30:30 Vocabulary Challenge - July 2023

[cito]

Hey everyone, I think the challenge isnt working for me. Gonna have to drop it . Thanks for the ride!

No problem. I have to say I'm struggling and it is my challenge! The weekend was too busy with life stuff, and although I did manage to do an hour or so each day of the 30 words, I still feel I'm falling behind. However, I console myself with the idea that I didn't go into this challenge planning to ace the 900 words at the end, but to just retain as many as I can.

I hope that you had a good run, and that you learned a few more words than you knew before!

Oh, I definitely did! Thanks for setting up the challenge Rdearman!

[diaconia]

[...]I have to say I'm struggling and it is my challenge! The weekend was too busy with life stuff, and although I did manage to do an hour or so each day of the 30 words, I still feel I'm falling behind[...]

I've found myself in the exact same position. What about creating lists to serve as "breaks"? I've created 2 lists for exactly those times when I'm falling behind. One is numbers and the other is a silly list of clothing items. Something more akin to a review. The way I see it, I'm still in the target language, as far as immersion goes. Maybe that would help create some breathing room

EDIT: to quote our John "Hannibal" Smith: "It's always darkest just before it goes totally black!"

[Xenops]

With how my July is going, I can safely say that I do not reach the 30 new vocab items each day. So I will bail.

What the challenge has given me, however, is that boost to dive into a Danish ebook and studying it. I'm finding, at my current level, that the book of Genesis is a very approachable graded reader. It feels like satisfactory progress, so I will try 15 new words a day going forward.

[untrucdeouf]

Halfway through! How's everyone holding up? I'm finding the challenge is definitely getting more challenging with every passing day. Last week I had a couple 11 or 12 hour days at work and while I made my word lists and tried to get through them, I'm not sure how much learning actually got done on those days -- I suspect the real learning is happening in review. I'm definitely jealous of anyone who's attempting this and isn't currently working a full-time job!

I think this challenge would be more effective for me in terms of successful long-term vocabulary acquisition if the goal was to learn 900 words in a month (30 words on average) rather than a strict 30 words per day. I may try to repeat this in August without the daily limit/minimum. I think my schedule is just too variable -- sometimes I work 5-hour days and sometimes I work 14-hour days.

I have also turned to the book of Genesis as a graded reader of sorts. So far it's the only material I can find in contemporary Tagalog that has both audio and a side-by-side English translation available.

[raikiro]

I'm still going strong, but I have had the last two weeks off work which definitely helped with time. Tomorrow I'm back to working, so I'll need to move my studying from the morning hours to late afternoon. Hopefully my concentration won't be too impacted.

So far, I've had some ups and downs, especially with the reviews. Some days I barely remember anything and sometimes I'm breezing through it, despite the time and method always being the same. The time it takes per day is quite consistent though, around 80-90 minutes. Not knowing what to expect initially, I thought it would be more like 2-3 hours, so I'll take it.

I'm recording all the time spent and review statistics per language in detail, but I will wait with my analysis until the challenge is over.
Good luck everybody with the second half!

[Mista]

I've been a bit inconsistent with how much time I spend on this every day, but the minimum is about half an hour learning the 30 new words of that day. I'm using Quizlet, so what this means in practical terms is that I work through two rounds of "learning" in there. Sometimes I'll do an extra round, if I feel I need it, and then I'll do some review of old stuff on most days. On a good day I'll do up to 90 minutes in Quizlet.

Another thing is that I'm not quite done with my list yet, so I also have to put in some work on that on the days I have time. I started out collecting words from the coursebook we have been using for my class, and this got me up to 700 words. Now I've passed on to the translation exercises we have been doing (translation to Russian), picking the words I need to learn from there. I'm at 838 words at the moment, and I will have passed 900 by the time I'm done with my material. I have an exam on Aug 16th when I will need all these words, and I imagine that helps a lot with my motivation for keeping up this challenge!

I feel I'm learing a lot from this, so I'm very happy so far. I'm very satisfied with the choice of using words from a specific context. Yes, it's a lot more work, but it's worth it, and it's more motivating, in my opinion. And it means you can support the brute force learning by reading the text you picked it from.

