The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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Xenops
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Re: Thoughts on a challenge/experiment- The Free and Legal Challenge

Postby Xenops » Wed Feb 21, 2018 3:58 pm

I would love to join...Later: I am not confident that I can successfully juggle two beginning languages at once, and I owe it to myself to self-study at least one foreign language to a B2 or C level before I tackle a second one.

I did find that there are lots of languages covered by DLI, even Dutch. :mrgreen:
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Re: Thoughts on a challenge/experiment- The Free and Legal Challenge

Postby iguanamon » Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:42 pm

Elenia wrote:I've been purposefully staying away from most of the challenges just because they don't work for me. This has high potential to end up a bust, too, but I'm envisaging myself listening to city books stories in portuguese with the french up to help me a long, casting myself at the wall of DLI Portuguese Basic Course (if I can ever get DLI to work for me) and finally jumping in to the language.
In short - if it's happening, I'm in!

I would probably go a little easier and start with the Deutsche Welle Radionovelas Learning By Ear. I started with Queres que te conte mais? Fábulas africanas para uma cultura de paz- African Fables. They're also available in English, French, plus Swahili and Hausa if you're feeling adventurous. The radionovelas have downloadable mp3's and pdf transcripts in the languages. There are a bunch of them with close to a hundred hours' worth of content in some languages. The language is not at a super high level but it is native level. The subject matter varies from practical, health related issues to cultural matters, and problems faced by young people coming of age in Africa. Welcome to Portuguese!
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Wed Feb 21, 2018 6:39 pm

Soooooo, not to sound too keen, but are we good to go? If not, I can wait; I definitely haven't already been collecting material... :roll:

Oh, also, is there a timeframe for this? At least for the A2 test, I mean.

Thanks! I'm sure there'll be no more questions... :lol:
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby Spoonary » Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:14 pm

Yeah, I'm in too. As I have already spent money on a few ebooks in German, that's out, so I'm going to use this challenge as an excuse to start modern Greek. :P I'm going for the pure FL challenge, as I doubt my local library will have anything for this language.

*runs off to find resources*
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby iguanamon » Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:16 pm

LunaMoonsilver wrote:Soooooo, not to sound too keen, but are we good to go? If not, I can wait; I definitely haven't already been collecting material... :roll:
Oh, also, is there a timeframe for this? At least for the A2 test, I mean.
Thanks! I'm sure there'll be no more questions... :lol:

Yep, it's on. I've edited the first post which contains the rules for most of the challenge. I'll post a separate "rules post" later. If you're doing the "Free and Legal Challenge With Swap Exception" see the post below rdearman's.

For now, read the first post and tell us which challenge variant you want to do and which language. You have nine months to reach A2, 15 months to reach B1 (if you want), and 24 months to get to B2 which, I think is reasonable. I may tweak this a little more depending on feedback from participants. You have all the time in the world to reach C1/C2, no time limit for C1/C2. Participants can jump in at any time between now and the end of the year. The time clock starts ticking when they declare they're in. Looking forward to seeing what you've chosen and what you'll use to get there, LunaMoonsilver. You're our first participant! Since "Free and Legal Challenge" is a lot of writing, you can call it the FLC.
Variants-
Pure FLC- All internet based, no library, no illegal downloads or streaming including illegally uploaded youtube videos.
Library FLC- if any library materials are used
Swap Exception FLC- rdearman's idea of swapping something for materials- no money involved- we'll see how this plays out- the jury's still out on this one :). There's abuse potential here.
Super FLC- plus either "pure", "library" or "swap": take language to B1 in 15 months
Super Duper FLC- - "pure", "library" or "swap": take language to B2 in 24 months
Any successful Super or Super Duper challenge also gets credit for A2 and B1.
No Way In Hades You Can Do This At All, Yes This Means YOU!, FLC
Learn the language to C1/C2. I won't even bother putting a time limit here.
"Irrationally Exuberant" Adult Monolingual FLC
Do any of the above with two or more languages simultaneously. Same time limits apply.
The time clock starts from when you start. Good Luck! If I can help, let me know.
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:38 pm

Amazing! I'm semi-caught between two languages: I definitely want to do Polish, which I've previously studied about two hours of over the last year (I know how to say sorry/excuse me/hello but that's it). I'm also pretty sure I'm going to try Mongolian too (for laughs) but with the caveat that if I have to drop one of the languages early, Mongolian will be the one to go.

I'm aiming to do the pure FLC (because I'm pretty sure my library charges for language courses anyway and definitely does for interlibrary loans, so it's essentially moot) and I guess I'll try and get to A2 and then see if I want to keep going? B2 would obvs be the dream but I maybe need to chill about this a little.

