 films Italian : 29.3 books : 71.8 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.061 books per week --> 1.034 books per week Italian: 0.945 books per week --> 0.915 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 91.00 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 80.54 Musing I am inserting this little section for this week to muse about some of the stuff I've done so far in the challenge. Feel free to ignore. I've been a little hard on myself this week because I have only just managed to keep my "consistency" badge. But looking back of the short period of time I have been doing this challenge I know I've made progress. My reading comprehension in French isn't perfect, but compared to my starting point it is remarkable. Books I'm reading now in both French and Italian would have seemed like gobbledygook before, with only a limited amount of words I'd recognise. My comprehension of spoken languages have improved with the most noticeable improvement for me in French. I can get the gist of just about any French conversation, but things like subs2srs for the Hero Corp TV series is really helping me with listening to French speakers at speed. My testing previously shows my French reading is high B2 or Low C1 level and if I could find a decent Italian evaluation I think it would probably be about the same. Most of this of course I attribute to the massive input levels I've had from doing the super challenge. But here is the rub. While I can look backward and see all the progress I have made, I'm very frustrated at my lack of progress!! I want to look at a page of French or Italian writing and understand all the words. I don't want to get the gist of a conversation or infer the meaning during conversations, I want to understand everything and speak well. I can do this in English why can't I do it in French or Italian? The answer of course is I've had 292,000+ hours of exposure and use of the English language. It is very unlikely that I'll get 584,000 hours of French & Italian exposure in, since that is another 100 years. This dichotomy between my current level and my desired level means that I'm often despondent about my languages and I have to struggle with the little nagging voice which tells me to just give it up, it isn't worth it, nobody cares, why bother, etc, etc. I know that everyone who is learning a language also struggles with this and I think the successful ones are the people who are just pig-headed enough to keep going. After having written all that, my mind leaps back to a quote from Winston Churchill, which I love; If you're going through hell, keep going. I'll conclude by just telling you all that I've decided I'm going to complete the challenge in both French & Italian by hook or by crook, come hell or high water! :-) Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 91 of 158 04 December 2014 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
It really does get better with more exposure! :-) Personally, I saw really big gains in comprehension between 2,500 and 7,500 pages, at which point I was seeing an unknown word every page or two in my favorite genres, and reading became a lot more straightforward. (Some other people in the Super Challenge needed more, but everyone saw massive progress.) Really, when you think about it, that's between 10 and 30 typical adult paperbacks, which really does not seem like a very high price to pay for basic reading ability in another language. Especially compared to what we all paid in our native tongue. Edited by emk on 04 December 2014 at 3:28pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 92 of 158 04 December 2014 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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More exposure as well as more production should help you see some nice gains. I'd
recommend committing yourself to a writing challenge or a speaking challenge (either conversation or prepare a series of presentations) which ought to help you "close the loop" on a lot of the knowledge you're gaining through input. Also, there are quite a few decent upper-level materials that target more common advanced vocabulary (including idiomatic usage and slang) and grammar which can pay out dividends in comprehension. 3 persons have 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 93 of 158 11 December 2014 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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--- Weekly Update ---
I could almost copy and paste last weeks results here. Only a couple of pages read and a couple of movies watched. At this point I've got another 55 weeks to catch up. Doing the math shows I need to average 60-65 pages per week of reading if I want to succeed with the challenge. I'm not confident that I'm going to win, but I need to get myself in gear if I want to even come close! --- SC Statistics --- French : 33.2 books : 86.0 films Italian : 29.6 books : 71.9 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.061 books per week --> 1.034 books per week Italian: 0.945 books per week --> 0.915 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 88.53 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 78.93 --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4008 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 94 of 158 11 December 2014 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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You have made so much progress since May! Keep focused on the big picture! Plus with reading speed
improvements I'm betting we will see, I have no doubt the last half will seem easier than the first half! 2 persons have 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 95 of 158 18 December 2014 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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--- Weekly Update ---
Well I'm not hitting the targets I set for myself this week, but I did manage to progress reading & watching in both Italian & French. I've been keeping up the ANKI decks, which obviously don't count toward the SC, but they do help me to recognise words when I come across them. This means that when I do get a couple of moments to read or watch I'm understanding more. So I thought I'd give a little more information on my Anki decks. I've got a lot of decks. - 1984 sentences (which is basically all the sentences less than 12 characters in length in Mandarin from the book 1984 by George Orwell) - Basic Hanzi (7250 most common Hanzi / Chinese characters) - French non-noun list (This is 3500 most common non-noun words in French, e.g. adjectives, verbs, articles, etc.) - French Numbers 0-100 (Audio of numbers 0-100 because I have a hard time wrapping my head around (4-twenties plus 10) rather than just saying 90) - Hero Corp Episodes 1-3 (This is a subs2srs of three episodes of Hero Corp in French for lots of listening practice) - The Hobbit Italian (This is another subs2srs deck with the entire first movie of "The Hobbit" in Italian) - Italian top 20,000 (This is another most common deck, which shows the top most used 20,000 words in Italian) - Pimsleur Mandarin 1 (This is audio & transcript of the first Pimsleur set of lessons) This mass of anki cards takes me about 50-70 minutes a day to get through! For the super challenge I've mostly been watching or listening. Reading is normally a 1/2 hour at bedtime or lunch. Since everyone loves graphs I thought I would throw in some more, I wasn't tracking properly for the first 8 weeks of the super challenge if you are wondering why it starts at week eight. The first graph is the average books and films per week in French. You can see at one point I was averaging almost 4.5 films a week in French, this has now tailed off to 2.5 and that average is only held up by the previous mass injection of films. However reading has been fairly steady throughout the entire period. Low between 1-1.5 books per week but steady enough. 
Next we have Italian, which peaked for films around the 4 per week mark and has been dropping off sharply. Reading has actually be on the increase although the last few weeks have killed off that trend. I hope to start getting the numbers back up over the next few weeks. 
One thing I've actually learned from looking at the statistics over the last couple weeks is how much I actually accomplished when I was commuting to work each day. I'm on a mini-sabbatical at the moment and I thought with more free time my super challenge levels would rise not fall. It just goes to show how useful those "timesinks" like commuting can be if you make use of them. I need to get myself a new routine which will be as useful as my dull old commute seems to have been. This weeks statistics show that my losing trend in reading continues, and that I'm going to miss the boat by about 30 books per language if I don't get myself in gear. --- SC Statistics --- French : 33.5 books : 87.1 films Italian : 30.1 books : 72.2 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.061 books per week --> 0.985 books per week Italian: 0.945 books per week --> 0.885 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 86.70 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 77.90 --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 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 96 of 158 25 December 2014 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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--- Weekly Update ---
Merry Christmas everyone! Not a lot going on with me this week, but I have managed to get in a couple of books and films. Lots of people around for the holidays so I don't have much opportunity to read or watch films. Some steady progress but still not good enough to complete the challenge at this rate. I might just try to get some dedicated time to just read for a day or two. --- SC Statistics --- French : 34.3 books : 88.1 films Italian : 31.1 books : 72.7 films Reading Averages Change French: 0.985 books per week --> 0.980 books per week Italian: 0.945 books per week --> 0.888 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 86.24 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 78.19 --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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