Super Challenge: questions and discussion

[jeffers]

I've shared my tracking spreadsheet further up, but here's a new link. It is an Excel sheet, and unfortunately some features only work in the app. However, if you save it to your OneDrive you can update it on your phone, the web, etc.

Viewing link:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!Au7QtoKh6LiuiyB3pQ1OuQWbb2AI?e=h9aGYk
You will need to make your own copy once you view it. Basically, choose the option to save a copy.

I had planned to make a couple updates, but didn't get around to it:

• The needles are too sensitive at the beginning of the challenge, and not sensitive enough at the end. Basically, if you're a few pages above or below at the start, where it makes little difference, the needle can be buried to the right or left. And at the end, if you're 10% behind it doesn't look too bad, even though in the final weeks 10% behind would be quite a problem. I think to do that the formula would need to be based on something like the amount of task left compared inversely to the amount of time remaining. Meh.
• The timeline bar at the top wasn't working in the second half of the challenge, but I never investigated.

Here's what the dashboard looks like:

Screenshot 2024-05-02 102523.png

Just add pages to reading tabs or minutes to the film tabs. The value of having % is that you can update books while you're reading them, or you can put 200% if you read it twice. Here's my Hindi book page, for example:

Screenshot 2024-05-02 102802.png

[Severine]

I've shared my tracking spreadsheet further up, but here's a new link. It is an Excel sheet, and unfortunately some features only work in the app. However, if you save it to your OneDrive you can update it on your phone, the web, etc.

Viewing link:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!Au7QtoKh6LiuiyB3pQ1OuQWbb2AI?e=h9aGYk
You will need to make your own copy once you view it. Basically, choose the option to save a copy.

That is an absolute delight of a spreadsheet. Thank you for sharing it! I am tracking all of the same data, but stylistically I've been slumming it with a simple table and a bit of conditional formatting. No longer! Now I too shall have a spiffy data dashboard.

I'm just going to leave this here for you, without comment:
https://fmworldcup.com/excel-esports/microsoft-excel-world-championship/

[jeffers]

I've made a separate thread about Storyweaver, but figured some people who are taking part in the SC might have missed it. Storyweaver is a free reading website made by Pratham Books in India. They have thousands of children's books in hundreds of languages, arranged in four levels, so it should be quite useful for people at A0-A2 levels. All are open source and can be read online or downloaded as a pdf or epub. You can even edit them, and add your own translations.

https://storyweaver.org.in/en/

Here's the original thread, if you want to discuss the site and its features: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=20231

[Teango]

I'd really like to join you guys for the Super Challenge this year. And after months of fighting colds and relative inactivity on the forum, it's just what the doctor ordered!

However, I'm also set to embark on a bit of a language odyssey and grand experimentation over the next 20 months, which will most likely entail a lot of languages. With limited time and energy on my hands, I certainly won't be able to complete a challenge (or even half challenge) for each and every single one, and am far from certain which of the languages I've selected will dominate more than others at this point.

Having noticed in the rules that you can set up Super Challenges for whole "language families", I was wondering if I could register with all of the languages I intend to study en masse, and watch the equivalent of 100 films and read the equivalent of 100 books in total?

[NantokaHito]

Hello all. I only went back a few pages ago excuse me if this has been answered elsewhere, but are there plans for new discussion threads for the 2024-25 super challenge?

I'm also curious if someone plans to make a new book club. It sounds like a lot of fun.

[stell]

Hello all. I only went back a few pages ago excuse me if this has been answered elsewhere, but are there plans for new discussion threads for the 2024-25 super challenge?

I'm also curious if someone plans to make a new book club. It sounds like a lot of fun.

A lot of the discussion tends to happen in logs! If you go to the Language Log section of the forum, you'll find that many people are logging their Super Challenge progress. Creating a log of your own, reading other people's logs and responding to messages is a great way to engage with other people who are doing the Super Challenge.

As for a book club...I was part of a Spanish book club here a few years ago. It fizzled out after a few months. Anyone who wants to could start a book club or a "read along" just by posting a message and seeing if people are interested in joining. What are you interested in?

[NantokaHito]

As for a book club...I was part of a Spanish book club here a few years ago. It fizzled out after a few months. Anyone who wants to could start a book club or a "read along" just by posting a message and seeing if people are interested in joining. What are you interested in?

What caught my eye actually was one of the responses on the first page of this discussion thread about a super challenge book club, where people try to read the same book across several languages. I understand it can be had to keep people organized for an extended period, I just wasn't sure if it was a super challenge tradition!

[dabedu]

Hey, how would you guys go about calculating pages for languages that use a non-Latin script? I'm doing the Super Challenge in Japanese, which doesn't have a clear delineation of word boundaries like English has with spaces, but I'd like to have a good way of counting things like newspaper articles. Right now, I'm tempted to use 400 characters (the number of characters on one page of standard genkō yōshi manuscript paper) as a page equivalent, but I was curious if there were any established standards.

[rdearman]

Hey, how would you guys go about calculating pages for a languages that use a non-Latin script? I'm doing the Super Challenge in Japanese, which doesn't clearly delineate word boundaries like spaces do in English, but I'd like to have a good way of counting things like newspaper articles. Right now, I'm tempted to use 400 characters (the number of characters on one page of standard genkō yōshi manuscript paper) as a page equivalent, but I was curious if there are any established standards.

I think 300-600 characters was the rule, but my memory isn't as reliable as it used to be. But I figure your 400 characters is legit.

[NantokaHito]

Anyone who wants to could start a book club or a "read along" just by posting a message and seeing if people are interested in joining. What are you interested in?

As a follow-up thought, if I did make a book club post, do you (or anyone who cares to weigh in) think it would fit better in the super challenge forum or the general discussion forum?

I think I'd be interested in hosting this but I'm not the most familiar with the forum logistics.