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Super Challenge discussion thread 2014

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
432 messages over 54 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 33 ... 53 54 Next >>
Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 257 of 432
12 April 2014 at 2:05pm | IP Logged 
Youtube
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Cavesa
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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 Message 258 of 432
12 April 2014 at 2:58pm | IP Logged 
:-D Those discussions on counting pages and nearly counting words make me laugh. Really, do we need to be 99% precise?

1. I think we should put time into reading, not counting.
2. We are competing against ourselves above all. Count the way you won't feel like cheating, that's the only thing that matters. This is not the Olympics, noone will come and take away your medal because of something "funny" had been found in your blood sample.
3. Too much discussion like "my 100 books are way more valuable than your 100 books" is spoiling the fun, in my opinion.

4. An example of how to count (precisely how I count to not feel like cheating): Book starts with page 12, than the page count for whole book is the last page -12. There are half pages or quarter pages left blank at the end of a chapter? I don't care unless it's a page with two lines or something like that. The book has dense text? Well another one has wider gaps between lines, it will somehow balance it out, no need to worry. What if my counting is not precise? Who cares, another book is waiting on the shelf, feeling lonely. It may sound like I'm a bit oo leisure when it comes to books but on the other hand, I may be a bit too strict with the movies but who cares. As long as I keep going and pushing myself, everything is working fine.
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Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
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 Message 259 of 432
12 April 2014 at 3:02pm | IP Logged 
rdearman wrote:
If anyone knows how to get TV shows or Movies at low cost, or free I'd really like to know!


Youtube is good, but most of the time you can't find stuff with subtitles, if you need them.

For TV shows, DramaFever and Viki are two of my favorites, although you have to watch ads (unless you want to pay for premium).

If you're studying Spanish, there is rtve.es, which has tons of shows - but again, no subtitles there. I'm sure there are more out there that are more language-specific that I don't know about. :)

There are also TEDx Talks in other languages, which may or may not be of interest to you. You can search by language or country.




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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 260 of 432
12 April 2014 at 4:12pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
:-D Those discussions on counting pages and nearly counting words make me laugh. Really, do we need to be 99% precise?

1. I think we should put time into reading, not counting.
2. We are competing against ourselves above all. Count the way you won't feel like cheating, that's the only thing that matters. This is not the Olympics, noone will come and take away your medal because of something "funny" had been found in your blood sample.
3. Too much discussion like "my 100 books are way more valuable than your 100 books" is spoiling the fun, in my opinion.

4. An example of how to count (precisely how I count to not feel like cheating): Book starts with page 12, than the page count for whole book is the last page -12. There are half pages or quarter pages left blank at the end of a chapter? I don't care unless it's a page with two lines or something like that. The book has dense text? Well another one has wider gaps between lines, it will somehow balance it out, no need to worry. What if my counting is not precise? Who cares, another book is waiting on the shelf, feeling lonely. It may sound like I'm a bit oo leisure when it comes to books but on the other hand, I may be a bit too strict with the movies but who cares. As long as I keep going and pushing myself, everything is working fine.


Er... that's precisely the point I was making. I said just check the back and the front. Twice I said in my post that we shouldn't get too stressed about it. But it is useful to consider the issues.

However, the issue with kindle page counts is more than minor. The difference in pages is often wildly off.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6606 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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 Message 261 of 432
12 April 2014 at 4:27pm | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
It is also worth knowing that Amazon counts for Kindle books are often wildly inaccurate. There was an easy reader called Le Pendetif, which was listed as 70 pages. Well, the book has more space than text, and the end of every page of French has a half page of definitions of the new vocabulary. Another example is Le Petit Nicolas. The print version is listed by Amazon as 156 pages, but the kindle edition is listed as 180 pages.
There may well be printed editions that are 180 pages and 130 and anything in between.
When reading on my e-reader and using page size that's clearly less than one page, I often just enlarge it some more until it makes sense to count it as half a page.
1 person has voted this message useful



hjordis
Senior Member
United States
snapshotsoftheworld.
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 Message 262 of 432
13 April 2014 at 12:44am | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
This discussion brings up another complication (that you might want to
ignore!) The page counts given by Amazon count all the pages of a book, including
blanks at the beginning and end. I have in front of me Le Club des Cinq et le
trésor de l'île
. Amazon.fr says it is 192 pages. However, the first page of
writing is page 7, and the last page of the story is page 187. So at the most the
story is 182 pages.
I remember starting a book once and being amazed that it
actually started on page 1. Not amazed enough to remember what it was, but still
amazed.

For kindle books I like to look at the print version just because I don't trust
amazon's count, but it probably doesn't matter much.

We can drive ourselves crazy trying to get page counts to be "fair." Even if you take
only print books you've got different page sizes, different font sizes, different
spacing. Maybe you just happen to have the copy of the book with minuscule print and
somebody else reads a different printing and gets more pages out of it. It's just how
it is. It's even worse if you have books with pictures and/or charts(I'm thinking of a
couple of mine). Just have to estimate what seems fair, because I don't know about
anybody else but I'm certainly not going through and determining just what percentage
is pictures.)

(I know I'm agreeing with you. Just writing this out to organize my thoughts and have
my opinion on record.)

And another note: If you have a book with a significant amount of footnotes that are
all gathered at the back don't forget to count those! It seems like the sort of thing
that could be easily overlooked.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4918 days ago

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 Message 263 of 432
13 April 2014 at 8:35pm | IP Logged 
hjordis wrote:
Just writing this out to organize my thoughts and have
my opinion on record.


That's actually exactly why I made my posts. I am itching to get started, and being a geek, I have made a spreadsheet of the books I have, including paper books, kindle books, children's books and BD's.

Too much time on my hands? Not really, I just can't help myself. ;)
Also, Excel is to geeks what duct tape is to regular men (i.e. there's nothing it can't do).
3 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4918 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 264 of 432
13 April 2014 at 8:38pm | IP Logged 
rdearman wrote:
If anyone knows how to get TV shows or Movies at low cost, or free I'd really like to know!


Since you are in the UK, do you have Sky? If you do, it includes TV5 Monde for free. I love having it, and during the last Super Challenge I often just watched whatever was on for an hour or so.


1 person has voted this message useful



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