What happened to the challenges

[PeterMollenburg]

Why not do 6wk for A1/2 then the next 6wk for B/C ? (e.g. skip the 6 week break)

I think we discussed this before, and the problem was we don't have a bot / can't get a bot?

RD would know but is PM aware that the 6WC is not my challenge? It's Sprachprofi's. I just create a thread each time. I can't edit the bot and I don't know how to write Twitter bots.

Ah, right, yes, this rings a distant, but loud bell now that you mention it. I forgot it was Sprachprofi's, despite previously being aware of this fact.

Here's my plan:
Speaking of fun challenges, some day I will study a language without taking any notes...

> without taking any notes

I experiment a little every time I learn a new language / I learn a new language every time I want to experiment a little. Swedish fell under the latter case, and part of the experiment was to not take notes, to memorise vocab and conjugations straight from the textbook or website. Saved me heaps of time as I'm normally very fussy about the aesthetics of my notes. Anything inconsistent, say the wrong colour used to write a subheading, and I might re-write the whole page. I hate inconsistency! And when I use white correcting fluid or tape on greyish paper, I have to colour the white patch grey.

I take very little notes now and I feel liberated I still have flashcards, but even this may go.

I really like this idea of not taking any notes, and I've actually pretty much moved to this practice recently. And your observations of yourself bare some resemblances to mine, smallwhite, in that I used to be rather fussy over how I wrote notes in my course books - numbering the unknown word in the text, writing the corresponding number in pencil at the top of the page, followed by writing out the phonetic transcript, gender and other such identifying factors of word class, and multiple definitions, sometimes an example. Took too long! So, like you, I try to retain now straight out of the material I'm using. I must say though, I never did colour white patches grey and that kind of thing, but when I was in primary school I used to get obsessed with headings and if it wasn't perfect, I'd screw up the page and throw it out. My teacher complained about me wasting too much time on colouring in headings and not doing the actual work! Anyway, off track, I did evolve... nowadays, why duplicate things by writing at all! Although, Ani has made a good point, there is something in the act of writing out the words/phrases (motor memory?). Anyway, efficiency matters! I'm still yet to learn to let go of unnecessary courses though (still trying hard with that one)

[smallwhite]

Maybe I can set up a Google spreadsheet à la 6WC. One sheet/tab per person. Enter data yourselves. Column headings: Date, Category, Minutes. Personal stats help yourselves. Leaderboard on another sheet. Sub-leaderboards possible: A1-ers, Voyageurs.

[coldrainwater]

There were 33 challenges / experiments listed on the first page of this thread. Someone picked the haiku, and lots of people took up the FLC, but did anyone decide to try one of the others? Or come up with their own experiment?

Yes, trainwreck or not, I am still willing to attempt a reading of Borges Ficciones backwards (one of your new ideas listed). No programming legerdemain with string.reverse(whole book) allowed in my case. I strongly considered reversing the text split by words thus maintaining my left-to-right reading norm. The challenge would be less wacky then though, and I don´t really want to add a component to it requiring text manipulation out of the box.

Whether it was implied or not, I would be happy to see people pick from the challenge list so that we have a more broad challenge spectrum, even if only one or two people are fiddling with some of them.

[reineke]

I would like to see people picking up languages.

[LunaMoonsilver]

There were 33 challenges / experiments listed on the first page of this thread. Someone picked the haiku, and lots of people took up the FLC, but did anyone decide to try one of the others? Or come up with their own experiment?

I was looking at the 101 essays one, especially since it fits so nicely with the Output Challenge targets. Just have to pick a language (out of Spanish/German, not a new one ) to do it in though!