A language learners’ forum

I like to log the number of pages I read after every reading session. Typically once per day, but occasionally a couple times. All my reading right now is on Kindle, so I end up doing some math.

At the beginning of a book, I sample an average page and determine a typical word count. I've kept a spreadsheet of all French books read since day one, and have just under a million words read now, so I'm getting a pretty decent feel for average word count. I've counted both paper and Kindle pages for my records. For Kindle, with my font, a typical page is in the 165 to 185 range. After a reading session I'll multiply the Kindle pages by the average count for the book that I derived earlier, and then divide it by 250 to come up with a Super Challenge page count. Once I get to about 50% done in the book, I'll compare my page count with Amazon to get a feel for how close I am, and if I'm off a bit, I'll adjust my math for the second half of the book.

So far it's come out pretty close. I'm actually starting to wonder if Amazon does word count and divides by 250 to come up with their numbers. Some of my math would suggest they do. Although, of course, I'm just a super small sample, small enough for it to really be wild ass guess.

If I start a Romance language challenge and give up my current Spanish challenge, would it be OK to move my pages and minutes to the Romance challenge?
I keep getting a big pull toward French, and I've been thinking about LRing it some.

Of course there are classics in French available, but I've been having the usual problems trying to buy eBook versions of some recent books. I wonder why it is OK for me to buy Spanish ebook versions of Follett's five big historical novel's (~7000 pages), but it is not OK for me to buy French versions.
Silly publisher, I have money and I want to pay you...

Sure, that's fine. Still the same stats, you're just tehnically moving them We've had some disagreement over whether it's okay to post the same content with a romance and french tag for the purpose of stats, but if you choose just one it's definitely ok.

In a severe state of wanderlust, I started French and love it so far. Gee, I've studied French a whole 3 hours now. I'm still in the honeymoon stage, for sure.
I haven't found much I can do with Assimil that I think matches the spirit of the super challenge, but I'm going to keep taking shots at some French audiobooks. I would assume that I would start to have a little comprehension within a couple of hundred hours of study. Anyway, when I start to comprehend more I'll do more, but right now I'm going to try to keep up with the super challenge with Spanish while I break my way into French with a couple of courses.

Kerrie wrote:For books, most of my reading is on my Kindle or ReadLang. I normally just look up how many pages are in the book (on Amazon or GoodReads, for example), and log the book when I'm done.

I use ReadLang for a lot of my reading as well and was lamenting the lack of page numbers. However, I recently discovered that ReadLang does show the current word count in the site address. So when I have a book open, the address is something like:

http://readlang.com/library/5557ed3d51a ... from/10138

The number at the end is the key. In this example, I've read 10,138 words so far. It's made my SC calculations much easier.

I've recently registered for the full Super Challenge for English and I've had a great time watching TV shows so far. Can I ask though why 50 pages is considered 1 full book? I read about the SC a couple years back and even then I though that the rule of 1 standard book having only 100 pages was a bit off. I checked the novels I had at home and most of them had from 300 to 500 pages and I think that most modern novels have that amount of pages. I'm just curious what lead to this 50-page book rule?

kalen wrote:I've recently registered for the full Super Challenge for English and I've had a great time watching TV shows so far. Can I ask though why 50 pages is considered 1 full book? I read about the SC a couple years back and even then I though that the rule of 1 standard book having only 100 pages was a bit off. I checked the novels I had at home and most of them had from 300 to 500 pages and I think that most modern novels have that amount of pages. I'm just curious what lead to this 50-page book rule?

Because reading 100 books that are 300-500 pages each, in a language you are learning, is not realistic.

You can read a book with 300 pages, but it will count as 6 book units for the challenge. Completing 15-20 books of that size in a relatively new language in 20 months is a SUPER Challenge.

I think the reason was, that there's not really a better word for "unit of written pages". I also count the minutes of films, so that an actual film can be more or less than one film-unit of 90 min.

Hello all,

After a week into the Super Challenge, I have read one book, Pauvre Anne, and watched 2.4 films.

Pauvre Anne is fifty pages long and an easy read. It is written at a junior high school level. There are about ten books in this series.

I just started Le Pendentif. It is a similar book of the same length.

I have watched watched seven episodes on Extra French on YouTube. Each one is about twenty-four minutes long. I've also started watching C'est Pas Sorcier. I hope that I can keep up the pace for another year.

All the best,
Tom

tiia wrote:I think the reason was, that there's not really a better word for "unit of written pages". I also count the minutes of films, so that an actual film can be more or less than one film-unit of 90 min.

Yeah... the original plan was indeed to count all books under 500 pages as one book, but then about a week into the first challenge we all realized how unrealistic it was and how it made the comparison unfair. 100 pages were downgraded to 50 pages later, when we concluded that otherwise the 100 books, 100 movies challenge was disproportionally difficult. We had other ideas, like making it a 50 books/100 movies challenge, or 10 actual books/100 movies, but Cristina preferred keeping it as 100/100 but changing the size of one "book".