Super Challenge 2014-15

The original Super Challenge began on 1st May 2012, ending 31st December 2013. Its core aim was for each participant to read 100 books and watch 100 films in their target language, with the idea of increasing fluency in that language.

I took part in it, though only ended with limited success – though of course, that still meant that I’d done more than I probably would have otherwise!

This round of the Super Challenge began 1st May 2014 and will end 31st December 2015. The basic rules are the same: read 100 books, watch 100 films. These are the main rules:

  • 50 pages count as a book.
  • 90 minutes counts as a film.
  • If you are reading something with a low text to page ratio (e.g. manga, comics, children’s books), then usually count that as 5 pages read = 1 page on the bot.
  • Everything else is up to you!

If you’re interested in doing this (if you haven’t already signed up), then there is information about registering with the twitterbot here – and there’s more info about the Super Challenge. This link will take you to the HTLAL forums, to the Super Challenge discussion thread, in case you need any more information.

If anyone signs up – or has signed up already – let me know! There’s 19 months of this challenge left now, and it’s going to be a much harder journey without some friends 😉

2 Comments

  1. I’ve never heard of this, it’s undoubtedly a great help to improving receptive language abilities, but even in my native language I’d struggle to find 100 booms/films I could read and enjoy. Thanks for sharing!

    • Ha, luckily it’s not 100 books/films as such; 50 pages is counted as a book and 90 minutes of viewing as a film, so really you end up reading a lot fewer books – and I watch TV shows a lot so by the time you’re through a series, you’ve usually seen a few ‘films’. But yeah, I definitely notice an improvement, though keeping up with it consistently is a large part of the challenge. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *