Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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einzelne
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby einzelne » Sun Dec 26, 2021 2:43 am

Le Baron wrote:Being too lazy to count up the words I'm reading


Generally, I'm also too lazy for that but, with libraries closed and international shipping taking months, lockdown forced me read fiction on my iPad. If you have epubs, counting words is a matter of seconds. Naturally, I became curious about numbers. And these numbers made me recalibrate my idea of "considerable number" and "enough".

I read 16 French fiction books in 2020 and 24 this year (I don't include non-fiction stuff I read for my research and the books I started but didn't finish). That means 40 in total (and I can safely say that I read 3 million words). I decided to treat myself with some fancy experimental post-exoticism novel for Christmas. Well, it turned out 40 books were still not enough. Now I don't even consider it as a considerable number.
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby Le Baron » Sun Dec 26, 2021 3:06 am

This is the thing. If I start patting myself on the back and saying "I read 2 million Spanish words, yippee!" (I didn't, but whatever), and then feel like I climbed about 3 steps up the very long ladder of comprehension, I'm going to feel like I was swindled for the effort. It might be that I get just as much benefit overall from reading half the number of books more slowly. I don't mean fewer average words per second, but lingering, rereading with longer intervals.

I also read lots of things online, articles, news stories, YT comment threads (dangerous!) and whatnot. I don't know what exactly adds to progress, though it's no doubt all of it together, so I can't feel enthused about counting up the number of words in the books I read; especially since loads of them are just repetitions. Which are good for driving them into long-term memory, but do I have to count them all up? What does it even mean?
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby german2k01 » Sun Dec 26, 2021 4:55 pm

Well, it turned out 40 books were still not enough. Now I don't even consider it as a considerable number.


At least it allowed you to gauge which types of books you can handle; which books are still not in your vocabulary range. Therefore, you need to read more and shoot for a more progressive goal as your next target like the 6-8 million words read instead of sleeping off like a rabbit (Hey I read 40 damn books in my target language, huge number!!) then being beaten by a tortoise.
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby german2k01 » Sun Dec 26, 2021 5:06 pm

This is the thing. If I start patting myself on the back and saying "I read 2 million Spanish words, yippee!" (I didn't, but whatever), and then feel like I climbed about 3 steps up the very long ladder of comprehension, I'm going to feel like I was swindled for the effort. It might be that I get just as much benefit overall from reading half the number of books more slowly. I don't mean fewer average words per second, but lingering, rereading with longer intervals.


Micro goals allow you to be self-discipline every day. Reading 109 pages daily will allow me to finish reading a 400-page book in 4 days; do not assume other readers did not read the interesting paragraphs twice who had actually read 2-3 million words. Who knows. Also, another benefit of following a micro goal is, you are not taking long breaks in between hence allowing you to reinforce what you have already learned /encountered yesterday in your reading. That's an added benefit from a language learning point of view. I would rather read every day than read 40 books randomly over the course of a year.
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby Le Baron » Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:46 pm

german2k01 wrote:Micro goals allow you to be self-discipline every day. Reading 109 pages daily will allow me to finish reading a 400-page book in 4 days; do not assume other readers did not read the interesting paragraphs twice who had actually read 2-3 million words. Who knows. Also, another benefit of following a micro goal is, you are not taking long breaks in between hence allowing you to reinforce what you have already learned /encountered yesterday in your reading. That's an added benefit from a language learning point of view. I would rather read every day than read 40 books randomly over the course of a year.


What's the difference between that and just reading a chapter per day? Or e.g. 'some pages'. That's a micro-goal too, part of a book. It's the oddly specific counting that baffles me. Like some guy who says 'I'm going to get fit by jogging...I'll take 209 steps a day'. Why not just 200? Or 'to the end of the road and back to start with'? Just pick increasing distances, landmarks (like chapters in a book).

Why do you need to finish a 400 page book in 4 days? Why do you need to even read a 400 page book at all? Quality over quantity seems a better goal to me and I'm not referring to quality of the literature per se.
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby luke » Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:04 pm

Le Baron wrote:What's the difference between that and just reading a chapter per day? Or e.g. 'some pages'. That's a micro-goal too, part of a book. It's the oddly specific counting that baffles me. Like some guy who says 'I'm going to get fit by jogging...I'll take 209 steps a day'. Why not just 200?

