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Super challenge total info reference

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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 49 of 76
26 December 2013 at 11:27am | IP Logged 
I have just read everyone's opinion so far, and I have not drawn many conclusions yet. The 2014-15 Super
Challenge will however start in May, it will again last for 20 months, and you can of course only count what
you read inside the frame of those 20 months for this particular challenge.

I think it is better for the forum as a whole that it does not start from January, it is better that it starts a few
months later when we need a surge of motivation.

I do not think it is possible to cater for every possible variant in one single challenge. I had a very simple idea,
which got increasingly complicated as I last time tried to adapt to every wish. Once I decide on final rules for
the second round, I would encourage people to work with the different challenges and plan around them, if
you feel that participating in challenges motivate you.

If you want to see remarkable improvements to your French and want to focus on that, and only want to do
30 hours of Spanish and read 1000 pages of German, then set French up for a Super Challenge, take
German for the Tadoku, and do the Spanish as one of your secondary languages at the 6wc. The Super
Challenge was not designed to include every single language you study. It was designed to give an
enormous boost to one language. We have other challenges where you can do all the other languages. The
Tadoku challenge did marvels for my German, the year that I gave it my full attention, and the 6wc is also an
opportunity to use every little shred of a language that you use. And when the Tadoku challenge, the 6wc and
the Super Challenge run at the same time, you can with the very best conscience count the same book three
times:-)

There is also the possibility of making new challenges, like the Assimil Challenge which run last year. The
Super Challenge is one option. It does not rule out other options.

The thought of stars for so and so many read pages is very interesting. I will think that one over and discuss it
with Surrealix.

I am not sure I have got the full picture on whether people would like the current amount of books/films, or
whether they would like to see the numbers halved, like I suggested. Even if we have a star system, so that
we would have more "part winners", I would still like to keep the idea of having a common goal which would
be a complete Super Challenge. My suggestion was to cut the current numbers down to a half. Another
possibility would be to have the same numbers for all levels, but that everyone would have to self assess
their level - supposing that it is possible to add an extra column. If an A2 and a C1 were to compete, that
would be very frustrating for the A2. It would be better to be able to compare himself with other A2s.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6548 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 50 of 76
26 December 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged 
But 6WC and Tadoku are short-term. I agree with patrickwilken that the super challenge is a bit too long.

The main issue with halving the numbers is that 25 "films" is way too few even for a "half" challenge. There were much more audio challenges completed so I think the numbers worked fine for the films, just not the books. And do you still plan to limit it to B1?

As for the Big Goal, I think it's much better to set it as custom.

Edited by Serpent on 26 December 2013 at 12:53pm

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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 51 of 76
26 December 2013 at 11:57am | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
Serpent wrote:

Kerrie, kanewai, I just don't understand how it affects you?


But I could say the same thing about starting in January not May or whenever... If we are counting stars and you want to start in May and I and others in January, why can't we start when we want, and you when you want?

Yes, it's true you'll probably end up with less stars, but that's your choice isn't it?
Because I could do what I want without breaking the rules and you don't. Well, unless signing up with no intention of reading 2500 pages in Karelian counts as breaking them.

(Hm, how about a mini-SC only for smaller languages? looks like there's no way I can avoid signing up with Spanish, but what about the smaller ones?)

I don't care about having less stars. I care about being discouraged from doing my smaller languages that don't have the same wealth of materials as Spanish, German, French etc. I care about this challenge being all-or-nothing, when in reality there will be plenty of people who aim higher than me and do less.

And actually although I didn't sign up with Spanish, I definitely completed the 100 audio part, so forcing me to sign up will only mean I'll have more stars :P

Edited by Serpent on 26 December 2013 at 12:07pm

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Tamise
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
jllrr.wordpress.com/
Joined 5194 days ago

115 posts - 161 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Dutch
Studies: French, Japanese, Spanish

 
 Message 52 of 76
26 December 2013 at 12:14pm | IP Logged 
Personally, the only thing I would change in the current challenge is the B1 or less rule for the normal Super Challenge. I might just have been allowed to do the normal super challenge in Dutch when I started, but sort of felt forced to do the advanced one - removing the restriction removes that call and takes into account the time a person might have available as being something separate from their ability in a language.

