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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5285 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 1 of 76 14 May 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
NAME OF CHALLENGE: THE SUPER CHALLENGE
The idea of a challenge first came from the 6 Week Challenge and the Tadokou challenge, which both proved to be intensely motivating for me. Inspired by my personal sense of accomplishment after having read my first book in Russian, even though I could not really read Russian, the Super Challenge started out as a simple idea with 100 books and 100 films in 20 months in a language where you are at B1 maximum.
PURPOSE OF PROJECT – WHY DO IT
The purpose of the challenge is to get you to read a large amount of books and see a large amount of films, in order to give you such a massive exposure in your target language that you will see some real improvement. Later the optional elements of conversation and writing essays were also added. Not everyone is motivated by a challenge, but for those who are, this can be a big help in your studies. Push yourself out of the comfort zone and see some real progress!
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO COMPLETE THE CHALLENGE
First you need to decide what sort of challenge you want to do: As I said, it started out as an extremely easy concept, but ended up being quite complex, so you now have the following versions to choose from:
THE SUPER CHALLENGE
- A Half Super Challenge (50 books, 50 films or 100 books or 100 films)
- A Half Super Duper Challenge (50 books, 50 films or 100 books or 100 films + 100 30 minute conversations or 100 essays)
- A Half Super Duper Mega Challenge (50 books, 50 films or 100 books or 100 films + 100 30 minute conversations and 100 essays)
- A Super Challenge (100 books and 100 films) (The original…)
- A Super Duper Challenge (100 books or 100 films + 100 30 minute conversations or 100 essays)
- A Super Duper Mega Challenge (100 books or 100 films + 100 30 minute conversations and 100 essays)
THE ADVANCED SUPER CHALLENGE
Then since there were some who would like to do the whole thing for languages in which they were more advanced I also created a version which can be used for any level, but which is mostly intended for B2-to C2 due to the workload
- The Advanced Super Challenge (200 books and 200 films)
- The Advanced Super Duper Challenge (200 books or 200 films + 200 30 minute conversations or 200 essays)
- A Super Duper Mega Challenge (200 books or 200 films + 200 30 minute conversations and 200 essays).
Some say it is insane, and can’t be done. I say that even if you don’t reach your goal, you will still have achieved more than if you did not do it.
DURATION
It started on May 1st 2012, and will end on New Year’s Eve 2013. Can you join later? Yes, you can. You are welcome to join at any time, but if you start significantly later than the others you may want to consider doing a half challenge.
HOW DO YOU COUNT THE DIFFERENT SORTS OF MATERIAL?
First some advice: This is a “hard core” challenge, and can be tough for a beginner. You may also think it is difficult to find enough material. Look at this before you read the actual rules:
If you are a beginner, you can start with the films. And it counts even if you see it with subtitles in your own language, or even if you see the film in your own language but with TL subtitles.
If you start out with the 100 films this year, I am sure you will be able to do the 100 books next year.
If you just have 5 books and 5 films then your read them 20 times. Though my guess is that by the time you have read/seen them 5 times, you WILL get other films or books.
So the rules would be the following:
- Every film counts as long as they have at least voice or subtitles in the TL
- If it lasts less than 45 minutes (a show/series) it counts as half a film. If it lasts for more than three hours it counts as two films.
- If you want to use podcasts or audiobooks, 1 hour and a half is the equivalence of 1 film.
- Every book counts as long as it is 100 pages long. If it is less than 50 pages, it counts as half a book. If it is more than 200 it counts as two books, more than 300, 3 books etc.
- You can do fiction or any other material – a documentary on whales, or a book about gardening works just as well as a novel.
- You can see the same films/read the same books again and again.
- If you have a book of less than 100 pages, lest’s say 80, you can read 20-30 of the pages again to make it count as a book
- With parallel books you count the pages in your TL – minimum 100 pages to make it count as a book.
- A manga from 100 to 500 pages counts as 1/5 of a book, 500 upwards counts as 2/5 of a book
- A children's book with large letter, pictures and few pages counts as 1/5th of a book. If it seems too big to count for only 1/5th, use your best judgement.