Maybe it depends on your Significant Other ;)

There was a time when I had the goal of 10,000 steps per day. What that did was sometimes when I was under 10,000, I'd do some extra walking to hit the goal. It may not mean a lot, but say you weren't counting and you were only doing 1000-2000 steps per day on average. (That's probably were I was at in my normal sedentary lifestyle at the time). The 10,000 step goal suddenly increases your movement a lot. That happened to be at a time when I was trying to improve my fitness significantly. Other numbers like "heart rate", "duration", "weight lifted", "reps" all were helpful in knowing I'm working hard and I'm doing more than I used to be able to and I could see progress, even when it seemed like I was stuck. Sometimes I was stuck, and that meant it was time to "change up" the workout.

Metrics can sometimes help carry you through the doldrums when it's not obvious you're making progress.

These days, I just take 2 walks per day and count it as 7500 steps. It's probably a lot more, but 7500 is the goal my boss is looking for, and I'm sure I'm exceeding it and that's all that matters. (not the exact number or whether it's 8,000 or 18,000).

You're at a more advanced stage. You know the difference between quality and quantity, even though quality is harder to measure. At earlier stages, we sometimes have to use quantity. In the process, we may begin to develop a feel for "quality".
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby Le Baron » Sun Dec 26, 2021 10:00 pm

luke wrote:[...even though quality is harder to measure. At earlier stages, we sometimes have to use quantity. In the process, we may begin to develop a feel for "quality".

I can see the point you make and I didn't chop off all the rest of your post to avoid answering. :) I see the value in rep counting to make sure you do enough work. I use it myself for physical exercise. And that physical exercise also needs attention to quality. In both cases - exercise and language learning - it can end up where people go through the motions, chalk up numbers achieved and then wonder why results aren't materialising dammit!
Even aside from all this, there are no real reasons to finish a book in record time. You can plough through a book and it might feel like an achievement turning over that last page, and having counted all the words, but the quality of understanding in reading does matter. I will concede that initially a lot of ploughing through does have to happen as you find your way.
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby einzelne » Sun Dec 26, 2021 10:36 pm

I'm a voracious reader but even in my teenage years when I had plenty of free time I never set such a high bar even in my own native language. Sure I could read 100 pages per day and during holidays I could even finish a 300 pages book in a day but it was because I was interested in a book, in its content, not because I had to finish a N number of pages.

100 pages per day doesn't sound like a feasible mini-goal to me. And, given the natural distribution of words in a book, I sincerely doubt it does any good for expanding your vocabulary. At a certain moment (my favorite Greek incantation: hapax legomenon, dis legomenon, tris legomenon...), it really doesn't matter whether you finish a book over a weekend or over two weeks. The only thing that helps is a consciousness effort to store new words in a long term memory...
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby einzelne » Sun Dec 26, 2021 10:50 pm

Le Baron wrote:
german2k01 wrote:What's the difference between that and just reading a chapter per day? Or e.g. 'some pages'. That's a micro-goal too, part of a book. It's the oddly specific counting that baffles me. Like some guy who says 'I'm going to get fit by jogging...I'll take 209 steps a day'. Why not just 200?


Well, as a long-distance runner I can tell you want improve your endurance, specificity matters:) It's the only way you can gradually and slowly increase you mileage if you prepare for, say, a half-marathon.

In a way, I agree with both of you. On the one hand, I don't believe that there's a magic number (of hours, of pages, of words etc) which, once reached, automatically makes you a fluent reader or speaker. Yet on the other, it would be silly to deny that certain mini-goals can certainly will be helpful and would allow you to develop a routine. In my case, though, reasonable mini-goal should be something like 30 min of reading per day, or 15-20 pages which roughly translates into 2 average books per month. Everyone is different, of course, but in the long run modest goals win, while ambitious goals fail.
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Re: Super Challenge registration thread 2020

Postby Le Baron » Sun Dec 26, 2021 11:16 pm

Your choice of numbers is what makes me feel in agreement in with you. You said '30 minutes reading' which seems very reasonable, but I see people choosing to count this as 1800 minutes of reading... and it makes me look askance at it.
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