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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Adrianslont
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby Adrianslont » Thu Jan 03, 2019 5:54 am

lavengro wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:...
Whoever makes it the furtherest through the year, wins.
...

I am mindful of the fact that no actual prize has been designated for the winner. I note Brun Ugle may have mentioned something about pizza in the 2019 New Year's Resolution thread. Accordingly, if when I win this challenge, I am giving myself a pizza. I am riding the wave of one day's worth of momentum already in this challege and feeling pretty good about my chances. Victory, and a pizza, are mine!

So if everyone falls in a heap in March I could win early and not have to study any more! Just eat pizza and feel like my countryman Steven Bradbury
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:07 am

Serpent wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:Sounds reasonable, English will just be in both your Generic group and separate. No probs.
Great! Then my starting date is January 1st :)


I am expecting a long list, but could you let me know please, Serpent, your languages for the Generic group
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby Iceberg » Thu Jan 03, 2019 12:29 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:LIST OF COMPETITORS

Commencing 02.01.2019: (1 competitor)
Cavesa - German
ilolwhat - German


Unless Cavesa and ilolwhat are the same persons, I think there is an error here. :D . 2 competitors.


I'm tempted to join this challenge to create a habit to study on the weekends. I will think and announce here soon.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby Serpent » Thu Jan 03, 2019 7:28 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:I am expecting a long list, but could you let me know please, Serpent, your languages for the Generic group
wait, is it obligatory?
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby kanewai » Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:37 pm

Well, it didn't take me long to run into trouble!

Here's what I got with Coffee Break German:

Intro - I skipped it.

Lesson 1, 20 minutes: We had a long introduction to the hosts, in English. We learned hello, yes, no, it is good, and good morning. Then we met Julia, who talked about German culture (in English). Then we met Kristina, who talked about her love of German grammar (also in English). Then we reviewed the words for yes, no, good, etc.

Lesson 2. 20 minutes. I thought maybe the podcast would start now, but it was still 80% English, with maybe five or six new words.

In 40 minutes I got maybe 5 minutes of content. I can't honestly consider this as counting in any way shape or form. Luckily I have Assimil at home and was able to to work on that for 30 minutes each afternoon. And that will be fine for now - but will get challenging on nights where I'm tired, or out with friends, or when I'm on the road. We'll see.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby rdearman » Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:50 pm

I just found Coffee Break Italian on Spotify tonight and had the same experience. I skipped forward to the end of the first season and they were still introducing words for coffee. So I'll be ignoring that. :)
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:19 am

Serpent wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:I am expecting a long list, but could you let me know please, Serpent, your languages for the Generic group
wait, is it obligatory?


It was at one point, but now, no, not really, as you can add and remove languages as you go, it’s really just to make the list pretty. If you’d like to decline or name a handful instead, or some kind of estimation, it’s your choice, it won’t affect your ability to participate. Perhaps you could group or number them? - romance languages, germanic languages, 10 languages from the nordic, germanic, slavic groups, up to you.
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:24 am

Iceberg wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:LIST OF COMPETITORS

Commencing 02.01.2019: (1 competitor)
Cavesa - German
ilolwhat - German


Unless Cavesa and ilolwhat are the same persons, I think there is an error here. :D . 2 competitors.


I'm tempted to join this challenge to create a habit to study on the weekends. I will think and announce here soon.


Thanks Iceberg, and good luck with the thinking!
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:38 am

kanewai wrote:Well, it didn't take me long to run into trouble!

Here's what I got with Coffee Break German:

Intro - I skipped it.

Lesson 1, 20 minutes: We had a long introduction to the hosts, in English. We learned hello, yes, no, it is good, and good morning. Then we met Julia, who talked about German culture (in English). Then we met Kristina, who talked about her love of German grammar (also in English). Then we reviewed the words for yes, no, good, etc.

Lesson 2. 20 minutes. I thought maybe the podcast would start now, but it was still 80% English, with maybe five or six new words.

In 40 minutes I got maybe 5 minutes of content. I can't honestly consider this as counting in any way shape or form. Luckily I have Assimil at home and was able to to work on that for 30 minutes each afternoon. And that will be fine for now - but will get challenging on nights where I'm tired, or out with friends, or when I'm on the road. We'll see.


My first session and a bit of Arabic was in French (the base language of the course I’ve just begun using), all on how to approach the course, different types of Arabic etc.

I’m going to add a rule that if you do a session of learning for language X but you hear/use/read language Y or Z as the base language, instructions or narration and it’s an integral part of the content, even if your 30 minutes included explanations in (an)other language(s) to make use of the content, this still counts towards language X. Otherwise it becomes too hard to calculate and unfair on the learner putting time aside, sticking to their routine, but being punished for it.

It would then become a real grey area as so much content is translated (Assimil for example), you’d litterally have to ignore the content or stop and start a timer every time you referred to content in another language.. in fact you’d then even have trouble with dictionaries. Too hard to draw the line and too hard on the learner.

On the other hand if you seek out bilingual movies because you’re trying to avoid your target language, well that’s a different story, imo. If you have a movie with 50 minutes of English and 25 minutes of Spanish and Spanish is your target language, the one you have signed up for in this challenge, well you can only count 25 minutes.

If you watch movies in your target language with subtitles in another language for your reference, no problem, as long as you are either hearing the target language, or reading it.

rdearman wrote:I just found Coffee Break Italian on Spotify tonight and had the same experience. I skipped forward to the end of the first season and they were still introducing words for coffee. So I'll be ignoring that. :)


In addtion to my above reply, I just add (not to rdearman specifically, but anyone), just try to use common sense and avoid something full of narration in English or another language which isn’t your target language if it’s superfluous to your language learning level. I mean, if you want to use content full of English narration, go ahead, but is it going to be helpful to your learning? I guess weight it up yourself. An Assimil course might be full of another language for comparison, but it’s still highly useful. Coffee break Italian would be worthless for someone already at the C1 level. It’s all good judgement and fairness. If you are C1 and feel coffee break Italian is a good way to review some vocabulary and it works for you, I’m not going to argue with it (I’m using a pretty easy ‘advanced’ course right now for French which is full of English explanations, but it’s what I like to use).

All in all there’ll be NO loss of time for any narration/instructions in a langauge other than your target (announced) language(s).
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Re: The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge

Postby kanewai » Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:13 am

I think there's always going to be a level of native-language instruction at the beginning level. I don't even try and account for that. When Mr. Pimsleur asks me to ask the lady if she wants a drink (which he does in every single course), I figure I'm still focused on the target language even if half of the lesson is English. It's these podcasts where the native language dominates that don't work for me. My brain never switches over into any type of 'active' language acquisition mode.

I ran into the same issue with films for the super challenge. I got so frustrated with those French movies that had one line of dialogue for every ten minutes of the hero staring wistfully out to sea. I never logged those.

Caveat: I'm not looking for a rule clarification here! I think you can drive yourself crazy trying to cover every nuance. I'm thinking more about what feels like a solid 30-minutes for myself personally.
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