- You can be at a B1 maximum when the challenge starts (except for the Advance Super Challenge which is open to all levels)
- The material covered for this challenge can be counted and done in parallel with both the 6WC and the Tadoku challenge (so if you participate in all three you could at one point count the same book three times :-)
- If you want to join later than May1st 2012 or end before December 31st 2013, you are welcome.
- If you do L-R it is up to you whether you want to count it as reading (in which case 100 pages would count as one book) or if you want to count it as film, in which case 1 hour and a half would count as one film.
- If you enter book pages, the bot counts pages in another way than the rule I have set up here, - don't worry. Just use the system which motivates you the most.
FINAL WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT
The most important thing about this particular challenge is that you do this for yourself, and any material you cover which you would not have covered had you not participated in this challenge – means success.
I do not know how many of us who will succeed – life will probably get in the way for some of us, and there will be days, weeks, even months where we don’t get much done.
I do however have this mental image which probably sounds idiotic, of those of who still are hanging in there running (or stumbling) over the finishing line together, after having made a monumental effort, and having taken their target language to a whole new level.
Let not the best man win: Let as many of us as possible win!
LINKS
1.
SUPER CHALLENGE DISCUSSION THREAD 1
2.
SUPER CHALLENGE TWITTERBOT
3.
REGISTER/UPDATE SUPER/ADVANCED CHALLENGE 2013
4.
SUPER CHALLENGE REGISTRATION/UPDATE 2012
REGISTRATION/UPDATE ADVANCED CHALLENGE 2012
5.
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
6.
SUPER CHALLENGE PERIODICAL SUMMARY
7.
SUPER CHALLENGE RECOMMENDATIONS
8.
100 ESSAYS - TOPICS
9. Link to a Hall of Fame thread (to be created)
Contact person content: Solfrid Cristin
Contact person Twitter bot: Surrealix
Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 01 January 2013 at 4:10pm
7 persons have voted this message useful
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5285 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 2 of 76 01 January 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged |
This seems to have become unstuck. Could a moderator make it sticky again?
1 person has voted this message useful
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5346 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 76 27 January 2013 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
Isn't the end of February the half-way point? How is everyone doing on where they want to be with their challenges?
1 person has voted this message useful
| surrealix Diglot Groupie New Zealand languagechallenge.su Joined 4555 days ago 66 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish Studies: French
| Message 4 of 76 22 December 2013 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
It's 10 days until the Super Language Challenge is officially over! I thought I'd start a discussion about the future of
the challenge bot, and share some cool statistics.
Although these forum threads have been awfully quiet, the twitter challenge bot has been run off it's feet all year.
There's been an impressive 12,496 tweets (and counting) from 136 participants. That's 2 updates an hour, and counting
only active users 138 per person.
Together, we read 298,617 pages; watched 668,960 minutes of tv & movies; talked for 28,800 minutes; and wrote 155,001
words. By my count, that's 29,861 books; 7,432 movies (or 14,865 tv episodes); and 20 days of non-stop talking. If we
had a publisher, we could release 3 very confusing novels.
16 people took the effort to sign up, and then never registered a single piece of study. At the other end, Anna
(@Anyapop) signed up and sent an impressive 1,186 tweets (nearly 3 per day) covering her 7 languages. Although they were
only studying one language, 五月 (@satsuki_055) also updated regularly and came in second with 819 tweets.
Congratulations to BAnna (@Pandora Sieben), Patate (@Patattte), and emk (@emk_langs) for being the only people to finish
their challenges! Congratulations also to everyone in the top 10, the number of polyglots in this bunch is astounding -
on average you studied 4.4 languages, updating them with 625 tweets, and reached 64% of your goals. That's the
equivalent of finishing 2 Super Challenges each!
Congratulations also to everyone who participated - this wasn't an easy challenge and the number of gold, silver and
bronze stars scattered throughout the score list shows how dedicated we all were.
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Although the challenge officially finishes on the 31st of December, I'm going to be on holiday and out of internet range
until the 3rd of January. This gives everyone a bit of leeway to send in their final tweets before I assemble a final
Super Challenge Results list. I don't know what, if anything, Christina has planned for the Super Challenge next year,
but at this point several things could happen with the bot and I'd love to hear your thoughts:
- The results will be archived and the bot taken offline. It seems a bit of a shame to do this.
