A language learners’ forum

JohannaNYC wrote:For the book part, can I use Assimil if I manually count each word per lesson? Or maybe if five lessons equal one page?

For comic books, was it four or five comic book pages equal one book page?

I missed this challenge the last few months. I've felt my Croatian slipping away even though I've been keeping contact with the language every single day in 2016. Hooray for the Super Challenge! Super Challenge je jako super!

I'm not sure if textbooks are allowed unless they are 100% in the TL (but I could be wrong), also for reading the easiest way is just to count words up to 250 which would equal 1 page. Manga are more "Text Rich" than most comic books I think. But the 250 word rule of thumb will let you calculate books, ebooks, newspapers, online articles, whatever.

rdearman wrote:

JohannaNYC wrote:For the book part, can I use Assimil if I manually count each word per lesson? Or maybe if five lessons equal one page?

For comic books, was it four or five comic book pages equal one book page?

I missed this challenge the last few months. I've felt my Croatian slipping away even though I've been keeping contact with the language every single day in 2016. Hooray for the Super Challenge! Super Challenge je jako super!

I'm not sure if textbooks are allowed unless they are 100% in the TL (but I could be wrong), also for reading the easiest way is just to count words up to 250 which would equal 1 page. Manga are more "Text Rich" than most comic books I think. But the 250 word rule of thumb will let you calculate books, ebooks, newspapers, online articles, whatever.

I asked about using the text part of Assimil in the first Super Challenge, and it was approved (basically since it is a large chunk of extended text). Some learners felt that you shouldn't be using study material, but what I did was not count when I was doing my daily lesson, but sat and read the whole thing through over a few days and counted it then. If you want to count it, as Rdearman says the 250 word rule of thumb should probably be your guide.

The official rule for manga and comics is that 5 pages equals one book page, but a lot of us counted differently for more "text rich" comics and followed the 250 words = 1 page rule. For things like kids books and comics it is hard to have a one-size fits all rule about pages, but following the word count is certainly fair.

Where teaching material should be 100% in native language is in video instruction. Cristina said instructional audio only should not be counted, but instructional video could count if 100% in the target language. For example, French in Action is 100% in native language, as are the Extr@ videos. Fokus Deutsch on the other hand has the instructor explaining a lot in English. Another good example of instructional video which counts is La pronunciation française pour de vrai because all of the instruction is in French. The same author has another version of the video which has a lot of the instruction in English, so that one would not count.


This reminds me, I should actually watch my copy of La pronunciation française pour de vrai this time, instead of staring at the box....

jeffers wrote:This reminds me, I should actually watch my copy of La pronunciation française pour de vrai this time, instead of staring at the box....

Me too!

I'm really finding SRS to be a good adjunct to the super challenge. I found out how weak my Tagalog reading is, and I've been using SRS sentence cards to do some "intensive reading".

I don't understand myself; 6 months ago, I couldn't stand to look at an SRS card, now I find them very useful...

I am in love with this challenge. I struggle motivating myself to learn vocabulary through rote, so seeing how quickly I'm picking up vocabulary just through watching things I enjoy is really exciting. Right now I'm sticking to TV shows and Youtube playthroughs of story based video games, because then the vocabulary gets repeated often enough that it really sticks. I'm so invested in this challenge.

I hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as I am!

EmmaC02 wrote:I am in love with this challenge. I struggle motivating myself to learn vocabulary through rote, so seeing how quickly I'm picking up vocabulary just through watching things I enjoy is really exciting. Right now I'm sticking to TV shows and Youtube playthroughs of story based video games, because then the vocabulary gets repeated often enough that it really sticks. I'm so invested in this challenge.

I hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as I am!

I have thought about doing this as well but wasnt sure if it was allowed. Japan has alot of visual novels I'm interested in play/watching but half the time you are just reading the main characters thoughts and descriptions and not hearing anything in your target language. I can understand using this for the book part (if the whole game is in the target language) but I'm not sure for films? Hopefully we can, I'm running out of stuff I want to watch lol.

Rotasu wrote:

EmmaC02 wrote:I am in love with this challenge. I struggle motivating myself to learn vocabulary through rote, so seeing how quickly I'm picking up vocabulary just through watching things I enjoy is really exciting. Right now I'm sticking to TV shows and Youtube playthroughs of story based video games, because then the vocabulary gets repeated often enough that it really sticks. I'm so invested in this challenge.

I hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as I am!

I have thought about doing this as well but wasnt sure if it was allowed. Japan has alot of visual novels I'm interested in play/watching but half the time you are just reading the main characters thoughts and descriptions and not hearing anything in your target language. I can understand using this for the book part (if the whole game is in the target language) but I'm not sure for films? Hopefully we can, I'm running out of stuff I want to watch lol.

I consider it listening comprehension, because all of the dialogue and thoughts and narration are spoken in my target language. The videos contain 0 English, and the same density of spoken language as any movie or tv show, so I can't see why it wouldn't count. The only reading is subtitles of what's being spoken. No different to watching a tv show or movie with subtitles.

geoffw wrote:It works. Certainly for closely-related languages--but I suspect that others out there may have success stories from more distant language pairs? Anyone?

I did the last super challenge with Korean (final count: 102 films, 98 books) and it also helped to improve my language skills immensely. I wouldn't have been able to pull it off if I hadn't been at or near B2 level when I started.

I'm thinking about joining in with Persian this time, but I'm not sure how much I'd be able to accomplish from starting from current ~A2.

This is wonderful. What great motivation. I hope to be successful this year. I just don't want to have to watch Incubus 50 times!

I just joined the Super Challenge for Mandarin and Spanish but I'm not quite sure how to go about Mandarin. As I only started this language 3 weeks ago, I understand almost nothing when watching movies for instance. What I do is that I very often pause, go back, and look up things in the dictionary. I haven't started a book yet but the same will be true here. So, the time it takes to finish a movie or book will be considerably longer.

How do you go about the challenge for languages that you are an absolute beginner in? Do you just watch movies from start to end no matter how much you pick up?