rdearman wrote:Brun Ugle wrote:I just got the study guidelines and I must say, my first thought is
Study guidelines wrote:- Read one book per week of at least 50k words and write a summary.
- Watch at least 2 hours of video in the target language per day.
- Listen to at least 1 hour of audio in target language per day.
- Create and complete at least one deck of subs2srs flashcards.
I don't see how I could possibly do that in Czech. I'm supposed to read a book every week in Czech?! If I could do that, I wouldn't need to learn Czech, I'd already know it. Also,
am I supposed to write the summary in Czech too? I thought this was the "lazy fist" method. Are you sure you have the right definition of "lazy"? I'm not sure I'm actually awake enough hours in the day to study even one language like this. Though if I could manage to study that many hours per day, I'm sure I'd be doing pretty well no matter what kind of study technique I used.
I assume LWT is allowed for reading? I was just looking at my Star Trek books and one of those is a little longer than your minimum for one week and the only word I think I know is "planet." I'm not sure how to go about reading any book without a whole lot of support.
Seriously though -- you said these were "stretch-goals." What are the real goals? Goals that are impossibly high are just demotivating.
The real goal is to do as much as you can! You're not going to be able to do this at the beginning of the study, I get that. However, hopefully by the end of month 5, you'll be able to read 50k words per week easy.
EDIT: I forgot to add that we must not forget some people are starting this study with a B2 level in a language, so for them 50k words shouldn't be too much bother. So the goals are there for both beginners and intermediate participants. But I'm just asking you to do as much as you can and stretch yourselves.
Just a question - how are you going to do an analysis of the data if people's methods, within the two larger groups, are so wildly different and when there is a sheer lack of structure (which is what it seems like some people are looking for)? Yes I see that you have some guidelines in place, but they are pretty broad, as can be shown in your idea of a stretch goal. It also just doesn't seem sustainable for a lot of people. I understand that you've mentioned that it's okay if people don't last the 6 months, however from what appears to be your methodology (as it's been shared in this thread), it seems like you're setting yourself up for getting data that is going to be very hard to draw any concrete conclusions from. The ambiguity is overcomplicating things.
I have next to no stakes in this as I'm not a participant, but I am in a research group and am used to looking at learner data, though very very different data than what you'll be collecting. In our case we've never looked longitudinal data and have thus never looked at things from a perspective of, "how has XYZ changed after ABC months?", but I am used to looking at different sets of data to see if there is a trend. In our case, while the groups we're studying have various diverse features, they are playing the same game/doing the same tasks and thus we have a built in set of parameters. We also take an ethnomethodological viewpoint and are using conversation analysis so again, very different.
If you were looking at this qualitatively then I think I wouldn't have nearly as many reservations about this, but I'm not clear that that's what you're doing (though I admit to not reading to the very end of this thread as of 5:30pm PST so maybe you are).
