Over at HTLAL they have 20-month challenges: read 100 books and watch 100 movies (videos) in your target language. There are some nuances regarding how long a book or a movie should be, and if your book is not long enough you can read it again to get to a full book and so on. 100 books and 100 movies sound like a lot, until you remember you have 20 months. Then, thinking about it some more, you realize 100 books and 100 movies ARE a lot. They also have six-week challenges.
Er, I’m not suggesting one takes up the HTLAL challenge. My post is just another suggestion for here, like Chris’s 365-day suggestion. Nor need it be official. Folks who might be interested can take it up among themselves.
I was thinking a little bit about the challenge goals, and I realized I’m going to focus on things within my control. Making goals such as know words and having a certain level of reading or speaking ability is out of my control. What I can control is my actions, my activity level, lingqing, reading and listening and writing a bit. If the words stick great, if not I can’t control that and in my opinion will only stress a person out and be counter production to language learning.
One more thing. This challenge reminds me of working out. You can put in the time but literally have no control over how strong or fit you will become. I once was challenged by a friend of mine to bench press 300 lbs in one year. After 3 months I was at around 260 and my shoulders were starting to bother me, so I gave up. You really need to pace yourself, I think language learning isn’t really that different.
Nate, our known words number is more of an activity meter, since it really measures the amount of words you have read and not saved. It is more of a measure of your reading activity. However, from my experience, since these are words that you either learned and moved to known, or words that you learned incidentally and no longer felt that you needed to save, it is fairly accurate measurement of the growth of your vocabulary. As the number of New Words in new lessons declines, you understand more and more,
Did it take 9 months to heal your shoulder injuries? Because if you got to 260lbs in 3 months, which is damn impressive (to me), I can’t imagine how you couldn’t have hit a clean 300 by the end of the year.
Lol @ chris. I’m just a naturally strong ol’ country boy (living in the city now). I could do 230 at the beginning. Normally I can do around 220 give or take 10 lbs if I’m healthy. No it didn’t take that long to heal, I just stopped doing “pushing” excises. I saw my chiropractor and he said my shoulder was out of whack, my front delts where way too strong in comparison to my rear delts, causing an imbalance. I’m older and wiser now.
Ah 'dem rear delts…the least-loved muscle of almost all bodybuilders and weight-trainers…
Sad to say I’m having the exact some problem myself right now. Got some impingement action going on which really needs to be sorted out. Unfortunately I’m neither old nor wise, so…
Chris, how long have you been training? I’ve had plenty of issues with my shoulder over the years, and honestly it’s still not perfect, but I have figured out how to keep it healthy enough to continue training and avoid taking time off. What have you been doing for it? Before I type out an essay give me an idea whats going on and how you’ve been trying to rehab it and I’ll give my experience with getting past an iffy shoulder.
