Postby Cèid Donn » Sun Nov 03, 2019 12:05 pm
I have no desire to try to police other people's 6WCs but if there's a question about what to count, I think going back to the purpose of the challenge may serve as a reasonable guideline: the challenge was intended to encourage people to improve their skills in a language where they are at a low level to something more "useful."
Outside of your declared 6WC language, with which I think we should probably focus on more intensive activities to stay in the spirit of the challenge, I think there's a wide berth. I get a fair amount of casual immersion with Spanish where I live, but I won't be counting short interactions with the grocery store clerk or the Taco Cabana cashier as part of my overall study time because while it's good practice, it's just not enough in my opinion for my level of Spanish to improve my skills to something more useful, especially if it's a situation where I'm just using basic phrases and am not really required to think in Spanish or learn anything from that experience. But that's not to say all casual immersion isn't useful. I suspect if I went to Mexico and had to spend the whole day doing these short interactions with different people, it'd be a lot more work. That would be more like drilling, wouldn't it? So maybe then I might say, "I had 12 interactions with different people today, probably averaging 1-3 minutes each, so roughly 25 minutes of practice with speakers." But I'm just trying to see myself in your shoes. I don't think there's a hard, fast line here beyond using your best judgement as to what's really contributing to your progress in that TL.
7 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.