The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge - Sign Up and Discussion

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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kanewai
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby kanewai » Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:11 pm

Has it only been seven days? This is definitely going to be more of a challenge than I thought. Still on track for Spanish and German. Early impressions:

- Thirty minutes is a lot longer than I realized. Usually my goals are along the lines of "read the next chapter" or "do another lesson." Those might take me an hour, but that includes lots of breaks to feed the cat, grab a drink, let the cat outside, play a video game on my phone, let the cat back inside, etc. For this challenge I've been setting the timer for 30 minutes and trying to study without a break. And ignoring the dang cat.

- I've had a tendency in recent years to rush through Assimil lessons. I took the 'passive' wave a bit too far. It's been super useful to actually work on each lesson slowly & stretch it out over thirty minutes. I re-listen to it more, I write out the answers to the exercises and do them over if I make a mistake ... it's the way I originally did Assimil, and now I remember why this course is so useful.

- I still don't have a game plan for when I travel.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby Adrianslont » Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:59 pm

kanewai wrote:Has it only been seven days? This is definitely going to be more of a challenge than I thought. Still on track for Spanish and German. Early impressions:

- Thirty minutes is a lot longer than I realized. Usually my goals are along the lines of "read the next chapter" or "do another lesson." Those might take me an hour, but that includes lots of breaks to feed the cat, grab a drink, let the cat outside, play a video game on my phone, let the cat back inside, etc. For this challenge I've been setting the timer for 30 minutes and trying to study without a break. And ignoring the dang cat.

- I've had a tendency in recent years to rush through Assimil lessons. I took the 'passive' wave a bit too far. It's been super useful to actually work on each lesson slowly & stretch it out over thirty minutes. I re-listen to it more, I write out the answers to the exercises and do them over if I make a mistake ... it's the way I originally did Assimil, and now I remember why this course is so useful.

- I still don't have a game plan for when I travel.

The thirty minute timer and the more carefull completion of your Assimil lessons is an interesting and positive side effect. It will be interesting to see how much benefit that brings you over time.

I’m really good at ignoring my cat.

If you develop a game plan for travelling, I’d love to hear about it. I’m worried about next month when I will be travelling - I’ll be travelling with friends so it will be harder to find time.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:16 pm

Over the last 3 days my family and I have been moving out of our house.

Day 1 (of the move)- putting everything in every room into boxes and placing them in the lounge room and garage to be sent off in different directions. I had not slept well the night before, planned to get up early to do my 90 minutes of study (30min x 3 languages). That didn't happen. I tried to put my headphones in and listen to an audio book but the kids would come and talk to me, so I thought, that won't work. The evening arrived after a day of hard work and I was sooooo tired. I was thinking of not studying, but I didn't- I did study! I got through all 3 x 30min and got to sleep around 1 am (during my French 30 min I was nodding off occasionally, so had to extend it slight to allow for the loss of focus).

Day 2 of the move - all the boxes begin to be shipped out (some to storage), the house gets cleaned, the trailer gets full and two cars (all this while constantly battling with 2 children - don't touch that, don't do that, don't eat that, stop that, don't hit your brother, and so on). I was wise on day 2 - 30 min Arabic on the drive to my in laws where we're staying for the week (we've managed to cut back our time there as we'll be house-sitting elsewhere after one week), 30 minutes French reading to my daughter before bed - I asked my wife that I be the one reading to the children on that evening as I couldn't foresee me studying any other way that day. 30 minutes of silent Dutch study on my phone as the ipad was flat and my books somewhere too hard to get to. Like French the night before, I was nodding off but even worse this time, so I extended by somewhere between 5 and 10 min.

Day 3 of the move (yesterday). I was on the road more as I had to do two trips between our house in the in-laws (trailer and car full of things). Driving a little slower than usual to ensure I got 30 minutes of language learning done in each direction. Managed to tick off all three and a little extra for Dutch at the end. But boy, I under-estimated the day. I thought we'd get through it in reasonable time. I didn't get home with a tightly packed trailer and full car load until 10pm and I had work at 7.30 am the next day, for which I was now not 25 min away from, but now an hour.

So, it's quiet for a little, I'm at work and I'm so glad I made it through the last three days. Today and for the coming week, as we run things to the rubbish dump, our storage, and other locations I'll still have to plan carefully, but at least on work days, now I have an hour of travel each way, so no stress getting study done once I get to our new temporary home, as there'll be very little time.

