Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 02, 2015 4:26 pm

Welcome to the Output Challenge Registration thread. I hereby officially open the registration for the Output Challenge 2016 !!! The Output challenge runs from 1st January 2016 - 31st of Decemeber 2016. 12 months or 1 year to complete the challenge.

The idea of the Output Challenge is output both writing and/or speech in your target language. The hope is by increasing the amount of output you produce, you'll be able to identify gaps in your knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or other problematic areas of output.

The challenge entails:
  • 50,000 words or 1 nanowrimo novel
  • 50 hours of recorded speech (only minutes where you are speaking count) *NOTE: 50% less that the 2015 challenge.
  • You can only sign-up for one language at a time.
You can post your writing for correction on sites such as lang-8, and perhaps find people willing to give corrections of your audio recordings. It would be very helpful if you can state if you're willing to provide advice or corrections in your native language.

Because of the difficulty of doing 100 hours of speech, I've dropped the challenge by 50%. So now the challange is basically 50k words and 50 hours of audio.

To register, please state:

LANGUAGE:

CHALLENGE: (Audio only, Writing only, Full Challenge)

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2)

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: (Yes/No "Your native language")

COMMENTS: Any comments you feel like adding as to your reasons for choice of language, type of challenge or material you want to produce or your expectations for the outcome.

The rules are straightforward, but are open to questioning. In the normal course of the challenge if you feel that what you are doing is in the spirit of the challenge, e.g. producing copious amounts of output in your target language, and it is helping you improve, then it is probably OK. If you don't know, just ask. Generally, if you wrote it, pen, paper, keyboard, blog, poem, traffic ticket, then it counts. Audio is slightly more difficult, but if you are talking, singing, whatever and being recorded it counts. If you're not recording it, then it doesn't count. The reason is that we're only counting output that could be shared. You don't have to share, but the potential has to exist. So chatting with your neighbour over the fence doesn't count, unless you get permission and record it.

If you're uncomfortable with the audio then feel free to just signup for written output only.

Some other points are:
- You can be at any level when the challenge starts.
- Any work or material completed in this challenge can be used on any other challenge.
- You can join the challenge at any point while the challenge is running.
- You can only sign-up with one language, but you can do other languages after you complete the first, or change mid-challenge if you want.
- You are welcome to link to your other logs in this thread.

We don't have a cool Bot like all the other challenges, so you have to do it the hard way. Save your writing and use the word count tool in your software. Count the minutes in your audio. Save it all on a pen and paper or spreadsheet. You can also use the very cool progress bars available on this forum, and instructions in this thread: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=856

If anyone wants to create a mega-cool bot then please step forward!
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby Mohave » Wed Dec 02, 2015 5:18 pm

I'll join in the fun for the writing portion.


LANGUAGE: French

CHALLENGE: Writing only

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: ???? Active Skills - most likely B1, possibly B2 on a good day....mainly I need to activate vocabulary and clean-up grammar.

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes (English)

COMMENTS: My passive skills really took a jump after the Super Challenge - which I hope to finish shortly. I hope I will see a similar jump doing the Ouput Challenge.
Last edited by Mohave on Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:53 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby tomgosse » Wed Dec 02, 2015 5:25 pm

Thank you rdearman for setting up this challenge. I know that I could not complete the writing part. Fifty thousand words in a year is about 137 words per day. I couldn't write that much in my native English.

But, I am thinking about the audio challenge. Fifty hours is eight and half minutes a day. So, my question is, would recording myself reading a novel be permitted?

EDIT: Just reading a novel for a year would not be my only output. I would try to do other things. Just not sure what they might be.

Even if I don't join, I'm still looking forward to watching other people's progress.
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 02, 2015 5:51 pm

tomgosse wrote:Thank you rdearman for setting up this challenge. I know that I could not complete the writing part. Fifty thousand words in a year is about 137 words per day. I couldn't write that much in my native English.

But, I am thinking about the audio challenge. Fifty hours is eight and half minutes a day. So, my question is, would recording myself reading a novel be permitted?

EDIT: Just reading a novel for a year would not be my only output. I would try to do other things. Just not sure what they might be.

Even if I don't join, I'm still looking forward to watching other people's progress.


Yes, reading / shadowing yourself is allowed. BTW 50k words are written by thousands of people every year in the month of November for Nanowrimo, so over 12 months is acchieveable.
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 02, 2015 6:04 pm

LANGUAGE: Italian

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: B1/B2

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes - English

COMMENTS: I struggled to decide between French, Italian, and Mandarin. Mandarin was quickly eliminated because I'm just not far enough along. I could do French, but in the end I decided to stick with my old favorite Italian. My plan this year is to write some stories in Italian, and to also do a video of some cooking each week. I enjoy cooking and baking, so just filming it is easy, it is the sub-titles and the narration which take time. You never know, this time next year I might be on Italian TV as a chef. :lol:
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby Bao » Wed Dec 02, 2015 6:48 pm

LANGUAGE: French

CHALLENGE: Writing only

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: I'm in a B1 class

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes, German, when I have the time for it

COMMENTS: I'll be in France for most of the year.
ETA: While I enjoy listening to my own voice :oops: I can't imagine recording myself regularly. That is, I don't think I should record conversations with other people, cutting the results would be a pain too, and there's no way I would talk to myself or record some kind of talk that frequently. Especially as I wouldn't think anyone would ever listen to it again, not even myself.
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby Radioclare » Wed Dec 02, 2015 7:07 pm

Thank you for organising this again, rdearman :)

LANGUAGE: Croatian

CHALLENGE: writing only

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: B1/B2

COMMENTS: I tried the challenge in 2015 and didn't succeed. I'm hoping to be more disciplined in 2016!
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby Anya » Wed Dec 02, 2015 8:04 pm

Language: German

Challenge: Writing only

Current level: B1?

Willing to correct: Yes

Comments: My active skills really need to be improved
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby steyyan » Wed Dec 02, 2015 10:14 pm

LANGUAGE: German

CHALLENGE: Writing only

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: Weak B2

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes, Norwegian

COMMENTS: I want to improve my active skills to make them catch up with my passive skills, which are excellent in comparison. The reason for doing 'writing only' is the fact that I can't stand hearing my voice recorded, but that does not mean I won't speak a single word of German this year.
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Re: Output Challenge 2016 Registration Thread

Postby Spoonary » Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:38 pm

LANGUAGE: Spanish

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: I'm going to say C1, although my level of production has definitely fallen over the last 5 months.

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: No, because there are so many people who correct English so much better than me.

COMMENTS: I gave up on the challenge this year, but I thought it was a great idea (Thanks rdearman!) and I think it helped to have something definite to do every day, so here I am again. I chose Spanish because I need to re-solidify my ability to produce clear, coherent Spanish, both orally and in writing. My plan is to use topics such as those suggested in the Output Challenge prompts thread in order to focus my output and challenge myself to talk about a variety of topics.
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