A language learners’ forum

Serpent wrote:

zKing wrote:As stated in the rules these are really ~22/44 mins without commercials

Was this mentioned explicitly anywhere?
I honestly think if the commercials are in your target language (at least subtitles) and you actually watch them, there's no need to subtract them. Sure, watching random commercials on youtube doesn't really seem to fit the spirit of the challenge (not sure about a 10-minute compilation of commercials), but if you watched TV for 1 hour it doesn't matter how much of this time was occupied by commercials if you did watch them.

Sorry, I wrote this in a confusing way. The DVDs I've ripped my shows from don't have commercials, so they are already either ~22 minutes or ~44 minutes.

But I have another question, why do shorter YouTube videos not count? The vlog channels I tend to watch are usually solid talking and better bang-for-the-buck in spoken language per minute of run time than most TV shows. They are no different than podcasts, really. I mean 90 minutes of talk is 90 minutes of talk, no?

In that sense, I may just measure this as a 9000 minute goal on my side.

zKing wrote:

Serpent wrote:

zKing wrote:As stated in the rules these are really ~22/44 mins without commercials

Was this mentioned explicitly anywhere?
I honestly think if the commercials are in your target language (at least subtitles) and you actually watch them, there's no need to subtract them. Sure, watching random commercials on youtube doesn't really seem to fit the spirit of the challenge (not sure about a 10-minute compilation of commercials), but if you watched TV for 1 hour it doesn't matter how much of this time was occupied by commercials if you did watch them.

Sorry, I wrote this in a confusing way. The DVDs I've ripped my shows from don't have commercials, so they are already either ~22 minutes or ~44 minutes.

But I have another question, why do shorter YouTube videos not count? The vlog channels I tend to watch are usually solid talking and better bang-for-the-buck in spoken language per minute of run time than most TV shows. They are no different than podcasts, really. I mean 90 minutes of talk is 90 minutes of talk, no?

In that sense, I may just measure this as a 9000 minute goal on my side.

I'm being lazy and don't want to look up the rule, but I thought it was only a 10 minute minimum? I dimly remember a change which lowered the amount of time?

rdearman wrote:I'm being lazy and don't want to look up the rule, but I thought it was only a 10 minute minimum? I dimly remember a change which lowered the amount of time?

Yep, that's what it says. I'm really asking... What is the intent of that limitation? The vlogs I watch are anywhere from about 3-15 mins long. And if I watched 30 of the 3 minute ones back to back, I would get far more language input than almost any 90 minute movie. I'm just curious if there is a didactic reason for this limit; I'm not asking to change the rule.

For me personally, I'm already not following the rules by not doing the reading, and I don't plan on using the bot... So it's more of an unofficial challenge for me anyhow. I'm just going to measure 150 hours / 9000 minutes and kind of do my own thing. I'm just curious if there's a logic behind the shorter content exclusion that I'm missing. I do understand that some short YouTube videos could be quite lacking in sustained speech, but I would not watch things that aren't useful for learning like that... And i think there are plenty of movies and TV shows that might have similar issues.

rdearman wrote:I'm being lazy and don't want to look up the rule, but I thought it was only a 10 minute minimum? I dimly remember a change which lowered the amount of time?

Yeah, originally the limit was 15 minutes. It applies to all audio/video content. Although common sense should definitely be used, so if someone makes a long recording/video and posts it as small chunks for whatever reason, you can count it as a 10-minute item (or longer).
Also, I do feel it's fair to be lenient about it if you're already discounting for silence/music/lack of focus. Ie if the recording was 10+ min but you can honestly count only 8-9 min of content, just count them.
The challenge wasn't started by me btw. As you should know by now it was originally about books and movies, but it was cautiously expanded to include some other types of content. The spirit of the challenge isn't to watch 3000 x 3-minute videos, it's to watch/listen to 100 x 90 minutes or 200-300 shorter items. A single 8-minute long item is not a problem, the problem is when all your items are like that.

And we do have many other challenges where every minute counts

Serpent wrote:As you should know by now it was originally about books and movies, but it was cautiously expanded to include some other types of content. The spirit of the challenge isn't to watch 3000 x 3-minute videos, it's to watch/listen to 100 x 90 minutes or 200-300 shorter items. A single 8-minute long item is not a problem, the problem is when all your items are like that.

And we do have many other challenges where every minute counts

Yep, I think I'm just going to change my target to 150 hours (9000 minutes), which is what I'm really after, and not refer to it as a Super Challenge. I'm really coloring outside the lines of this Challenge, so I won't continue to attempt to hammer my square peg into this round hole.

I'd guess this challenge was originally intended to encourage those high beginner/low intermediates who had just finished a lot of text book material, yet feared jumping into native content. The easiest and most direct recommendation: go read a LOT of books and watch a LOT of movies. Simple, easy to understand, relatively easy to implement in most languages and a mostly enjoyable path to get a **** ton of comprehensible input and get someone very comfortable with using native materials (after the initial hours which feel like a trial by fire).
All good stuff.

Like I said, the formal version of the SC doesn't quite match my needs, but I will be doing an informal one "in spirit" with my 150 hours target.

Thanks for the interesting discussion!

Language: English
Challenge: full
Current level: B2
Comments:
I'm afraid books won't be a problem. I have been reading english, and only english, books for the last 5 years at least. But I'm going to need an extra effort to watch so amount of the films. However, come on!!

My badges look nice right now
Those on the left are for watching 2 "films" and reading 2 books in the last 2 weeks, the ones on the right are for a 10-week streak and the bronze one for a 5-week streak. (I'm pretty close to 20 and 10 weeks respectively)

Congratulation!
The badges look fantastic!!

Thank you/Gracias

Serpent wrote:My badges look nice right now
Those on the left are for watching 2 "films" and reading 2 books in the last 2 weeks, the ones on the right are for a 10-week streak and the bronze one for a 5-week streak. (I'm pretty close to 20 and 10 weeks respectively)

sc stats badges.png

I don’t understand how the badges work. I know they are for streaks, but what do the different colors and shapes mean? And why to some people have two badges on some languages? Is there one set for movies and one for books?