If I can do that, you can too! (if you want to, and if you're actually me, that is you have blatantly stolen my body and my mind and as I type this I'm not even really me, i'm you and you're trying to steal all the credit while pretending to be me! - you see what moving does!). No lost days for me.... yet!
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:17 pm

rdearman wrote:I'm dropping out of this challenge. Not because I haven't been able to do it, but simply because other studies suffer because I have to do Mandarin. Previously I was rotating between 5 studies doing 20 minutes each. Some days I only managed to do 2-3 study periods, but I could even it up over the next couple of days. But being forced to always keep one in the rotation permanently doesn't give me the flexibility to keep things going more or less consistently with the others. Plus the extra 10 minutes sucks away half the time which could have been used on something else. So, I'm dropping out with a score of 5.

Good luck everyone.


It's a shame to see you go rdearman, but perfectly understandable. Good luck with your studies too!
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Jan 07, 2019 11:27 pm

Spoonary wrote:Well, I failed. I didn't do any studying on Saturday because I just didn't want to. :? According to the rules, I guess that takes me from a streak of 4 to -3 (after subtracting 7 points). For now I am going to continue, but I can see myself having other days like yesterday where I just don't feel like doing anything...


Well, this makes sense. If you foresee you continuing to have days off Spoonary, then perhaps see how you go with the challenge and if you still remain more consistent than what you would've without the challenge, then perhaps it is still worthwhile to you even if you end up with a dismal score in the end.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby Spoonary » Mon Jan 07, 2019 11:35 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:
Spoonary wrote:Well, I failed. I didn't do any studying on Saturday because I just didn't want to. :? According to the rules, I guess that takes me from a streak of 4 to -3 (after subtracting 7 points). For now I am going to continue, but I can see myself having other days like yesterday where I just don't feel like doing anything...


Well, this makes sense. If you foresee you continuing to have days off Spoonary, then perhaps see how you go with the challenge and if you still remain more consistent than what you would've without the challenge, then perhaps it is still worthwhile to you even if you end up with a dismal score in the end.

Yeah, exactly. I think if I have many more days off I will just give up the challenge, but for now I think I'm ok :)
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Jan 07, 2019 11:56 pm

Spoonary wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:
Spoonary wrote:Well, I failed. I didn't do any studying on Saturday because I just didn't want to. :? According to the rules, I guess that takes me from a streak of 4 to -3 (after subtracting 7 points). For now I am going to continue, but I can see myself having other days like yesterday where I just don't feel like doing anything...


Well, this makes sense. If you foresee you continuing to have days off Spoonary, then perhaps see how you go with the challenge and if you still remain more consistent than what you would've without the challenge, then perhaps it is still worthwhile to you even if you end up with a dismal score in the end.

Yeah, exactly. I think if I have many more days off I will just give up the challenge, but for now I think I'm ok :)


Well, good luck all the same. I do hope you do well, but don't stress if you need to drop out. It's not failing, it's just a change of plan and the challenge in that case may not suit you. Either way, hang in there, you're still learning, all is well. As rdearman has illustrated it may be that this challenge just isn't suited to some people - the way they study and prefer to have days off, or the amount of time required doesn't work for them.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby Fenderman » Tue Jan 08, 2019 2:03 am

The first week is finished and I’m fairly happy with my results so far since I averaged an hour and fifteen minutes of studying per day. If I can keep near that average for the rest of year I finally might start getting in the B1- B2 range that I’ve lacked consistency to achieve in the past.

One week down and 51 to go!
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby lingua » Tue Jan 08, 2019 3:44 am

tomgosse wrote:
tomgosse wrote:Finished day 7 out of 365. Only 358 to go! Yeah!


Same here. Averaging 104 minutes a day although today isn't complete yet.

For traveling, I'd suggest reading or listening to podcasts or audiobooks. I assume some podcasts are downloadable to a mobile device. I plan to read for my 30 minutes a day during vacation.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby coldrainwater » Tue Jan 08, 2019 4:07 am

I am also happy with my results after week one and feel being a part of the challenge is helping me to broaden my resource base for the new year. For those of you concerned about missed days or travel and looking for suggestions, I can share what has worked well for me in 2018. Due to how our vacation policy is structured at work, I took quite a bit of travel time off in Q4 of 2018. To the best of my recollection, I didn't miss any study days since I use listening practice for study. I have a pair of bluetooth headphones (Mpow 059) that I hook up to my smartphone and keep the headphones with me almost all the time, preloading audio-only resources, normally podcasts and audiobooks, so that I do not run out of content. I also have books and video content loaded separately but consider them secondary when crunch time hits. Some of my audio resources are definitely highly resilient to both distraction and widely varied life circumstance (for example super-long work hours, anxiety, depression, stress, etc), which is what ensures study time will happen.
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