The Super Challenge was born out of an idea by Solfrid Cristin, over on the How To Learn Any Language forums. The basic idea is to read 100 books and watch 100 films in the language of your choice, starting on 1st May 2012 and ending on 31st December 2013.
These are the original rules (copied from the site):
- Every film counts as long as they have at least voice or subtitles in the TL
- If it lasts less than 45 minutes (a show/series) it counts as half a film. If it lasts for more than three hours it counts as two films.
- If you want to use podcasts or audiobooks, 1 hour an a half is the equivalence of 1 film.
- Every book counts. If it is less than a 100 pages, it counts as half a book. If it is more than 500 pages it counts as two books.
- You can see the same films/read the same books again and again
- You can be at a B1 maximum when the challenge starts
- The challenge starts on May 1st 2012 and ends on December 31st 2013, and can be counted and done in paralell with both the 6WC and the Tadoku challenge (so if you participate in all three you could count the same book three times 🙂 If you want to join later, you are welcome.
Since then, they’ve also added the option to do a half Super Challenge – which can be either 100 books, or 100 films, or 50 of both. Another option includes 100 units of conversation and 100 pieces of writing – these make up the Super Duper Challenge.
I’m doing the Super Duper Challenge for Mandarin, but writing only – so this means for Mandarin, I have to try and read 100 books, watch 100 films and do 100 pieces of writing (which I will post to lang-8 to get corrected).
For German, I’m only doing a half challenge; reading is much easier for me in this language but I still need to get used to watching films without subtitles. The half challenge I have chosen entails reading 50 books and watching 50 films.
I’m going to keep track of what I read and watch on this blog and will probably write reviews for the items, too.
Let the challenge begin!