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Super Challenge/Adv, Cha. Reg, Upd, 2013

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Tamise
Triglot
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United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, German, Dutch
Studies: French, Japanese, Spanish

 
 Message 129 of 199
17 August 2013 at 10:37pm | IP Logged 
20 months is good for the numbers we're doing at the moment, though I really like finishing at the end of the year, so would either go for a May start again or for a 24 month challenge with 100ish as standard or 12 with 50ish as standard.

Re: graphic novels - I'm reading a lot of manga for my Japanese challenge and am just dividing all the page numbers by 5 as per the Tadoku challenge. For anyone wanting other kinds of media, going with the Tadoku figures seems like a good idea and it's straightforward to do. Obviously it does vary across different kinds of graphic novels, and French BDs seem more text heavy than the average manga, but it's a good enough approximation.
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kanewai
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 Message 130 of 199
17 August 2013 at 11:32pm | IP Logged 
I'm not sure how 'make your own challenge' is different from just regular studying. If
there's no common goal then all we're talking about is making a lot of individual to-do
lists.

I do think it would be nice to have a clearer definition of 'book.' 100 100-page units
or 25 250-page units are the same (if I did my math right), but defining a 'page' itself
is tricky - variations in the font size, line spacing, and paper size mean the same novel
might have 2, 3, or 400 pages depending on the format!

Edited by kanewai on 18 August 2013 at 10:25am

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Cavesa
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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 Message 131 of 199
18 August 2013 at 12:01am | IP Logged 
There is a defined page, at least there is a definition most educational institutions here tend to follow (and I guess they don't keep separate standard from the rest of Europe). A standard page is about 1800 letters (including gaps) as it is based on times new roman script, 1,5 lines, height 12.

So we theoretically could count words or make at least estimates (count a typical page, multiply by number of pages) but wouldn't we spend far too much time counting instead of reading? The Tadoku seems to be a good base, however, should we agree on any kind of narrowing what a page is.

I actually think it isn't necessary to take into account various density of text in various books and even in various editions of the same book. Unless part of your reading is in comic books, the "trouble" solves itself. I have a feeling that for every book with more legere print (less text on page), there is another with dense one.

Kanewai, I agree that there is a line after which it is no longer common goal and shared challenge. But this is the first round and at the end of the year, we will have an awesome opportunity to organise ourselves better:
1.if there will be a bot, than introduce it right away so that some slow morons don't miss it
2.look at which challenges were popular to take and which of them were likely to get completed.
(I personally think there should be no distinction between Advanced and basic level, because 100 hundreds pages and 100 books will be great at any level. And 200 is really a lot. And that we should keep only reading and listening as parts of the challenge, for the sake of keeping some common ground.)
3.We might gather the popular resources to the wikia to help others choose and gain their books/movies and get helped by them. Actually, if I was to give advise to someone wishing to join for the first time, it would be simple: always have an extra book or movie with you. It is already difficult enough to find the time, losing it because of bad preparation is stupid.

Tamise, I agree 24 months wouldn't hurt. I think we began in May becuase the author (I think Cristina?) came with the idea in April. But having two years might be good, the more that others are free to join in later and you can always take on more if you end up too early ;-)
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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
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1546 posts - 3200 votes 
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 Message 132 of 199
18 August 2013 at 8:57am | IP Logged 
kanewai wrote:
I'm not sure how 'make your own challenge' is different from just regular studying. If there's no common goal
then all were talking about is making a lot of individual to-do lists.


I agree. Once we start dividing the challenge into lots of different languages, with speaking, writing, reading and listening as parts of the challenge, you might as well rename the challenge my "future study plan".

I like the idea of the simple original challenge: Pick a language you want to get good at by reading tons of books and watching lots of movies.

When everyone is doing radically different challenges I might as well just do my own personal challenge. I personally found it helpful knowing others were struggling with the same sort of challenge as me. Once that's gone the group aspect is also gone for me.

kanewai wrote:

I do think it would be nice to have a clearer definition of 'book.' 100 100-page units or 25 250-page units are
the same (if I did my math right), but defining a 'page' itself is tricky - variations in the font size, line spacing,
and paper size mean the same novel might have 2, 3, or 400 pages depending on the format!


English books standardly have 250 words per page. I don't know how you generalize that across languages, but if we took 250 words as a basic unit you could presumably get some approximate sense of equivalency across media/languages.

In terms of length of challenges I would prefer 12 months challenges. You can tie it in with a New Year's resolution, and it's sufficiently long that you can set yourself a difficult challenge, but one that will finish in a realistic time frame. I would have trouble setting myself realistic goals over a two year time period.

Edited by patrickwilken on 18 August 2013 at 8:59am

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geoffw
Triglot
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United States
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 Message 133 of 199
18 August 2013 at 10:42am | IP Logged 
kanewai wrote:

I got the impression that a lot of people were caught unawares at how much time 100 books
would take.    


Probably true, though I did try to do a reality check on this early on, which may possibly have helped sway public
opinion toward doing the 100 "book" challenge rather than the "100 book" challenge (see post 37 of the original
Super Challenge thread, where I estimated that 200 page books on average would mean 50-60 hours of reading
per month for 20 months). How many latecomers to the challenge actually read all of the early discussion posts is
an open question, of course.
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Cavesa
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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 Message 134 of 199
18 August 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged 
Well, we surely could agree on narrowing the next round of challenges. "my future study plan" doesn't need to be a challenge (you know what I mean, of course it is challenging etc.) and not everything needs or should be part of the challenge.

What about having these options only next time?
100 "books" (either 100 pages or 250 pages pieces, just something we agree on)+100 movies
50+50
and perhaps the only reading and only movies variants?

Saying a page is 250 words, that would surely make a good standard. The question is: Would it be worth it? Really, if I was to spend too much time counting how long approximately is the book, I wouldn't join the challenge.

I am more interested in longer challenges, either 18 (20) or 24 months. I already fail enough New Years resolutions and we have already got TAC.

One more thing: having 100 pages as a "book" leads to nice numbers like 10000 pages. So, we could stop pondering whether 100, 250 or something else pages is a book and just say number of pages.
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geoffw
Triglot
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United States
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 Message 135 of 199
18 August 2013 at 4:38pm | IP Logged 
Just for the record, I'd be quite happy if a new round of Super Challenge (and the Super Best Friends) started in
May, like last time, instead of January. Personally, I'm still psyched to sign up for another SC, but after what's going
to be 20 months, I'd like to have a period of time where I'm not worrying that intensive study is taking away from
time that could be spent on plowing through more books and movies.

I'm sure there also are a few folks out there who just can't wait until the end of the present challenge to get started
on a new round, but thought I'd throw that out there.
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Tamise
Triglot
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United Kingdom
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115 posts - 161 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Dutch
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 Message 136 of 199
18 August 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged 
Re: counting words on pages - I don't see the benefit to this. At some point it was said that folks should just use their judgement and if the book you're reading has very spaced out text, scale the number of pages by whatever seems reasonable. Equally if you're reading something with very dense text. Personally I'd prefer a larger number of smaller page chunks (so 100 * 100 pages rather than 50 * 200), or as Cavesa says a straight page numbers thing. [With page numbers scaled where necessary.]

If we're going for 20 or 24 months, then I think the current numbers are fine - even if we went for 24 months, taking the standard book numbers down to 100 doesn't really make it significantly easier.

The only change I would really want to what we have now is that you should be able to do 50 books/50 films for languages at B2 or above - that would allow some amount of challenge for maintenance languages. If it's felt that keeping a higher amount for better languages is good, then I'd ask that it be for C1+ languages.


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