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The Super challenge! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5116 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 561 of 713 08 June 2012 at 12:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think this is perhaps the time to again evoke the principle I have mentioned a couple of times before, but which I will now name "The Golden Rule" to make sure everyone notices it.
The Golden Rule goes as follows: If any ruling gives un unreasonable result then you apply your own best judgement. I am unfamilar with manga, but was told that 1/5 would be a reasonable converting scale, and the librettos and plays I have seen so far have occupied approximately 1/5th of a regular page. If the librettos or plays you have correspond to a written page, then count them as one. I am starting to regret leaving my simple little idea and trying to accomodate every variation of challenge and every possible written text. I have just come back from an extremely tough international meeting, I have slept less than 3 hours this night, I have just stumbled through the door, and it is past midnight. I certainly was not prepared to coming home to outrage. The point of the challenge is motivation, so just apply the rule that motivates you. You are doing this for you, not for me. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 08 June 2012 at 12:38am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4691 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 562 of 713 08 June 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't have thought you should discount a book of poetry or a libretto. Some books have more or less words on their pages, that's just the way books are. And some have larger pages, others smaller pages.
Comics and children's books are obviously discounted because they have pictures and/or large print. But other than that, I would have thought a book is a book is a book. Edited by Jeffers on 08 June 2012 at 12:45am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5116 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 563 of 713 08 June 2012 at 12:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Again: The Golden Rule :-)
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4691 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 564 of 713 08 June 2012 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||
But how do I count it if I want to use silver? ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5009 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 565 of 713 08 June 2012 at 12:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm sorry you misinterpreted my response as outrage. I assure you that it was shock, not outrage. I'm not at all angry at you! I am very grateful that you've come up with an idea that's getting more people to read and listen/watch more to foreign languages! Please, don't take my criticisms personally. You seem like a nice person from your posts on the board, so I certainly don't want to offend you.
However, if I'm going to be frank about it, I don't think I've ever seen a play or libretto that really only takes up 1/5 of a regular page--even more so when you are counting things like Harry Potter as full pages. I was just hoping for something that was at least close to fair. Surely, you couldn't really be serious about Shakespeare, et al., being equal to a children's book? I mean, my jaw dropped open when I read that--and I mean literally. That's all that I was responding too--surprise, not outrage. If you are asking people to dedicate 20 months (!) of their life to a challenge, can you blame us if we want it to be both fair and flexible? The Golden Rule sounds fine. From my little experiment, I have discovered that counting words on a page is not really that time consuming (which can then be times by total number of pages), so perhaps that's how I'll deal with these sorts of materials in the future. Depending on how it compares with regular book pages, I could then count it as 1, 1/2, 1/3, etc. of page. This really does seem a lot fairer and less arbitrary to me. I'm sincerely sorry that you had a tough meeting and little sleep. I hope you don't hold my complaints against me! I really didn't do it just give you a hard time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5177 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 566 of 713 08 June 2012 at 1:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Being a girly girl and all, I love gold. I actually like silver better, though. It works better with my skin tone. :D People, the whole idea here is to motivate yourself, to push yourself, to advance your language skills. Read whatever you want to. I don't count what I read online. I don't count my daily lessons for reading. I count copying my Assimil lessons for writing, but will only do that up to half of the writing part of the challenge, then I'll only count whatever I produce on my own. Use your judgement. If it's something you enjoy doing, then do it! The idea is to go beyond what you otherwise would. The important thing is that you are learning, pushing yourself, and getting more proficient at your target language(s). It's not a competition with others, it is a competition with yourself. (Well, maybe for Serpent, but not for the rest of us! LOL) I added Croatian as a full Super Challenge. There's no way I am going to read that many books by the end of next year. I want to do the writing, the conversation, and as much listening comprehension as I can. I'm not going to ask permission, because the point is to PUSH YOURSELF. I want to push myself with a new language that's hard for me. Very hard for me. I want to see how far I can go with it, and this is the motivation that I need. This challenge has really pushed me to evaluate what I want from each of my languages and what I need to do to get there with each of them. And more than that, it has forced me to make a plan on how to get there. Edited by Kerrie on 08 June 2012 at 1:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5009 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 567 of 713 08 June 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Kerrie, I admire your attitude, but I don't commit to anything that I don't think I'll actually be able to accomplish. That's just the way I am. I thought long and hard before signing up for this challenge, because I did not want to sign up unless I would to whatever I could to complete the challenge. Once the rules for what counted as a book changed, I even started to hope that if all was going well for me late in the year, I might change one (or possibly even more) of my half challenges to full challenges. Once again, though, I wouldn't want to do this unless I were planning on accomplishing it in the end.
So...if counting one "book" for a libretto/play/poetry collection literally takes me 2 to 5 times as long to do as counting one "book" for a novel or non-fiction text or articles, then of course it becomes a lot more difficult to finish the challenge successfully (unless, of course, I simply want to ignore reading some of the things I like for the next year and half!). You see, this was why I was concerned about it all. (Once again, I wasn't just trying to be contentious--I promise!) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4671 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 568 of 713 08 June 2012 at 1:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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This was originally a simple idea: 100 books, 100 movies, 20 months. Why make it
complicated and aggravating? It's a challenge,, not a race, or a contest with a winner. Can we read 100 books in that amount of time? That's going to be pretty hard for most of us if we're at a B-1 level. I'd like to see a lot of us finish. Some of us will read Harry Potter, and some Marcel Proust, and the pages will count the same - I don't think there's anything unfair in that. The challenge is for ourselves. edit: and my guess is that Harry Potter, Book 1 is right about a "B-1" level, and so makes a pretty good launching point. Edited by kanewai on 08 June 2012 at 12:07pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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