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Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 10:04 pm
by rdearman
Welcome to the Output Challenge Registration thread. I hereby officially open the registration for the Output Challenge 2018 !!! The Output challenge runs from 1st January 2018 - 31st of Decemeber 2018. 12 months or 1 year to complete the challenge.

The idea of the Output Challenge is output both writing and/or speech in your target language. The hope is by increasing the amount of output you produce, you'll be able to identify gaps in your knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or other problematic areas of output.

The challenge entails:

50,000 words or 1 nanowrimo novel
50 hours of recorded speech (only minutes where you are speaking count)

You can post your writing for correction on sites such as lang-8, and perhaps find people willing to give corrections of your audio recordings. It would be very helpful if you can state if you're willing to provide advice or corrections in your native language.

To register, please state:

LANGUAGE:

CHALLENGE: (Audio only, Writing only, Full Challenge)

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2)

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: (Yes/No "Your native language")

COMMENTS: Any comments you feel like adding as to your reasons for choice of language, type of challenge or material you want to produce or your expectations for the outcome.

The rules are straightforward, but are open to questioning. In the normal course of the challenge if you feel that what you are doing is in the spirit of the challenge, e.g. producing copious amounts of output in your target language, and it is helping you improve, then it is probably OK. If you don't know, just ask. Generally, if you wrote it, pen, paper, keyboard, blog, poem, traffic ticket, then it counts. Audio is slightly more difficult, but if you are talking, singing, whatever and being recorded it counts. If you're not recording it, then it doesn't count. The reason is that we're only counting output that could be shared. You don't have to share, but the potential has to exist. So chatting with your neighbour over the fence doesn't count, unless you get permission and record it.

If you're uncomfortable with the audio then feel free to just signup for written output only.

Some other points are:
- You can be at any level when the challenge starts.
- Any work or material completed in this challenge can be used on any other challenge.
- You can join the challenge at any point while the challenge is running.
- You are welcome to link to your other logs in this thread.
- Anything you've written or recorded from 1st January counts, even if you'd not yet officially registered.

We don't have a cool Bot like all the other challenges, (although I hope to get one up and running soon) so you have to do it the hard way. Save your writing and use the word count tool in your software. Count the minutes in your audio. Save it all on a pen and paper or spreadsheet. You can also use the very cool progress bars available on this forum, and instructions in this thread: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... f=16&t=856

You might want to check out the mini-challenges and prompts from previous years. https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... f=21&t=710

OK, Good luck to everyone who takes the challenge!

EDIT: Also this year we are allowing multiple languages. So you can register for more than one.

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 10:26 pm
by Ольга
LANGUAGE: English

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: I don't know, all tests show a different level, may be B2? Or C1?

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes, if only it is welcomed. Russian.

COMMENTS: I hope I will be able to manage a CPE test at last. :D

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 11:53 pm
by cazgram
LANGUAGE: Spanish

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: A1-A2

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: By default, no. If someone is willing to do a writing exchange, I will correct English if you are willing to correct Spanish. I will occasionally correct writing inside italki if I'm going to correct stuff.

COMMENTS: I love the idea of being forced to produce video/audio. This is the first challenge I've ever joined from the beginning. I started a TAC many years back on the other forum, but didn't have a clear goal.

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:36 am
by Xmmm
LANGUAGE: Russian

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: B1

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: No

COMMENTS:

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:58 am
by zenmonkey
LANGUAGE: German

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: B2-C1

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes, English is my strongest.

COMMENTS: Plan to take the C1 test, so this will be good practice. However, I feel that 50K words production / 50 hour recording might be too much for me (it's a massive transition in habit) - it's an hour of speaking a week and close to a page a day and I don't think I can meet that. So I'm going to focus first on reaching 25K / 25hrs and see if that is reasonable.

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 9:12 am
by MamaPata
LANGUAGE: Russian (and maybe French)

CHALLENGE: Writing only (Half challenge)

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: B1

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: No because I'm bad at replying to messages. But I post anything on lang8 or italki, I will also correct English in return.

COMMENTS: As I've mentioned elsewhere, Russian is my priority until June, so while I might get a bit of French in here or there before that, it's unlikely. But I really need to pull up my writing abilities in both languages, so I would definitely like to work on it at some point.

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 10:12 am
by kunsttyv
LANGUAGE: Spanish

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: B2-C1

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: No

COMMENTS: As of the last two months of 2017, I established an output routine I'm going to continue with this year: daily writing, weekly Skype lessons. I write a little every day in a document I share with my teacher (adds up to about 5 pages a week). She corrects my writing and we go through it every Monday (1.5 hour Skype lesson). Let's say 2018 will consist of 40 work weeks, taking into account vacation and some busy periods. Then, if everything goes according to the plan, I will have written 200 pages and taken 60 hours of Skype lessons by the end of the year. I will sit the DELE C1 exam in either July or November.

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 11:44 am
by Anya
LANGUAGE: Italian
CHALLENGE: Writing only
CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: A2-B1?
WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes, if I have time (Russian)
COMMENTS: Good luck to everyone!

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 1:17 pm
by LunaMoonsilver
LANGUAGE: German / Spanish

CHALLENGE: Full Challenge

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: C1 / A2

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes - English

COMMENTS: Trying with two languages; German is my strongest so this is mostly to iron out remaining errors and get some practice. Spanish is going to be the tricky one, but I'm interested in seeing the impact on both! :)

Re: Output Challenge 2018 Registration and Discussion

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:20 pm
by Maiwenn
EDIT 27/11/2018 -- I did not keep count of writing for the output challenge. A lot of my Arabic writing was in texts/messages and I found it too tedious to continue counting up every word. German was sadly abandoned over the summer. I did record over 22 hours of speaking output through May before stopping that as well. I do think that that initial effort of recording my speech was beneficial to my expression skills.

LANGUAGE: Arabic

CHALLENGE: Full!

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: A1-A2

WILLING TO CORRECT LANGUAGE: Yes, English.

COMMENTS: I'm cheating a bit on this one as I'll be counting both Moroccan Arabic and MSA (and who knows perhaps another dialect) in one category. I'm eager to hear how my speaking will change throughout the year (hopefully for the better ;) ).

LANGUAGE: German

CHALLENGE: Writing only

CURRENT LANGUAGE LEVEL: A2-B1

COMMENTS: I will also practice speaking, of course, but I think recording the audio for just one language is more than enough for now.