Definitely biting off more than I can chew but ooooh I'm excited to see how this goes! :D Gonna add a post to my log later, too.
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby iguanamon » Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:55 pm

Welcome, LunaMoonsilver and Spoonary! Wow, two Pure FLC participants! LunaMoonsilver, if you do Mongolian too at the same time, I'll have to come up with a new variant. How does "Double FLC for Experienced Learners sound"? Or "What Am I Thinking Taking This On FLC!"?

I met a Polish couple the other day here and I downloaded the rather substantial and thorough (though 49 years old) DLI Polish Basic Course (copyright free) from ERIC. There's no audio. I used the Haitian Creole course successfully without audio. You're going to have to get creative with this. Misja Kraków is a free introductory course from Deutsche Welle. I'm curious about both! Maybe Misja Kraków can help to teach you pronunciation that the DLI course without audio is missing.

Modern Greek, I do know about the Greek by Radio (Study Guide) course. The free and legal audio files are here Learn Greek Online.

I'm eager to see what you all come up with. Remember to also "think outside the box"- more on this later.
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Re: Thoughts on a challenge/experiment- The Free and Legal Challenge

Postby Eceec » Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:09 pm

Saw this last night and I have been thinking about it since then. As someone who really loves the open source movement in software and 'free' software I absolutely adore the idea of this challenge. I know I should push forward 100% with my Portuguese, but this challenge is way too interesting to NOT try! I think it would be interesting not only to see if it can be done, but if people documented all of the free and legal resources available to them and to rate and review their usefulness. That way we could hope to make it easier for others to find in the future.

I could also dream large and hope that maybe people would being willing to improve existing public domain/open source material and/or create their own. Maybe someone finds a public domain coursebook that they really love and they make a revised edition with the help of friendly native speakers, other freely usable sources, etc. Maybe it is as small as adding vocab for modern technology. It can be as simple or complicated as the person wants to make and share for free! However people should be upfront with the limitations and be willing to make corrections.

Of course, those are just my ideologies talking and beyond the scope of the actual challenge!

If I am going to join, I will be looking at either Japanese or Chinese, but I am gonna have to think about it more. I studied Japanese 3-4 years ago self study, but I have forgotten almost everything. It would be extremely generous to say I was A1, maybe I knew 200 kanji but I was completely silent and never really understood anything.
Chinese on the other hand I have never studied. I know maybe five words from my former co-workers. I have already been looking for free resources for Chinese. Will come back after I have thought about it some more, but I can offer some free resources for Brazilian Portuguese.

http://linguadagente.coerll.utexas.edu/ COERLL has a large number of different projects available for free online, Língua da gente is probably my most used. Here is all of them http://coerll.utexas.edu/brazilpod/

obviously the usual suspects: Duolingo and Clozemaster.

More generally they have a site about people who are leading the open education in language learning and there might be some good info here for people. http://sites.la.utexas.edu/voices/ . Most relevant to Chinese is this site which links to a bunch of other open education resources for Chinese https://sites.la.utexas.edu/chinese/

Found this has well, it seems to be a database of resources for teachers: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials ... ews=false&

If the link doesn't work, you can do to the main website and browse all material and then go Humanities>World Languages. They even has a section on Less Commonly Taught Languages! Once you get to your language, you can search by material type, open (access) textbooks might be the most interesting for us, especially in the beginning!

Here is another http://loro.open.ac.uk/
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:34 pm

iguanamon wrote:Welcome, LunaMoonsilver and Spoonary! Wow, two Pure FLC participants! LunaMoonsilver, if you do Mongolian too at the same time, I'll have to come up with a new variant. How does "Double FLC for Experienced Learners sound"? Or "What Am I Thinking Taking This On FLC!"?

I met a Polish couple the other day here and I downloaded the rather substantial and thorough (though 49 years old) DLI Polish Basic Course (copyright free) from ERIC. There's no audio. I used the Haitian Creole course successfully without audio. You're going to have to get creative with this. Misja Kraków is a free introductory course from Deutsche Welle. I'm curious about both! Maybe Misja Kraków can help to teach you pronunciation that the DLI course without audio is missing.


"What Am I Thinking" is quite literally my real-life mantra (I seem to mutter it to myself enough!) :lol:

Thanks for the links, too--that DLI Basic course looks amazingly useful!
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Re: The Free and Legal Challenge- Discussion

Postby rdearman » Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:07 pm

Ok. I have a load of DVD s which I bought before and can't use for subs2srs. Can't copy the library DVD and can't buy more so subs2srs is out of the picture. So this is more challenging for resources than I had initially thought. BTW people check "the master list of resources" there are open text books for many languages including a French 600+ pager from a university in California and many other treasures.

We have the stuff here on the forum you need already compiled by our resident fox.
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