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Super Challenge discussion thread 2014

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
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1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 249 of 432
12 April 2014 at 2:50am | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
The question about pages of various things has come up from time to time. For example, how many pages to count in Word documents, etc. One guideline is the number of words per page in an average book. This site says it's about 250 words per page. I've seen others which say 300. This other site says it's 300 for a 5.5 x 8.5 book, and 350 for a 6 x 9 book.

So I'm going to reckon on 300 words per page. I have the Amélie script on Word, and Word tells me it has 9312 words; divided by 300 and it comes to 31 book pages. I haven't read it, but that seems about right.


I read most of my Spanish stuff on my Kindle (or my Kindle app on my phone.) I usually look up on Amazon how many pages the actual book has.

I think the thing to remember is that this is a challenge for you. We've had lots of guidelines set out, but it all boils down to common sense and being true to your goal of progressing in your target language.

Use your best judgement, and do what you think is fair. I don't think it's fair to count subtitles in a Disney movie as 50 pages, but maybe 15-20 pages would be right. (Doesn't Tadoku go by one page for every five minutes?) I know I watched a few of my Korean dramas with Spanish subtitles, which was a real challenge. If I didn't keep up with the subs, I was clueless. :D
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Serpent
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Russian Federation
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 Message 250 of 432
12 April 2014 at 3:51am | IP Logged 
Also, Word/A4 is roughly two regular book pages, and it was explicitly said that it counts as such.
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rdearman
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United Kingdom
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 Message 251 of 432
12 April 2014 at 11:06am | IP Logged 
Ok, I've read all 32 pages of this thread this morning... Now shutup and take my money. I'm onboard!
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Solfrid Cristin
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Norway
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 Message 252 of 432
12 April 2014 at 11:43am | IP Logged 
rdearman wrote:
Ok, I've read all 32 pages of this thread this morning... Now shutup and take my money.
I'm onboard!


You're on. How much money are we talking about? :-)
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Jeffers
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United Kingdom
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 Message 253 of 432
12 April 2014 at 11:53am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Also, Word/A4 is roughly two regular book pages, and it was explicitly said that it counts as such.


At what font size? What line spacing? I haven't planned to use a Word document before, so if there was a discussion I probably just skimmed over it. A "words per page" guideline seems to be a fairer and more flexible approach, because it can be applied to almost any electronic text.

I did test the Word/A4 = 2 pages idea against my word count. When I set my Amélie transcript to 10 point Times New Roman, with single spacing, it comes out to 16 Word pages, or 32 book pages. My word count estimate put it at 31 pages, so it's definitely close enough. But I think it's important to know what size and spacing is needed to make the 2 page conversion work.

This takes me back to the days when I would use fonts and margins to get my essays up the the required page numbers! Only 17 out of 20 pages? No worries, apply Chicago size 12. Problem solved! Only 15 out of 20 pages? Just do the same thing, and bring all the margins in by .25 inches.

EDIT: also, let's not forget that Americans use "Letter" size in place of A4. Letter size is a bit smaller and increases the total page count.

Edited by Jeffers on 12 April 2014 at 12:14pm

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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 254 of 432
12 April 2014 at 12:12pm | IP Logged 
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'm not suggesting that people should go through their books page by page and say things like, "Oh, that's a half page, that's a 3/4 page, etc, etc". But it is simple enough to look at the first and last page they will be reading and to do the math.

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. I think where possible, it's best to check the print edition for page counts of kindle books.

I'm not suggesting that anyone should spend hours counting the pages of their books, but we should spend a small amount of time making sure our reckonings are reasonably accurate.
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patrickwilken
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Germany
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 Message 255 of 432
12 April 2014 at 12:25pm | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:

I'm not suggesting that anyone should spend hours counting the pages of their books, but we should spend a small amount of time making sure our reckonings are reasonably accurate.


I am not taking part in the SC this time around, but last year I read all my books on the Kindle and used the paperback numbers on Amazon to count the pages. You are correct that some of this count is for pages that contain text you haven't read, but life is too short to worry about this too much - it's pretty accurate, and if you want to play safe just read 10% or so over your goal to make sure you reach 5000 pages or whatever.

The standard number of words per page in an English paperback novel is between 250-300. Since we've been conservative in the past and used an estimated 250 words per page (therefore 2.5 million words in the old SC) this probably balanced out any over-estimate in the page numbers from Amazon.

I don't remember the conversion we used for graphic novels, but say it was 1:4, that should imply that the average graphic novel page contains about 75 words to maintain parity with other counting methods.

BTW: If you run your e-books through Calibre you can add page numbers that are fairly accurate to your ebooks before reading.

Edited by patrickwilken on 12 April 2014 at 12:31pm

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rdearman
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United Kingdom
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 Message 256 of 432
12 April 2014 at 1:23pm | IP Logged 
I don't know about anyone else, but finding content is going to be a problem for me. However I have found a method for finding a lot of free books on just about any amazon site where they have a native language site. I.g. to find free French books on amazon.fr you can use this search in Google.

site:amazon.fr "0,00" Langue:français

So this would be for Italian.

site:amazon.it "0,00" Lingua: Italiano

If anyone knows how to get TV shows or Movies at low cost, or free I'd really like to know!


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