Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby gsbod » Sun May 03, 2020 11:22 am

jeffers wrote:How are you approaching this challenge? What have you done so far? What are you planning to read and watch?


I don't have a great track record with Super Challenge participation, so thinking about how to make it different this time, and make a success of it both in terms of hitting the numbers and making genuine improvements in my target language. Getting the balance right so that I neither over commit or under commit at the outset is important, I think.

So I'm sticking to one language, German, my favourite. I'm already at a pretty advanced level - on the whole around C1. At this level it's hard to use standard tests to measure any improvements in listening and reading, however, my perception is that my German listening is almost native level (i.e. the things I find hard when listening to German I also find hard in English), but although my German reading is pretty competent there is still a noticeable gap between my German reading and my English reading which I'd really like to close and the Super Challenge seems to be the right challenge at the right time for this.

Also German is a very accessible language for me, in that the main German TV channels (Das Erste and ZDF) make a lot of their programming available without geo-blocking, including many episodes of my beloved Tatort. Also, over the last 4-5 years I've managed to collect a nice library of German books and DVDs through trips to Germany, London, a local charity shop, and online shopping, and I tend to collect books at a faster pace than I can read them.

I acknowledge that my Super Challenge experience is therefore going to be somewhat different to somebody coming in with B1 or less at the outset, or for people studying a language that is less accessible, which could be for many reasons.

But I still expect it to be a challenge. I've gone for a double challenge, because a normal full challenge doesn't feel challenging enough given the circumstances above. At one point I was toying with going quadruple on the reading (i.e. 20,000 pages) but, truthfully, while I could read 1,000 pages in a month, repeating this every month would be very difficult, would remove any chance of me reading anything in English during the challenge period, and is probably more than is needed to meet my reading goals. And whilst 500 pages in a month is easily achievable if I get hooked on a nice, meaty book, keeping this up over the 20 months is still going to be a challenge.

I expect to watch a few films and a lot of Tatort (each episode is self contained and about 90 minutes long, and before lockdown you could go out to watch it in pubs and even some cinemas in Germany, so it practically is a film in the genuine sense anyway). I also have a few other TV series on DVD which I may include, like Der Tatortreiniger and Mord mit Aussicht. I don't plan on counting podcasts or audiobooks, but may do if I get desperate.

I expect to read my fair share of Krimis, in particular from the Gereon Rath (Volker Kutscher, basis for the Babylon Berlin TV show) and Bettina Boll (Monika Geier) series, but would also like to try and throw in something a bit more highbrow, whether that's from shortlists for recent literary prizes (e.g. Deutscher Buchpreis or Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse) or some established older "classics". I'd really like to explore older works by female writers, but apart from Christa Wolf I am genuinely struggling to find anything.
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby IronMike » Sun May 03, 2020 2:18 pm

Setting a daily goal is exactly why I love the 365/366-day challenge.

I don't think I've ever succeeded in an SC (and I mostly do halves) and this'll be my third since finding this forum. Doesn't mean I don't sign up and try. I don't always do SC-legal things, like museum or art gallery tours in Esperanto. But I gotta say, between the SC and the 365-day challenge, my proficiency has gone up.
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby Cavesa » Sun May 03, 2020 3:31 pm

Iguanamon summed a lot of stuff about the SC, it's history, and purpose. I still remember fondly the first one, which was a huge success for me, really improved my langauges (and life). Then, it got harder with medschool always standing in the way.

One of the things that haven't been mentioned: SC promotes the idea, that you need to actually devour tons of input in order to get results.

Input is nothing new anymore. We've gotten to the other extreme. The independent learning oriented internet is no longer fighting the issue of people sticking to only coursebooks up to C1 and still unable to watch a movie. Now, it is the opposite. Especially the subreddit, one of the most populated communities, is full of people expecting to understand a movie after a week of learning, and asking how did everybody learn so well with just movies and no boring coursebooks. Guess what, we didn't.

It is a challenge, that is mainly focused on the intermediate learners, the most overlooked part of the learners' population. The advanced learners consume the content without any challenge, that is no news. It's been like that for millenia. The beginners don't really need input too badly, they've got tons of other resources. But it's the intermediates, who need this gentle nudge in the right direction (or a strong kick) the most.

The SC is bringing a bit of sanity into this by promoting large amounts of content and also by specifying that it's only natural to get results depending on the original level, other activities, and so on. Honestly, I am tired of the people saying "you must be a genious, it simply doesn't work for anybody else. I've read regularly one page a day for a week and didn't feel I was progressing, so I gave up. So, what is your advice about the best group class instead?".

And it is also a wonderful opportunity to look for huge amounts of stuff to read/watch. It forces us to get far away from the usual answer Harry Potter or Le Petit Prince. Because no matter how much I love HP and dislike lePP (yes, I never found out what was that great about the book. blasphemy, I know), there is much more out there, waiting to be discovered. And a lot of it is definitely accessible to an intermediate learner, who dares to leave the comfort zone.

edit:some mistakes and typoes.
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby Cavesa » Sun May 03, 2020 5:10 pm

super-challenge.language-learners.org the website seems to not work. Where to find the instructions for using the bot, please?

And is the twitter bot still working? I can see only posts from 2017 there, not sure whether I found the right one.