There are a couple of other things about my list that make it easier to work with too, I think. Using a B1 coursebook means that the words I'm learning are mostly very frequent, and I notice when I'm reading other stuff (I'm reading Harry Potter on the side, for instance) that those words appear all the time. I also think my coursebook is consciously trying to teach word families, so my list is full of related words - nouns, adjectives, and verbs that all have the same root, for example.

[diaconia]

I'm still going strong, but I have had the last two weeks off work which definitely helped with time.

I just had two weeks off and that really helped me. Now it's going to be crunch time because I have a busier week ahead and then it's back to working full.

The rest of your post also echos my feelings as well, raikiro. Some days are better than others. Mista's Russian is better than mine which makes me wonder if this challenge is more suited for the intermediate learner. I'm having trouble staying on top of the grammar that I have to learn at the beginning stage. Suffice it to say, I'm struggling. It's a good kind of struggle, though

And another quote: Lt. Templeton 'Faceman' Peck: This is beyond nuts, boss.
Col. John 'Hannibal' Smith: It gets better.

[Mista]

Mista's Russian is better than mine which makes me wonder if this challenge is more suited for the intermediate learner.

Maybe there are things you could do to make it more suitable for your level, but I think I agree with you: I definitely feel more ready to learn loads of vocabulary now than I have earlier. It feels like the perfect time to do this. And I can also say that I have started on this now after a long period of using Drops, which has the benefit of supporting every written word with a sound file. One thing I've stuggled with for a long time with Russian is getting comfortable reading the script - I mean, you can learn the letters in a week, but reading fluently is a whole different story. And when you have to struggle with that, both reading and writing becomes tiring, and there's not much room left in the brain to make those connections between word form and meaning. That's how I look at it anyway.

One easy way to adjust the challenge to lower levels could be simply to reduce the number of words per day.

[coldrainwater]

Halfway through! How's everyone holding up? I'm definitely jealous of anyone who's attempting this and isn't currently working a full-time job!

From the perspective of a raw beginner in Latin, the challenge seems to be a great catalyst to gain exposure to a new language. Transparency of the language makes doing this as a beginner feasible. I would also echo the sentiments of several other participants in saying the challenge has been a great learning experience. Out of the first 450 terms, I would estimate that 100-150 are still unlearned. Of those 100-150, the main issue I have is really the same that I have had in many other life circumstances—namely, a lack of maturity. The test on day 31 I think will be a really good waypoint for me, but not the end of the road and certainly not a dead end. For next month's challenge, I found a multilingual wiktionary offered by Matthias Buchmeier at this location that others might find as a convenient source if they are having challenges coming up with enough terms.

I will also echo your sentiments about preferring not to have precise daily min/max, but wouldn't want to comment on that prematurely. There is an analogy to be made there between drip and lump sum investing, but I am better off leaving such ramblings to my personal log. For the 10+ hour work days, I have had a few of those and mainly just locked in my 30 words for the day and did a quick skim, which may have barely amounted to a glance (somewhere in my list there is a term for a god of oblique glances). I cut back on my German reading to make time for the new language, which was anticipated. When they say full-time job, occasionally they are kidding, but often they very much mean it.

[diaconia]

When they say full-time job, occasionally they are kidding, but often they very much mean it.

Oh, I hear ya! One of my favorite "nurse's anecdotes" has to do with working the night shift on the dementia ward. Most patients don't know night from day any more. One patient was very irate; she kept insisting it was time to get up and go to the bus stop. After bringing her back to bed x-times, calling the doctor, trying everything imaginable, the colleagues built a fake bus stop using a visitor bench and a piece of paper with the written words "bus stop". It worked. She sat there and it was all quiet! Despite knowing that I will never find the time, I always have to tell myself -- "No, you cannot bring your language cards with you to work" The temptation is always there.

I think Professor Arguelles' wife once compared him to a thief who steals time for his languages. I've always kept that in mind!

Mista, I agree. I'll definitely slow down. I still want to push through, because I would't be pushing myself if it were not for this challenge. I just need to spend more time with the language and get over than hump that you're referring to where it's such a chore to read. Now, I'm familiar with Kahoot but I've never heard of Drops -- I'll take a look at that! Thanks for the indirect tip!