30:30 Vocabulary Challenge - October 2024

[rdearman]

Another month with 31 days! Who's up to the challenge?

I posted a question about how to learn 50 words per day. And there are some great answers. I've trying to learn 50 words per day for the last few days, but it is too much. However, it did get me thinking about creation of a new challenge for building vocabulary. And this is it!

Super Challenge too easy?
6 week challenge too long?
365 day challenge just isn't a challenge for you?

Well, the 30:30 challenge is here to break you!

The idea is that in a month with 31 days (I'll explain why 31 in a 30 day challenge in a second) you learn 30 new words every day.

Starting on 1st of August, the challenge is to learn 30 new and unique words every single day. So in theory you'll have 900 new words at the end of that month. It doesn't matter for the purposes of this challenge how you learn the words, or how you review. You can use wordlists, or anki, or write them out on bits of paper, or inject the words via telepathy from an AI robot. But on day 31 of the month you have to take a test. I've created a google sheet (spreadsheet) which allows you to take a test.

You basically insert the TL word and the NL translation into the sheet, then sort by a column filled with random numbers, hide the TL word and take the test. Because it is a test with 900 words, it is going to take a lot of time. Even if you were typing in 10 words a minute, the test would still take an hour and a half. So this is why I'm reserving an entire day of the month just to take the test. I've also included a daily test for the 30 words you are doing that day. So you can test yourself daily before taking the final examination.

So how to do the challenge?

Sign up here before the 1st of July saying what language your vocabulary is going to be in (You can build your vocabulary in your native language if you want)
Take a copy of my Google sheet, then you can use Google Sheets, LibreOffice, Excel, whatever you prefer.
Find 900 unknown and unique words (and translations which are used as questions for the test) and paste them in the spreadsheet.
Test yourself on the 31st of July and report the amount out of 900 words you now know!

EDIT : Words can be in more than one language, or your native language.

I figure even if I learn more than 10 words, it is worth it. If I learn 900 words that would be brilliant!

If you want to post in this thread how you plan to remember, revise or otherwise learn the words, feel free to share! If this challenge is useful or popular then we'll run it again every month where there are 31 days.

In a world where vocabulary runs amok and learning feels like an insurmountable mission, there emerges a challenge unlike any other. Today, still wanted by the government, vocabulary survives as soldiers of fortune. So, if you have a linguistic conundrum, if expanding your language skills seems out of reach, if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find it, maybe you can complete the 30:30 Challenge.

Feel free to make "A-Team" references when signing up to the challenge. I love it when a plan comes together.

[rdearman]

Changed to July

[Sprachprofi]

Signing up - I'll build my vocabulary in Croatian.

Could you post the link to the spreadsheet, so I can start collecting my 900 words?

[MapleLeaf]

I will attempt this in French and Spanish.

[Teango]

I'm currently ill and resting up in bed, but will try to give Spanish another whirl for this July challenge. ¡Buena suerte a todos!

[Leviathan TQ]

For July, I will be doing German.

[bombobuffoon]

Has anyone ever beaten this test without cheating?

[Quabazaa]

I will be participating with Egyptian Arabic

[rdearman]

it is 900 more than you knew before.

[MapleLeaf]

My experience with the July challenge:

I decided to restrict it to French, and only to words I encountered in my efforts for the Super challenge. I did not want to use vocabulary lists or the equivalent, but wanted to see if I could use this challenge to prompt my reading. I started out with the French translation of The Wizard of Oz, getting 40 new words from its first page alone. I petered out on July 23, having only gone through a third of The Wizard of Oz, half of a second, easier, book, and ended up with a list of 653 words (37% from The Wizard of Oz, 23% from Un été à Montreal, 24% from Duolingo and the rest from random sources).

I'm not testing to see if I successfully remember any of these, but I plan to try these two books again in the future.