Super Challenge: questions and discussion

[jeff_lindqvist]

I suppose that's an option which appears after a member has been active enough. (I don't know the details.)

[rdearman]

Cannot edit signature for progress bar

I am trying to create a progress bar for the challenge. After spending a lot of time searching the forum I found instructions saying that I need to go to my user control panel, and under the profile tab, select the edit signature tab. However, I do not have the option to edit signature. How do I get that? Thanks!

This is a participating thing. The more you participate in the forum and discussions the more you are permitted to do.

EDIT: BTW, just editing the same post over and over doesn't count towards your participation score.

[rdearman]

Well, I'm not young.

You might know about these, but we used to have these things made out of dead trees. They would print words on these sheets of dead wood and we would read them. I've done 4-5 Super Challenges in French and Italian. I would beg, borrow, but not steal as many of these dead tree devices as I could get, and I would read them. I only looked up words when I couldn't figure them out in context, and if they showed up a couple of times I would write the translation in the margin (this is a small space on the dead tree sheets where you could write).

I used to use the 25-1 rule, which means every 25th page I would look up every single word I didn't know, and sometimes I added it to anki, sometimes not. As I got better at the language and knew more words, I changed the rule to 50-1.

I never used any electronic books if I could avoid it, but did sometimes use a kindle. I never used bilingual books either, since only 50% of the book counts toward the challenge!

[emk]

There's an article on the wiki that reminds me of how many options there are for reading a target language book: reading silently vs. aloud; monolingual vs. bilingual texts; reading with the eyes and ears at the same time; etc.

I think the 1-in-25 rule mentioned by rdearman is brilliant. A huge portion of the benefit of the Super Challenge seems to come from the sheer volume. Volume helps take stuff you already know—or which you can puzzle out—and consolidates it into automatic knowledge. But that occasional deep dive provides a chance to figure out more complicated things.

For my current Challenge, I'm starting with a bilingual book, because I'm trying to read real adult books very early in the learning process. And bilingual books can allow reading at a surprisingly low level. But there's a lot to be said for using graded readers or easy children's books, if you can find them.

After that, my next step is likely to be graphic novels. Graphic novels are amazing for French, because you have so many different choices in so many different genres, and there are plenty of actual literary quality. In Spanish, I'll probably try Blacksad, a noir graphic novel starring an anthropomorphic cat.

After a few books, an ereader with a pop-up dictionary should get easier. Especially if I read a couple of books in Spanish that I already know very well in English.

Really, the most important thing about a reading method is that it makes you want to read books! Everything else is secondary to that.

[cito]

If I wanted to do Latin, could my half challenge just be 100 books? Also, if I did Greek, could I combine Modern and Ancient?

[jeffers]

If I wanted to do Latin, could my half challenge just be 100 books? Also, if I did Greek, could I combine Modern and Ancient?

People have done the book side only, that's no issue. As regards ancient and modern Greek, I don't see why not. They're closer together than a language family, which has been allowed for a long time.

[cito]

If I wanted to do Latin, could my half challenge just be 100 books? Also, if I did Greek, could I combine Modern and Ancient?

People have done the book side only, that's no issue. As regards ancient and modern Greek, I don't see why not. They're closer together than a language family, which has been allowed for a long time.

Awesome. Also, do podcasts count as movies or books?

[emk]

Awesome. Also, do podcasts count as movies or books?

To oversimplify things a bit, here's my understanding of the rules:

1. You can only count a given reading/viewing once.
2. If you're actively listening to audio in your target language with your full attention, and not just leaving it on in the background, then you can count it as watching/listening.
3. If you're actively reading in your target language, then you can count it as reading. If text is in an unusual format, you can always fall back to "250 words in the target language = 1 page".

So let's say I was listening to Radio Ambulante, and reading along with the excellent transcript they provide. I could count this as either watching or reading, but not both. But if went through the episode a second time, then I could count it as the other.

And when in doubt, use common sense.

[jeffers]

If I wanted to do Latin, could my half challenge just be 100 books? Also, if I did Greek, could I combine Modern and Ancient?

People have done the book side only, that's no issue. As regards ancient and modern Greek, I don't see why not. They're closer together than a language family, which has been allowed for a long time.

Awesome. Also, do podcasts count as movies or books?

What he (emk) said. And any audio falls under the film side of the challenge.

[kaffesugen get]

I forked and updated the bot and put it on my GitHub page. I wrote a system for updates from Mastodon and via email, since Twitter stopped working. Although I think I could probably resign up for a twitter dev account. The original died when Elon took over and changed the rules on the dev accounts so the account which surrilix opened was shutdown.

I will try to start it up again before May and test the Mastodon part. Email is fairly flaky because the responses hit spam filters and get blocked, although the email did work when sent to my email server, you just didn't get a response and can't tell that it worked. I didn't do a web front end, but in hindsight this would have been the better option. I really should have done this before I started the new job!

Have you had any opportunity to look at the Mastodon bot? I find this kind of tracking useful, otherwise I forget to log stuff. It would also give me an incentive to create a Mastodon account.