I have made two videos explaining the concept of the 90 day challenge. You can find these at my YouTube channel, lingosteve. There is already ample explanation of the principles of the challenge, but I want to make certain points clear. Although I will be making videos almost daily, this is part of my role as head cheerleader, hoping to encourage people to get active with their language learning.
There is, however, no obligation to make videos nor do anything else other than to get very active with the language you are learning. You can share with others as much or as little as you want. We will be tracking the activity level of all participants.
I am also going to try to generate in depth statistics on my activities, beyond what the LingQ statistics show. You are welcome to do the same and to share these with us or not, however you feel.
All of this will become clear once we start. I am not going to touch my Korean until January 15. However I am experimenting with different ways of tracking my activities while studying Russian and Czech. More to come.
You mentioned tracking your activities in your video about this topic. Being retired gives me more leisure for studying languages, but knowing how much time I really do spend would help me better plan the day. What software are you considering? Or I can just wait for the answer until you decide.
The dictation software is built into my Mac. It works very well in five or six languages, going from memory, German Spanish, Italian, French, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.
I’m experimenting with an app called ATracker. I think I’m going to use it. Another app recommended to me by a reader of my diary blog, was Toggl. Both have free versions. I am used to ATracker, so I may just stay with it.
I have only used this tracking softer one day and was very surprised by the results. I discovered first of all that I spend more time on my measuring than I thought, and that having a contractor actually gets you could do more. You might want to see what I wrote on my diary blog, and the graph that I put up on my Profile page here at LingQ. See links below.
"I have only used this tracking softer one day and was very surprised by the results. I discovered first of all that I spend more time on my measuring than I thought, and that having a contractor actually gets you could do more. "
The trouble with the dictation is that you get careless. “softer” should have been “software” and “on my measuring” should have been “on my language learning”, and “contractor” should have been “time tracker”. I mostly works well, so we can get careless.
Good luck with the 90 day challenge, it’s sure to generate a lot of enthusiasm for your followers on lingq, what do you mean when you say, that ye are going to track the activity level of all participants?
I would like to step up my language learning for 90 days but also keep it interesting so I will be watching you very closely:-)
LingQ tracks everyone’s activity level, as you know. You can see this on your, or other members’ profile. I gather (Alex and Galina can give more detailed info) that we will be highlighting the most active participants on a regular basis, and that there will also be some awards to the most active members. Note that this is just about the level of activity.
I would also favour letting participants see how they are doing compared to the average or some norm, but some people here thought this might discourage the less active participants. I didn’t agree of course but then I don’t intend to be in the less active category. I think a gentle nudge in the form of being able to see where we stand versus others is not a bad thing.
I don’t mean we should highlight the stragglers, but that we should enable each participant to see what the average person is doing. Of course, some people have more time available than others. But each person would know that looking at his ranking versus the norm. Anyway we are not doing it.
Ok I see, that would be a good way I think for lingqers to see how they are doing, right now I am not using lingq because I bought myself assimil with ease and am working through that, then I would like to get back to lingq, maybe though I could challenge myself to speak to myself maybe for 10 minutes, for 90 days, just for the challenge!
I’m going to be silently taking part. Like a few others who I have seen commenting, most of what I am doing is outside of lingq. My priority is to read the roughly two dozen books that I have found in various used book stores. I’ve been reading them at a rate of two a weeks, so that should be achievable. My favorite listening resource at this moment, the podcasts from Radio-Canada, does not provide transcripts, so from that end I’m afraid that I’ll be doing this on my own.
If there is to be another 90 day challenge after this one, I’ll mostly likely take part, more or less fully through lingq, in Spanish.
Edit: Just started reading the ‘yearinthelife’ blog. Interesting stuff.
Steve dictated, “The trouble with the dictation is that you get careless. “softer” should have been “software” and “on my measuring” should have been “on my language learning”, and “contractor” should have been “time tracker”. I mostly works well, so we can get careless.”
LOL, sorry Steve but that’s hilarious.
About 12 years ago I broke my left arm badly. Even back then we did everything at work with IM and email and so my wife bought me some dictation software from IBM. This was long before the recent advances in deep learning and while the software was pretty good, it made lots of silly mistakes. I learned really quickly to enunciate and proofread. Luckily for me my coworkers assumed I was on pain meds :))
Re Dictation Software. I could use Apple’s software, I suppose, but do I trust Apple with my data?
Re: Time Trackers
Until recently, my study habits depended solely on LingQ for tracking and for guiding my study time. Now the clock guides me. Latin and Ancient Greek get one hour each, and Norwegian gets approximately two hours. The goal for Norwegian is .8 hours listening and about 2 pages a day from a book lingqing and reading. Latin and Greek get less time because there is unfortunately no listening. I changed to this agenda because I find my focus is more concentrated if the clock guides me rather than the task. So far, in Norwegian anyway, I am meeting my LingQ goals, too. Because there can exist no extensive reading where no extensive readings exist, intensive reading tqkes over in Latin and Greek and achievments such as in words read and lingqs made suffer consequently. All in all, though, clock-watching is working for me.
It’s interesting this discussion of time tracking. I’ve experimented with it in the past, but it’s one of those things that just doesn’t work for me. I’ve been experimenting a lot with various meta-learning concepts, primarily since getting an iPhone a few years ago, but have found that in almost every case the worry of trying to track my time has only ended up distracting me from the actual tasks I’m wanting to do.
One piece of software that I have actually been using with some success is Lift (http://lift.do).
Tonight I sat down with a Japanese interview (shared in the lessons, if you’re interested) that I’d been wanting to read for ages and just read, and read, and read… the most fun I’ve had for ages!
