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Super Challenge discussion thread 2014

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
432 messages over 54 pages: 1 2 35 6 7 ... 4 ... 53 54 Next >>
patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4293 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 25 of 432
18 January 2014 at 7:53pm | IP Logged 
Kerrie wrote:

I did not know badassery was a word. I like it. :D


From the Oxford English dictionary no less:

North American • informal

    behaviour, characteristics, or actions regarded as formidably impressive: few of us can attain her level of badassery

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 days ago

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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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 Message 26 of 432
18 January 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged 
This is starting to remind me on this thread. It's as if y'all (well, not emk or Cristina) want me to admit I'm lazy and unfocused because I don't want to read 10000 pages in one language but a total of at least 15000 in several. Because I don't aim for progress and it's not realistic to have a significant improvement in more than one language in 20 months.
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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4293 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 27 of 432
18 January 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
This is starting to remind me on this thread. It's as if y'all (well, not emk or Cristina) want me to admit I'm lazy and unfocused because I don't want to read 10000 pages in one language but a total of at least 15000 in several. Because I don't aim for progress and it's not realistic to have a significant improvement in more than one language in 20 months.


I don't know if this was directed to me, but in case it was for the record I think you are total badass polyglot. I am totally unable to multitask, which is why I can only manage to do one language at a time.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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 Message 28 of 432
18 January 2014 at 8:02pm | IP Logged 
Well, you do make it sound like me doing something else than 10k in one language would invalidate your achievements. But thanks for the nice words :)

As for agreeable, this was an attempted pun. I mostly meant that I agree with everything apart from the conclusion about 10k in one lang instead of 4-5k.

Edited by Serpent on 18 January 2014 at 8:05pm

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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5742 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 29 of 432
18 January 2014 at 8:17pm | IP Logged 
Since I've had nothing better to do today, I set about timing how long it takes me to read a few different types of media in different languages.

French novel: 39 pages per hour
Japanese short stories for adults: 22 pages per hour
Japanese children's book (with full phonetic gloss): 43 pages per hour
Japanese manga (with full phonetic gloss): 80 pages per hour

I would self assess my reading ability to be B1 French and B1/B2 Japanese (although as such the difference in reading speed for material aimed at adults between the two languages surprised me).

Based on this, I think the penalty applied in the previous challenge for manga is too high. I would say the difficulty of the text between the children's book and the manga was very similar, and yet the amount of manga pages I covered was only twice as much as the children's book. If the desire is to be stricter and compare it to my attempt at the adult's book, I would still argue that you should get no more than a 75% penalty for manga, and not the current 80%. But if I was reading the children's book for the Super Challenge, I would have counted it as a regular book.

I would estimate it would take me around 260 hours to complete a Super Challenge in French and 250-450 hours in Japanese, so I would support doubling the number of 90 minute "films" to create a better balance between time spent reading and time spent listening.

In order to complete a French Super Challenge of 10,000 pages and 200 "films", assuming there is no further increase in my reading speed, I would need to set aside around an hour a day for the 20 month period.

I'd be interested to hear more from successful participants of last year's challenge about how many pages they think "counts" in terms of real progress - how many pages did you have to cover before you felt that you'd levelled up?
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maydayayday
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4979 days ago

564 posts - 839 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2
Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese
Studies: Urdu

 
 Message 30 of 432
18 January 2014 at 8:25pm | IP Logged 
I failed miserably to even get close to finishing a Super Challenge last time - though I did spend most of the time actually in Country 2 using the target language and I am substantially more competent than I was: just let me know the rules and I'll sign up for Arabic,Russian & German as a false beginner.....
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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4293 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 31 of 432
18 January 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:

French novel: 39 pages per hour

...stuff deleted...

I'd be interested to hear more from successful participants of last year's challenge about how many pages they think "counts" in terms of real progress - how many pages did you have to cover before you felt that you'd levelled up?


Wow. You read much faster than me in German, and I think I am in B2 range. Perhaps the difference is that I am reading intensively? To complete the SC I did well over 500 hours of reading, though I did start reading from about the A2 level. It obviously makes a huge difference what you read. In June last year I was reading +150 pages of Harry Potter a day, and now I am reading comfortably, but slowly about 50 pages a day of Murakami.

Obviously amount of progress you feel depends a lot on where you start from. If you haven't read a real book in your L2 before, you are going to see a real progress in the first few hundred pages. For me there was a substantial jump in comprehension from 5000 to 10000 pages, but that coincided with me watching about 200 more movies as well.At 5000 pages I was about B1, at the end of 10000 I was a solid B2.

I can now pretty much pickup any standard novel in a bookstore and read it extensively for enjoyment. I didn't have that at 5000 pages. As EMK pointed out in another thread, 5000 pages is +1 million words, so that extra 5000 really makes a significant difference. That's not to say 10000 is some magic number, it's just the biggest number you can reasonably ask people to aim for in that time period.

I would be really interested in hearing from the other people who completed the challenge.


Edited by patrickwilken on 18 January 2014 at 8:42pm

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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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 432
18 January 2014 at 8:32pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
how many pages did you have to cover before you felt that you'd levelled up?

Well, with Portuguese it was just 9 "films" and 300 pages. But out of the eligible languages it was my best one, and for audio I did only Brazilian Portuguese because I was definitely B2 at understanding European audio.

Polish was something I started from scratch (well, as much as a Russian with some knowledge of Belarusian and Ukrainian can start it from scratch), and after completing the half challenge I'm not far from basic fluency. Same with Italian, in which I had done a lot of listening prior to the challenge but read literally nothing. I also went to Malta in November and used it there.

I had a breakthrough of its own kind with Danish, as described in the log post I linked previously.

And I've got much more comfortable with reading in German, Croatian and Belarusian after about 10 books each, but I admit this is not quite the big epic progress the challenge is about. And I don't want to choose one of these to focus on when I can continue from there and actually make significant progress in all of these.
I think it's an important factor that many of us will be doing one more challenge in the same language.

Edited by Serpent on 18 January 2014 at 8:52pm



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