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Super Challenge discussion thread 2014 | ||
Tags: Organization | Super Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 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 161 of 432 15 February 2014 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||
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-Try out various reading strategies.
-You may want to read intensively since there's no rush right now -Although music doesn't count for the challenge, use it now. -If the schedule doesn't change, there will be a two-week Tadoku in the second half of March. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5000 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 162 of 432 15 February 2014 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Shout at me if you want a row of rows. This is a challenge to take on yourself, not the world. Why waste time in shouting about stuff when you could read a recipe to make cookies.
Just logging on and tweeting your achievements is progress towards your goal: it might not be my goal but its a goal. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4413 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 163 of 432 15 February 2014 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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First of all, I'd like to thank Solfrid. It sure isn't easy to please everybody but
you've been trying your hardest and IMHO I believe you've pretty much succeeded in making as many people as possible happy. I'm perfectly fine (better: awesomely happy) with the way you want to set up the challenge. Please don't get distracted by any bad comment, you're awesome :) Well, what I'm about to say about my goals might not be pleasant but still I'd like to warn directly so that when the challenge start, I won't get too many complaints and can start well the challenge. I'll personally enroll for Japanese, Chinese and Korean. This may sound crazy (but hey, who's not on this forum), but I believe it's doable. Japanese: My level is rather high (JLPT N2) and I believe a full challenge will be doable rather.. "easily". It will still be a challenge, but the video part will be a breeze and the reading should be alright. Chinese: On the contrary my level is rather low (around A2 at most I'd say) but I'm going to China for 5months soon and might be living there next year (if all goes well (PLEASE!)). So I'll have a lot of resources and will increase like hell. Japanese helps for the reading but obviously most of what I'll read at the beginning will be readers or really easy novels. As for the movie part, definitely not a problem. When I find something I like, I've got no social life. Still I believe I won't complete the reading part but will do my best for it. Korean: I'll go for reading only. I know it's not possible to choose, but I'll focus on listening only if I finish all the rest (not likely to happen).Anyway, it is definitely the hardest one for me although my Korean level is much higher than my Chinese one. But if I can read even 10 or 15 books, it'll be a success. The bot will help calculate all that. I know, I know, this is crazy and I won't succeed in all and maybe in none (hopefully not because thinking "wow I read 5000pages in ***!" would make me so proud of myself (it's making me smile just thinking of it :p)), but all I want to know is.. how to learn those languages.. and what's better than this forum?! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4911 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 164 of 432 15 February 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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My views are not very important, but I was wondering what kind of 'challenge' the new Super Challenge actually is. I'm a normal guy who likes to read - and knows about the benefits of extensive reading. According to my stats I've read 3'600 pages in Polish since Jan 1st as part of my personal extensive reading project. Last year, I've read 6'500 pages in Thai between January and August (when I stopped counting). 5'000 pages within 20 months doesn't seem to be much of a challenge. Maybe consistency is for many of us wanderlust-plagued souls, or actually getting into the habit of extensive reading, but the absolute amounts aren't. Edited by Bakunin on 15 February 2014 at 4:56pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5313 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 165 of 432 15 February 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
The old Super Challenge was about 2.5 million words in 20 months. To put this in perspective, some US schools organize annual 1 million word challenges for native 13- and 14-year-olds. (The best students in the class may average 2 to 4 million even without a challenge.) The new Super Challenge is roughly 1.25 million words in 20 months, which is still a pretty formidable amount of reading for anyone below B2 or so. Of course, the new Super Challenge offers a "double" option (IIRC), for those who want to go for the full 10,000 pages, which is a pretty substantial commitment even at B2. But if you've already reached the point where you can knock back 3,600 pages in six weeks, then obviously the Super Challenge is going to be a bit easy. You're already reading 600 pages a week, which is far more than many native adults have time to read. Some slower native readers only read 30 pages/hour; very fast ones may do 150. So you're looking at 24 to 180 hours for natives to read 3,600 pages, or 4 to 30 hours/week. (I can do about 40 pages/hour in French if I'm really into the book.) I do recommend a "double" Challenge to any intermediate student who's willing to work hard. It will be a big chunk of your life, but it will pay off remarkably. But if you can already knock back a million words in two months, then of course even doubling the Challenge is going seem a bit easy. :-) (EDIT: Just to be clear, the Super Challenge doesn't require pages to be any particular length, and kid's books are totally cool. I'm giving the numbers for a relatively advanced student who wants to make things as challenging as possible.) Edited by emk on 15 February 2014 at 6:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4911 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 166 of 432 15 February 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Ah, if you count words it's a different story :) I've been reading books for young readers averaging a bit above 130 words per page, not the 250 you assume. My word count is only at 500k since January 1st. I agree that 2.5 million words in 20 months is substantial. But, as far as I know, the Super Challenge doesn't ask you to normalize by 250 words per page. I didn't know about the 1 million word challenges in the US. That certainly puts things in perspective, thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 167 of 432 15 February 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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For those who are at an advanced level I would also recommend a double challenge. That would be an old
Super Challenge with double the amount of films. But I would like to stress again how much I would recommend that people start out with just one Super Challenge, or maximum two. You can always add more later. One Super Challenge is already a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 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 168 of 432 15 February 2014 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I disagree with that. I added Romanian in June (or even late May), and I added Belarusian sometime later in summer. If I had done them from the beginning, I'd have completed Belarusian movies, and I'd have completed Romanian before New Year's Eve, leaving more time for those 6 Danish "movies" that I didn't finish.
When you're doing a challenge, you're generally prioritizing the language over others. For example, when choosing in which language to watch football, I always thought of the Super Challenge, as well as the 6WC when it was on. Fortunately in 2013 there was also reineke's challenge that allowed me not to throw away the opportunities to watch something in an unusual language. Especially with video/audio, I think many learners are going to finish early, and still want to watch/listen to something that no longer counts. If you look back, won't you wish you had spread it more evenly? Surely I'm not the only one who "wasted" HP/LOTR on languages in which there are tons of other resources? And for example in Expugnator's case, it makes no sense to count retroactively what he read when there's a bot that can let him count the reading (and movies) from the beginning. It's always easier when your stats are up-to-date, and trying to fix them later just takes more time away from language learning. You say that doing a half challenge or movies only is also an achievement - then what's wrong with registering for the challenge with that in mind? Of course if you're already fluent in German/French/Italian, it's much more important for you to complete your Russian challenge - but everyone is different. Yes, if you have a clear highest priority language, it's better to aim for just one Super Challenge, and for some misc stars in other languages. (and besides, I assume the ranking will still be calculated per member and not per language - wanting to be above those who are focusing on one-two languages was one of my reasons for registering with more and more languages) But a challenge is just a challenge. Don't let your other languages suffer. If you have reasonable expectations/plans of completing one reading star in a language, and/or if it's one of your main languages for TAC, register with it. Unless said language is a guilty pleasure/your way of procrastinating, like Spanish sometimes is for me. BTW, any feedback/stats from those who started later? Did everyone who completed the full 100/100 start in May 2012? Also, what about this?
I think it would be good if people learning several languages could record everything from the beginning, and then see what chances of completing the challenge they have. Or will you be asking surrealix not to change this? Edited by Serpent on 15 February 2014 at 10:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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