Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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PeterMollenburg
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Languages: English (N), French (B2-certified), Dutch (High A2?), Spanish (~A1), German (long-forgotten 99%), Norwegian (false starts in 2020 & 2021)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18080
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:40 am

I may as well declare it (here) 'officially'-

I'm aiming currently to complete Assimil Using French and Vocabulaire Progressif du Français - niveau débutant. With Assimil U.F. I'm up to lesson 70 (the last) on the first wave and lesson 25 on 2nd wave. With Vocab. Prog. I'm a little over half way.
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Atinkoriko
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Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby Atinkoriko » Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:36 pm

As detailed on my log, I'm running 5 Assimil courses now in one final push to finish all of them.

Is it okay if I join this challenge now?

EDIT:

French With Ease - active wave lesson 8/113

Assimil Business French- lesson 3/40

Assimil Spanish Without toil - lesson 36/105 [iirc]

Assimil Perfectionnement Allemand - lesson 4/70

Assimil German with Ease active wave - 18/100
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: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
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Cavesa
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby Cavesa » Sun Mar 26, 2017 1:45 pm

Atinkoriko wrote:Is it okay if I join this challenge now?

Sure! This is an ongoing challenge, with people joining any time, and adding new goals after finishing the old ones.

Welcome to the horde!
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Atinkoriko
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Posts: 202
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Location: England
Languages: English (N)
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Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby Atinkoriko » Sun Mar 26, 2017 2:15 pm

Cavesa wrote:
Atinkoriko wrote:Is it okay if I join this challenge now?

Sure! This is an ongoing challenge, with people joining any time, and adding new goals after finishing the old ones.

Welcome to the horde!



Great!!
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: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

the1whoknocks
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Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Spanish (Intermediate)

Probably 'gonna' be next: Portuguese
Mayby one day: French & Japanese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5253
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby the1whoknocks » Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:44 pm

Better late than never, right? :)

Language: Spanish

Course Material:The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close by Eric Vogt,FSI Spanish and Gramática de Uso del Español - C1/C2

Comments:

The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close is more a workbook, than a course. It's focus is squarely on the Spanish subjunctive and explores some of it's more nuanced usages. I think it'll help resolve many of the doubts that I sometimes experience regarding the subjunctive - it's everywhere in Spanish. UPDATE: completed 5/31/17

I plan to use FSI to help with automaticity. I've used the course sporadically but never went though it in a systematic way. Plus, there are many chapters I've never looked at. I think going though FSI will help clean up lingering issues I have with grammar.

GdUdE is a course I picked up after reading how many members here feel they've benefited from it. Much of the grammar presented in the C1-C2 level book is definitely new and nuanced. Of the three courses, GdUdE is probably the course I will take the longest to complete due to the nature of the material.

I started to put a deadline to completing these courses, but instead decided to commit to studying them between 15-30 minutes per day until complete. Why? While finishing is important, I like the option of spending more time on a particular chapter without having to potentially rush through another, only to meet a deadline. Also, reading and listening more is a priority of mine and I don't want grammar study to get in the way of that. That said, I'll make an effort not to become too fixated on any one chapter - it's important to keep things moving and give time a chance to work.

I look forward to following your progress and sharing mine.
Last edited by the1whoknocks on Wed May 31, 2017 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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"Wax on, wax off" - Mr. Myagi

Cavesa
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby Cavesa » Fri Mar 31, 2017 8:28 pm

My goals for the first three months of 2017: I failed terribly. I could have finished at least the GdUdE B, but there is no point in rushing through the quite dense subjuntivo part (like a quarter of the book), which is a bit too fast. So fast it has recently damaged my use of most Spanish tenses.

From now on, no fix deadlines, but I will have only one Spanish goal and one German goal to work on as a top priority!
I hope I'll soon report some success again. You are all very inspirative! Thanks

Spanish: Fiesta 2
A Czech based course. Compared to GdUdE B (the part I am stuck in), it is progressing slower, but the exercises are more varied and harder.

German: Themen Aktuell 2
No need for further comments.
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Elexi
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby Elexi » Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:01 pm

Coming to the end of Linguaphone German (1970s 30 chapter version). I am not liking it now the end is near. The story is charming enough, but I don't feel I am really learning anything useful at this end part of the course - maybe it has gone beyond my level?