- We can decide on a new timeframe, and the Super Challenge 2 could kick off.
- I can turn the twitter bot into a more general language diary. Instead of having a % complete, you'd have running
totals and per-month or per-year statistics. The scores table could keep track of active participants : the more
recently and regularly you've studied, the better.
Setting up a new challenge is fast and easy for me. Turning the bot into a general study tracker is something I'd like
to do, but it would probably take a month or two to get it off the ground.
Those of you who were the most active, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
---------
So thanks again to Christina for the fun idea! Thanks to everyone who sent me feedback for the bot, and everyone who let
me know when it broke! Merry Christmas!
8 persons have voted this message useful
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian
| Message 5 of 76 22 December 2013 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
surrealix wrote:
Congratulations to BAnna (@Pandora Sieben), Patate (@Patattte), and emk (@emk_langs) for being the only people
to finish
their challenges! |
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Congratulations all around, and many, many thanks to surrealix for running the bot! For those of you keeping
score, thus far both Michael Cain and I have finished A challenge (his was a full SC, mine just a half SC), but we
both signed up for more than one and didn't finish them all.
It also looks like Serpent should easily finish her Polish half SC, Kerrie has a shot at her full Spanish SC, and a
handful of other folks may have a shot a finishing at least one of their challenges. Finish strong, everyone!
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5346 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 6 of 76 22 December 2013 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
surrealix wrote:
Congratulations to BAnna (@Pandora Sieben), Patate (@Patattte), and emk (@emk_langs) for being the only people to finish their challenges! Congratulations also to everyone in the top 10, the number of polyglots in this bunch is astounding - on average you studied 4.4 languages, updating them with 625 tweets, and reached 64% of your goals. That's the equivalent of finishing 2 Super Challenges each!
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Hey, the challenge isn't over yet! Don't count the rest of us out yet! :)
surrealix wrote:
I don't know what, if anything, Christina has planned for the Super Challenge next year,
but at this point several things could happen with the bot and I'd love to hear your thoughts. |
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How difficult would it be to program it so we could "choose our own challenge" in a way? Pick a number of films/books/conversations/writing we want to do, I mean. For example, I would set up a challenge to do 150 films and 75 books for French. Someone suggested (somewhere, on another thread) that you could get a star for each 25 you reach. Would that be hard to program?
I like the idea of a general study tracker, but it seems like that would be a separate thing, if we decide to do a second super challenge.
I would like to see a second super challenge, maybe for 2014-15. For those who want a break, they could take a break for a few months, then still have 20 months to complete it. It is much more of a challenge than I originally realized, especially the reading part.
I'm curious what others would like to see, too. :)
1 person has voted this message useful
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6548 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 7 of 76 22 December 2013 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
I'm also finishing my audio challenges in Danish and Romanian, and given that I'm mostly doing Italian-based LR I still have some hope for finishing Italian too (will drop conversation).
1 person has voted this message useful
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian
| Message 8 of 76 22 December 2013 at 1:43am | IP Logged |
More fun facts (*as of today*, may change):
As anticipated, the reading challenge was the harder of the two for almost everyone. Numerous challenges were
partially completed, but no challenge that saw the reading portion finished remained unfinished.
Of the six completed reading portions, there were a total of 4 languages represented: French (3), English (1),
German (1) and Dutch (1). It seems, the Benelux wins the Super Challenge. =) EDIT: It looks like this isn't exactly
right. The completed English reading challenge has what looks to remain an unfinished listening portion.
There were 29 completed watching/audio challenges, in a total of 13 languages:
French (7), Italian (4), Korean (3), Spanish (3), German (2), English (2), Japanese (2), Polish (1), Portuguese (1),
Croatian (1), Arabic (1), Dutch (1), and Chinese (1).
The far and away most popular/successful language of this challenge was French, with three reading challenges
completed, representing a total of 250 "books," and seven watching/listening challenges completed, representing a
total of 650 "movies."
Edited by geoffw on 22 December 2013 at 1:46am
5 persons have voted this message useful
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