6 Week Challenge – February 2014 Edition

With the end of January heralding the end of the Tadoku Challenge (which I’m going to talk at more length about on Wednesday), February brings something else our way: the 6 Week Challenge.

It’s really as simple as it seems. You choose a language (though preferably one where you’re below B1 level or, even better, a complete beginner) and try to log as many hours as you can studying it over the next six weeks. It doesn’t mean you have to neglect any other languages you’re learning, either: there’s a twitter bot where you log your time and it will accept times for different languages, though the more time you spend on your target language, the further up you go in the rankings. (There’s more detailed information about using the twitter bot here, too.)

Personally, I enjoy the six week challenges because the short time period means that I actually can focus on just one language quite intensively, but the fact that it is six weeks means that generally, I see a lot of progress because I’m doing the language from a beginner’s (ish) level. I also do like that there’s an element of friendly competition with the rankings – if I find my motivation slipping, then I go and see how much time the person above me has logged and try and get a few minutes more than that.

For this six week challenge, I’ve picked Spanish as my target language. I’m not really a true beginner in Spanish because I studied it in school to GCSE level and then got the equivalent of an AS-Level (with a very poor mark, mind you) my first year of uni. However, I’m totally incapable of producing anything more difficult than greetings without a lot of time and I don’t actually remember as much as I used to – before January, I hadn’t looked at this language for two straight years. I’d estimate my passive understanding to be about A1 (maybe A2 if it’s written down), but my active skills are about zero. I’m going to use an Assimil course and some books/TV shows to try and increase my level, as well as other resources I’ll probably come across along the way.

So, what about all of you? Doing the 6 Week Challenge? If so, what language have you picked? If anyone is interested in following what I do in more detail, you can see it all on my twitter – and I’m always excited to see everyone else’s progress as well! 🙂