I also feel the written and oral exercises could have been made better by referring to the part of grammar they are testing (so I can re-read the grammar explanation) or by referring the exercise to the notes in the lesson that they are testing. Towards the end of the course the exercises are beginning to feel a bit 'free floating' to me - but that could be because I am bored of the course and rushing to get it done.

Still I have put all the vocabulary into Memrise and it levels out at just under a respectable 2450 words.

In French I am going through Pimsleur again - just finishing level 3 and am working though the old BBC dialogue course Rendez-vous a Chaviray. A nice course that has charming voice acting on the audio, a nice script for the dialogues and a good blend of exercises.
Last edited by Elexi on Mon Apr 10, 2017 8:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby blaurebell » Mon Apr 10, 2017 1:37 pm

I've been wondering whether I should join this challenge, since I tend to drop courses when I don't find them useful anymore. However, I've now decided to commit to some grammar courses to plug some holes, so I finally have some courses lined up that I actually want to finish properly:

Language: Russian
Modern Russian 1 : 10 / 45
Russisch mit System
Modern Russian 2

Deadline: Ideally I want to finish these by the end of September.

Language: Spanish
Gramática de Uso del Español A : 6 / 107
Gramática de Uso del Español B
FSI Spanish
Gramática de Uso del Español C

Deadline: GdUdE A & B December 2017, FSI + GdUdE C December 2018.

With the Spanish Challenge I will attempt a long-term challenge with slow pacing. I've attempted other grammar books over the years, but I always got super bored and overwhelmed, because I tried to do them as fast as possible. I never actually finished any of them. As a result I have actually neglected grammar despite many fossilised mistakes in my Spanish. Time to change my strategy and hopefully make some progress!
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

creamsodafan
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby creamsodafan » Mon Apr 10, 2017 7:43 pm

I've returned to studying Spanish after a break of 18 months. I've always had trouble studying regularly in the past, hence many restarts where I go back over the same easy material for a while and then start over ad infinitum. So I'm going to go through Hugo Spanish In 3 Months in order to build up a sustainable habit. I have lots of study material (too much, in fact) so I think narrowing my options and sticking to one source for the habit building phase should be helpful.

I've completed the Week 1 and 2 chapters in the past couple of days. I'm not using the CDs, just the book.
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: 2 / 13 Hugo Spanish In Three Months

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solocricket
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Languages: My good languages: English (N), French (C1), Spanish (B2), Italian (reading knowledge)
Languishing Languages: Dutch (~B1), Icelandic (delapidated passive intermediate skills), Yiddish (basic passive), Japanese (smattering of reading knowledge, lots of vocab, maybe I'll get back to it someday)
Studying: Polish (A1)
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Re: Course Completion Challenge -- Open for business!

Postby solocricket » Fri Apr 14, 2017 6:41 pm

Hello! I've been plugging away at Polish at my log, but since I'm actually sort of working through a course for now I thought I'd join in here.

Language: Polish

Course Material: First Year Polish (free pdf course provided by University of Pittsburgh)

Comments: There are 12 lessons, each about 60 pdf pages. I just finished lesson 4. I'm not following the course exactly "traditionally", however-- I'm adding sentences and some vocab items to Anki, and I'm calling each lesson finished when I've added everything of relevance. I'm skipping all the exercises, and I do skip adding some sentences if they're repetitive. Still, the course is very sentence/dialogue heavy, so this is no quick and easy task. I hope this counts as completing a course for this challenge?? My goal is to finish the course by the end of August, though my current rate of progress is not promising.

Log is here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5502

And a side-project....

Language:
Modern Hebrew

Course Material: A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew

Comments: This one I will (hopefully) be completing with exercises and all-- I don't really want to mess with Hebrew keyboards just yet. I haven't started yet, but I chose this particular book because it contains unpointed text (no vowels) with pronunciation using the Roman alphabet. I've had a hard time finding a Hebrew course/textbook that fits my preferences, many use pointed text, which is not used in daily life, and which I would like to learn later after I know some basics. I also have a book with unpointed text with no pronunciation at all, and very difficult to navigate online audio materials..... Anyways, this one seems to be what I was looking for, even if it's a little old-fashioned. And it was cheap. Perhaps I could work through this book by October? I think six months should be reasonable. I'd like to have a good handle on the basics (A2-ish) by then :D
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