From my experience, 100 is doable (of course I say that not actually having done it, except in Dutch...) and is a good goal. I can see now how I would set up to do this and be stricter with daily amounts from the beginning and would have achieved that. I do also think 200 is doable for more advanced languages - again, I haven't done that, but expect to hit 160 books by the end of the year having started two months in to the challenge, so would still like to have 200 as a possible goal.

For less transparent languages, I expect to hit around 65 in Japanese. If I had a goal of 50, I would probably have made it, but having the bigger goal meant that I have (almost) got over my fear of blocks of Japanese text. For 50 I might have just read manga rather than reading a few books too. [Having read both BDs and manga, I agree with emk that French BDs should probably count more than manga.]

If I were to start over, I would choose the same goals in Japanese (100) and Dutch (200), but would rethink for French and Spanish - probably upping the French goal, and having my own mini challenge for Spanish over a shorter period of time to keep the intensity up. The advances in my Japanese and Dutch have been huge. The advances in French and Spanish have been less, with French suffering the most from the lower intensity. I think my German could have really benefited from something like 50, but am not so sure the super challenge is the place for that.

I think it might be better to keep the super challenge with the original aim of massive improvement in a small subset of languages, and come up with something else for other languages. Surrealix mentioned the possibility of setting up a general foreign language media tracker that might work for that as we're all bound to have different goals, be it language maintenance, wanderlust or doing something in a language with fewer materials available.
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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5483 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 53 of 76
26 December 2013 at 2:17pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Even if we have a star system, so that
we would have more "part winners", I would still like to keep the idea of having a common goal which would
be a complete Super Challenge.

I totally agree we should have a common goal. If you want to say, "A Super Challenge is 4 stars", then a Challenge is 4☆, and anything else is a "part winner," as you say.

Solfrid Cristin wrote:
My suggestion was to cut the current numbers down to a half.

It depends on how Super you want the Super Challenge to be. :-) The current 10,000 page Challenge is definitely possible for an English speaker who starts at B1 and who's focusing on a single Romance or Germanic language. At last count, we have at least 4 finishers. But on the other hand, it would be nice to have something a bit easier, or some way of including more people.

The nice thing about a star system is that it would actually make the challenge simpler, because you could get rid of all the "Half", "Super", "Advanced" stuff. And you could have one, simple rule for everyone. (On a related note, see my PM with proposals for ribbons.) And if somebody wants to try for 10,000 pages next time, then you won't need to create a "Double Challenge". You know somebody will ask for one. ;-)

Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Another possibility would be to have the same numbers for all levels, but that everyone would have to self assess
their level - supposing that it is possible to add an extra column. If an A2 and a C1 were to compete, that
would be very frustrating for the A2. It would be better to be able to compare himself with other A2s.

This seems fair. I was a strong B1 when I started, which gained me a couple of months over somebody who started at A2.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6548 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 54 of 76
26 December 2013 at 2:27pm | IP Logged 
4 stars regardless of how they are combined? that would be great imo.
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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4484 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 55 of 76
26 December 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:

It depends on how Super you want the Super Challenge to be. :-) The current 10,000 page Challenge is definitely possible for an English speaker who starts at B1 and who's focusing on a single Romance or Germanic language. At last count, we have at least 4 finishers. But on the other hand, it would be nice to have something a bit easier, or some way of including more people.


I found that fact that the Challenge was "super" when I started really quite motivating. My level was only A1 when I started in June, and wasn't really able to start reading until December, but was able to finish the challenge in the last few days. German is obviously much easier than starting at the same level in Russian or Japanese, which I think would be too difficult.

To me the only thing that really mattered was finishing the challenge I had set myself, so stars etc would not have been important for me, though I can see how they might be motivating for others. If there were 1-star/2500 pages, I might have aimed lower (say 2-stars or 3-stars), but knowing that nothing would count if I didn't finish the whole challenge I found myself exceeding my expectations.

Is there really only four people that have finished? I thought there were at least 15 or so others... I am not sure I am in the official list. I gave my details to the appropriate forum list in June 2012, but I don't think my name ever got officially added.


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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 56 of 76
26 December 2013 at 3:21pm | IP Logged 
I'm perhaps 30 Polish pages away from finishing, and some audio away in Romanian and Danish but I'm gonna do lots of LR until the end of the year so there's hope. All this LR will be with an Italian base.

edit: or do you mean super as opposed to half?

Edited by Serpent on 26 December 2013 at 3:23pm



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