Btw, are we interested in extending the SC beyond our forum or not? Might be a nice opportunity to get some new blood that might fit into the community :-) Just to know whether I should talk about this to outsiders, perhaps post on reddit, or not
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby Mista » Sun May 03, 2020 5:33 pm

Cavesa wrote:super-challenge.language-learners.org the website seems to not work. Where to find the instructions for using the bot, please?

And is the twitter bot still working? I can see only posts from 2017 there, not sure whether I found the right one.

You just have to wait until it's activated
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby CarlyD » Sun May 03, 2020 6:22 pm

One of my biggest problems with the Challenge--for German--was finding the films/tv shows. There's a package I can get on my satellite for the 2 biggest German channels (I think around $30 a month extra) but I've been waiting until my listening comprehension was higher and it made more sense to do that.

I've read all the posts about what is allowed for listening, and what isn't. And I've decided--I will listen to anything I can find, no matter the form.

If it fits the rules for this challenge, I'll add it here. If it doesn't, then I can add it to my 6 Week Challenge count, and the 366-Day Challenge count. But I don't want to see something in German and say--I won't bother, because it won't count.

I'm going to set up tracking in my notebook--I'm assuming someone will post in this thread when the Bot is ready.
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby Cenwalh » Sun May 03, 2020 7:09 pm

rdearman wrote:
davidchoward wrote:Hello, I have found the github repository for the Twitter bot, I was wondering if there was any help needed on the technical side of things? I work as a programmer, I could probably help.

There is a list of issues on the github site, so feel free to knock yourself out. :) Probably the most pressing is the bug which doesn't allow 2 & 3 character ISO codes at the same time. For example, you couldn't use AA & AAX. It isn't parsing the 3rd character before it jumps off to the next function.


I've thought about ways to resolve this, but I can't help but think the easiest would be to just use ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 codes. You can get a nice tab delimited list of ISO 639-3 codes here, then instead of putting INSERT INTO over and over again when you build the database, you could just load them in with the LOAD DATA statement. I'd try myself, but I have to admit that my skill set does not include debugging PHP.

Cavesa wrote:It forces us to get far away from the usual answer Harry Potter


Just as a little fun exercise, I decided to see how far in the Super Challenge you could get just with Harry Potter without repeating the exact same thing.

The English Harry Potter audiobooks come to 141 hours and the Harry Potter films come to 20 hours, so that's 107 SC films. The paperback versions of the Harry Potter books come to 4,209 pages, but if you're willing to expand "Harry Potter" to "the universe of Harry Potter" and count short stories from Hogwarts 1 & 2, Cursed Child, Tales of Beedle the Bard, Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide, and Quidditch Through the Ages then you get to 5,013 pages or 100 SC books.

That said, it's highly dependent on whether people's target languages have Harry Potter audiobooks, and you'd kind of be reading the books twice.
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Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby Cavesa » Sun May 03, 2020 7:13 pm

Cenwalh wrote:
Cavesa wrote:It forces us to get far away from the usual answer Harry Potter


Just as a little fun exercise, I decided to see how far in the Super Challenge you could get just with Harry Potter without repeating the exact same thing.

... the Harry Potter books come to 4,209 pages, ...


:-D Looks like I'm not the only person suddenly using the SC bookunit to consider my reading choices. It's actually awesome. Just looking at a random texbook on my table. It's no longer a torture instrument, It's 10 SCbooks! YAY!

And to the topic: Just the last three HP books (main series) got me through a large part of the Spanish SC once. Definitely a great choice at the intermediate level.
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby IronMike » Sun May 03, 2020 7:26 pm

Cenwalh wrote:
rdearman wrote:
davidchoward wrote:Hello, I have found the github repository for the Twitter bot, I was wondering if there was any help needed on the technical side of things? I work as a programmer, I could probably help.

There is a list of issues on the github site, so feel free to knock yourself out. :) Probably the most pressing is the bug which doesn't allow 2 & 3 character ISO codes at the same time. For example, you couldn't use AA & AAX. It isn't parsing the 3rd character before it jumps off to the next function.


I've thought about ways to resolve this, but I can't help but think the easiest would be to just use ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 codes. You can get a nice tab delimited list of ISO 639-3 codes here, then instead of putting INSERT INTO over and over again when you build the database, you could just load them in with the LOAD DATA statement. I'd try myself, but I have to admit that my skill set does not include debugging PHP.

I'm no programmer, so maybe I'm missing something, but is there any reason we're avoiding ISO 639-1 codes? That's the only code list on which I found Coptic (cop), but the 6WC, for example, only uses 639-2. My only option was to list my times under #multilingual. I didn't want to do that though, so I dropped out of the challenge (although I'm of course still studying the language).

Am I missing something? Is it too difficult to add all the various language code schemes to these various twitter bots?
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Re: Super Challenge: questions and discussion

Postby Cenwalh » Sun May 03, 2020 7:49 pm

IronMike wrote:I'm no programmer, so maybe I'm missing something, but is there any reason we're avoiding ISO 639-1 codes? That's the only code list on which I found Coptic (cop), but the 6WC, for example, only uses 639-2. My only option was to list my times under #multilingual. I didn't want to do that though, so I dropped out of the challenge (although I'm of course still studying the language).

Am I missing something? Is it too difficult to add all the various language code schemes to these various twitter bots?


Any language that's in ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-2 is also in ISO 639-3, it is the most complete list. Coptic's code in ISO 639-3 is cop.
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Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)


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