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Super Challenge/Adv, Cha. Reg, Upd, 2013 | ||
Tags: Organization | Super Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5208 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes  Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 25 of 199 06 February 2013 at 6:48am | IP Logged |
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Hey !
I'll give a quick update from my challenge. I just updated my twitter account from the last months. I was sick, and just recover slowly... But I watched quite some films, usually I watch like... 2 films in a year ? Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian Films Snijeg - less prefered film of all. Nicija Zemlja (No Man's land) U ime sina (in the name of the son) 10 minuta Halimin put (the entire film seems to have disappeared from youtube) Karaula Sivi kamion crvene boje Almost all films are about Bosnian war (except Karaula), a subject that interest me. Most of my friend from the Balkan come from Bosnia. I have Serbs, Croats, Muslim friends, I make no distinctions. I just watch these films to try to understand a bit more what happened. Series I watched 13 episode of the Sulejman turkish serie, which is in Turkish but dubbed in Serbocroatian. Books I read a children book about learning croatian, and some pages of a book of a friend and Harry Potter. That makes 25 pages in total. Hungarian I watched episodes of Seherézádé. That's all I did. Italian I read some pages in the cooperazione magazine I receive every week. Unfortunately, it seems that there is some problem, as I don't receive it anymore... That's all, stay tuned ! Kisfröccs 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4227 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 26 of 199 12 February 2013 at 4:07am | IP Logged |
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I just registered on the twitter bot, even though the challenge is half way done.
Language: Italian Challenge : half (50/50) Level: A1, maybe low A2? Comments: The books will be hard, since i own none and my library has none. but i think i'll be able to find some on craigslist or at another city's library. And i just watched two movies this weekend, so it's a good start! 48 to go! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5038 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 199 16 February 2013 at 1:36pm | IP Logged |
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I've been on a roll watching the telenovela, Angela. Comprehension improving, of course, but still not 100%. Even
though I thought I would read 10 pages a day, as EMK suggested, life gets in the way. I'm still reading, but not regularly. On this 3 day weekend, perhaps I can finish it. I also have the motivation of reading the same book as my daughter. I'm ahead of her, but she needs to finish it for school, so is probably more motivated. Also, she can continue to read while I do dinner, laundry, etc. No fair! Peliculas: 25/50 50% 21. Capitulos 11 & 12 22. Capitulos 13 & 14 23. Capitulos 15 & 16 24. Capitulos 17 & 18 25. Capitulos 19 & 20 I really feel that I can finish the movie part of the challenge, maybe even do 100, as I simply MUST finish the show! Stopping at Capitulo 40 would be impossible at this point. As it's a Saturday morning, I'll read some now before the day gets busy. I'm quite excited to get to practice my Spanish, as I'm going to Costa Rica for Spring Break in a month. It's only a week long trip, but this will be my first experience "south of the border." A good reward for hard work! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5038 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 199 18 February 2013 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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What a difference a long week end with no illness makes! Finished La Ciudad de las Bestias this afternoon with a
cup of hot chocolate. There are still words on every page that I don't know, but it doesn't impede my understanding of the story. I still look up some words on Bing translate, as it's so much faster than my dictionary, but I don't write them down now. Overall, not a bad reading experience. Guess I'll tackle La Malinche again, see if my vocabulary has improved enough to make it easier. Although I'd be tempted to try another Allende book, maybe HIja de la Fortuna, if I could get it. Libros: 1545/5000 (30.9%) 6. La Ciudad de Las Bestias, por Isabel Allende (401 paginas) Woo hoo! 30% books and 50% movies! Moving right along ... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4688 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 29 of 199 19 February 2013 at 9:42pm | IP Logged |
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I'm on track to have finished 50% of the Challenge by the 50% mark!
