A language learners’ forum

There are pros and cons to every study method. Those who like native materials have set up the Super Challenge, those who like courses have set up the Course Completion Challenge, and those who like flashcards have set up the SRS Challenge. If you believe in a certain study method or approach, if you want to see others use your favourite study method or approach, if you want to promote your favourite study method or approach, start a Challenge!

I'm not trying to start a new challenge, I'm just saying that if non-intensive activities are eliminated, as Serpent suggested they might be, then there wouldn't really be any reason to limit the challenge to lower level languages as upper level learners wouldn't have the advantage of being able to rack up time with passive TV watching.

Brun Ugle wrote:I'm not trying to start a new challenge, I'm just saying that if non-intensive activities are eliminated, as Serpent suggested they might be, then there wouldn't really be any reason to limit the challenge to lower level languages as upper level learners wouldn't have the advantage of being able to rack up time with passive TV watching.

That's why I always quote the purpose of the 6WC when I start a thread for it. The 6WC is a challenge for beginners:

6WC wrote:The 6 Week Challenge is a challenge to upgrade your language skills in one language from beginner to something more worthwhile, and to see if you can find more time to study languages when competing with other participants in a global highscore.

If you want to remove the beginner element to a beginner's challenge, you might as well remove the SRS element from the SRS Challenge, the course-completion element from the CCC, etc.?

Allowing B1s was already a concession - note the wording:

6WC wrote:Note that you can only do the 6 Week Challenge with a language that you're a beginner at or lower-intermediate at most.

Not to mention the existence of Total Score and not just Target Score.

Not necessarily talking about you, but I really don't get this:

Brun Ugle wrote:I'm not trying to start a new challenge

Why not? Why change this part and that part of a long-standing, existing challenge and not just start one from scratch?

When you want a Finnish group, you start a Finnish group; you don't get Tomgosse and the other French voyageurs to learn Finnish instead and change the French group into a Finnish group so why change a beginner's challenge to a global challenge?

Because you might want to make it more open to more participants especially when it has little adhesion and these rules aren't enforceable and appear artificial.

Personally I've always considered it as a "how much time do you spend" challenge. I've stuck to the beginner rule (mostly) each time I've participated (as this time) but I'd likely do it more often if it wasn't like that.

zenmonkey wrote:Because you might want to make it more open to more participants especially when it has little adhesion and these rules aren't enforceable and appear artificial.

That's exactly why one should start a new challenge! Create a study-like-mad challenge that's open for everyone, and you'll get more participants --- because more people will be eligible; because with more choices of challenges, more people will find one that's relevant for them; because some people will be eligble for both challenges and will participate in both, thus doubling participation ---, and with a new challenge that's open for everyone, you can set your own rules and enforce them and the rules will be real.

You've laid out arguments for a new challenge.

Wanting to distort a challenge just to make it "more open to more participants" itself can't be an argument. You don't make the Course Completion Challenge "more open to more participants" by removing the Course Completion requirement, do you?

zenmonkey wrote:Personally I've always considered it as a "how much time do you spend" challenge. I've stuck to the beginner rule (mostly) each time I've participated (as this time) but I'd likely do it more often if it wasn't like that.

If you or someone starts a real "how much time do you spend" challenge, then you'll no longer have to distort the real purpose of the 6WC; the fact that it's a beginner's challenge.

I'll be doing Japanese this time. I want to finally step up my Japanese skills which are mostly forgotten at the moment...

Good luck!

That's all fair and nice but I assume that the 6WC bot is not a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. A TAC bot would be nice.

@Brun Ugle, that's exactly what we discussed last time. Removing the level requirement but counting only formal/intensive learning. Sorry if I was unclear.

It's a beginner challenge mostly because it started out as an attempt to compare various methods, testing how much you can learn *from scratch* (often in an easy language like Esperanto). The original challenge even had the limit of 30mins a day. But people started to use it for learning as much as possible and Sprachprofi adapted it. She later even reconsidered her original view that watching a movie inherently means spending some time thinking about the plot and not the language.

I've registered for Turkish this time, after some long and hard thinking (since the end of the last 6wc). I did about half of the duolingo tree a while back (about a year ago), and I have a textbook+workbook+cd that I have barely begun.

I'll also be doing a lot of French, since I have some exams in the second week of December - around the end of the challenge, in other words. I hope to find a little bit of time to do some Russian as well, but we'll see how that goes.

I've joined with Swedish. It's my weakest non-wanderlust language at the moment. I'll also be revising German and studying Dutch.

Good luck, everyone!

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Ends Dec 12th Monday
XXII Aug 2016
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