Flics: X. Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981). It's supposed to be a noir set in a colonial African town, but it was all so silly and one-dimensionsl that I couldn't finish. 47. Les Femmes du 6ème étage (Philippe le Guay, 2010). It's the 1950's, and a bunch of fun-loving Spanish maids teach an uptight bourgeouise man how to really enjoy life. I suffered, but I finished it. *** 48. Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque) (Joann Sfarr, 2012). A slighlty surreal fable about the life, loves, and music of Serge Gainsbourg. It's the first movie by Joaann Sfar, the graphic novelist who wrote Le Chat du Rabbin, about a rabbi's cat in Morocco. Gainsbourg has the same kind of free wheeling energy that you get in a graphic novel. I loved it ... and they loved it in France (it won 3 César Awards) ... but the American critics hated it. Silly Americans.  coming attractions: There's also an animated version of Le Chat du Rabbin that I hope Netflix releases soon; it looks great. And there's an Intégrale volume of the graphic novel available on Amazon that I've just put on my wish-list. Bandes dessinées Astérix: La serpe d'or. René Goscinny, 1962. That was fun. Astérix and Obélix head to Lutèce (Paris!) to buy a golden sickle for the village druid - and encounter lots of big-city corruption and intrigue. I could have probably read this in an afternoon, but instead I spread it over several weekends. Astérix is great reading for a lazy Sunday afternoon on the couch.  Novels Still working on Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu. I love it ... but it's taking forever. I think I need to take a Harry Potter break after this. l'Ordre du Phénix is 1000 pages! Edited by kanewai on 19 February 2013 at 10:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5331 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 199 28 February 2013 at 3:45pm | IP Logged |
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Halfway Report
I decided to make a big push this February so I could have some nice round numbers for the half way mark: Books: 50% Films: 100% Graphs and lists 
Since the start of the month, I've read over 1137 pages and actively listened to almost 47 hours of TV and podcasts. Or to put it another way, I did over 21% of my Super Challenge this month. This basically required devoting every free moment to French. Frankly, I still feel slightly dazed. :-) Results At this point, I think my reading is getting close to C1. If I pick up a children's chapter book with illustrations, I can read it very comfortably and fluently with only a handful of unknown words. Adult books usually require a modest effort, and some of them, such as Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï, have a certain richness of language and metaphor that makes them very slow going without an ebook reader and a pop-up dictionary. At this point, if I want easy graded readers, I can just buy books aimed at native 8- or 10-year-olds. My listening comprehension still lags a bit. I'd say it's a comfortably solid B2. If I have a bunch of native material available, I can typically try one or two choices before hitting on something where 90%+ of the audio is clear. But I still need to give it my undivided attention. French films and TV series like Engrenages are still very much hit or miss—some are OK, and others are still very hard work. I have a lot of trouble with heavily-reduced speech and subtle plots where nothing is explained. Unfortunately, the French are really into films like that. Going forward, I really need to work on listening comprehension. For me, even after living in a French-speaking household, the entire Super Challenge worth of films and TV isn't enough to get solid C1 or C2 listening. But it's enough to make a huge range of native materials accessible. Recommendations My biggest discovery of the last few months has been French documentaries. They tend to have very clear speech and lots of supporting images (especially the science documentaries). They're actually easier than radio news or audio books. My favorite is the Quebec version of the BBC's Planète terre, which has fewer science errors than the French version. If you like science, and your listening skills are about B1, I strongly encourage you to look for interesting documentaries. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5194 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 199 02 March 2013 at 8:17pm | IP Logged |
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The Super Challenge Update
the halfway point Spanish 62% 100/100 films 019/100 books I've finished all the movies (lots of TV shows, actually). I'm been pleasantly surprised at how much it's helped my listening comprehension. I've always been a book person and hadn't ever focused on that before. Officially, I have read 19/100 books. It's really more like 23-24, since I am in the middle of two books, and I only count them when I am finished. I started writing down vocab a few months ago, and adding it to Anki and making that a priority. It's amazing how much I have learned. (Who knew how much vocabulary was in Harry Potter books!?) I've been looking for something like Pixel of Ink (which sends me an email every day with free ebooks on Amazon) for Spanish, but I haven't found anything. I have a tendency to pick long, complicated books, and it would be nice if I could find some surprise quick, easy reads. There has to be something out there. If anyone knows of anything like that, please share. :) French 48% 85/100 films 03/100 books I'm almost finished with the films, and not even close on the books. I've signed up for Le Tour du Monde en Quatre Vingts Jours from Daily Lit in both French and English. I also got my Paperwhite Kindle a week or two ago, along with a handy French dictionary, so I will be starting something French on that soon. I just can't decide what to read. Italian 42% 33/50 films 01/50 books Croatian 12% 12/100 films Portuguese 1/100 films So I am in good shape with Spanish. I need to start reading in French. Those are the two important ones. With that little pesky thing called life getting in my way right now, I'm not sure about the others. In another month or two, if things settle down, we'll see. Spanish and French are the most important, though, and I'm still aiming to finish both of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6396 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 32 of 199 02 March 2013 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
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sooo a new update... just some numbers. i've done:
100% of the Italian and Polish audio 70% Polish total 58% Italian total (I want to reach 60% asap!) 50% or a bit more of Danish, Romanian, Portuguese audio 32% Portuguese total 29% German total (can't wait for 30%) 16% Belarusian total (mostly movies) 7% Croatian total With Italian I'm de facto doing what Cristina said: "if you watch 100 movies this year [2012], I'm sure you can do 100 books next year." done with the movies and focusing on the books now. I'm finally less terrified of the reading part. Mostly because I see improvement and realize that progress is not linear. I expect to complete in advance all the challenges where I'm currently on track. also, here's a gorgeous Belarusian chart :) 
gotta love the smoothness! :) now it's a bit less smooth :P but this means more items, so yay! I was going to reach 15 movies, 7 books but only got close enough on the movies part (14). really need to find something enjoyable in it:) Edited by Serpent on 02 March 2013 at 11:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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