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Tadoku – Read More or Die – April 2011 Edition

By thomas on Mar 29, 2011 in Language Fun

The Tadoku contest, also known as the Read More or Die contest is about to start again. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a twitter-based contest designed to motivate you to read more in your target language.

For one month, you try to read as much as you can. You read on your own and then tweet your page counts to a bot on twitter. At the end of the month, whoever read the most pages is the winner. There’s no prize except for bragging rights, but really the contest isn’t about winning at all. It’s about improving your literacy in your target language by reading as much as you can, and sharing your experience with other like-minded people.

The last contest was in January and it was a huge success. Ninety-nine (99!) people participated and read a combined total of 65,131 pages! That’s awesome. I placed 25th with 649.97 pages of Japanese read, which is the most Japanese I’ve ever read in such a short period of time. Said simply, the contest works.

If you are learning a foreign language, I highly recommend participating. You have nothing to lose. It doesn’t matter what your level is either. Read whatever is appropriate to your reading level, whether that be novels, comic books or children books.

It’s easy to sign up. All you have to do is tweet “@Tadokubot #reg” minus the quotes. Be sure to mention what language you will be reading in the tweet.

The contest starts at midnight on April 1st, your time. It ends April 30th at 11:59pm, your time.

The deadline to sign up is 11:59pm on March 31st! Don’t delay. Send your registration tweet!

For information about the contest, check the official blog: Read More or Die blog

Here are a couple of other blog posts I found that mention the new contest:

  1. The Power Of Reading
  2. Tadoku 2011, Round 2
  3. Tadoku contest
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10 Comment(s)

  1. Hello. Thank you for your post.
    I participated the last contest in January, and I knew from Lordsilent’s tweet round 2 was coming soon. But after the big earthquake on 311, I have not been able to read any books in English and even in Japanese, my native language. I live in Tokyo, and all of my families are safe. But still, it was really an aweful experience and it will take long time for us to recover everything.
    However, the fact that many people from all over the world are helping Japan, and I really appreciate it.

    And now your article encouraged me a lot to try tadoku again. As you wrote, I have nothing to lose. I don’t think I will be able to read as much as I did in January. I hope to enjoy reading some children’s books this time.

    Thank you very much.

    sloppie | Mar 30, 2011 | Reply

  2. @sloppie: I’m glad to hear your family is safe. We live in Hyogo and we have been safe, but we had some friends in the Tokyo/Chiba region and we were really worried about them (they ended up being safe, thank goodness).

    I hope you will participate in the tadoku contest. What’s your twitter id?

    thomas | Mar 30, 2011 | Reply

  3. @thomas: Thank you for your quick reply. One of my friends live in Hyogo, and she gave me e-mail to ask if I was OK, which warmed my heart. I’m glad too your friends are safe.
    My twitter id is @sloppier_r.
    I registered the tadoku contest right after posting the comment here.

    sloppie | Mar 30, 2011 | Reply

  4. This is a very interesting concept. I like it! Thanks for introducing it to people unfamiliar with it, like myself.

    I’ll give it a go and will also be participating this year.

    Melissa | Mar 31, 2011 | Reply

  5. Good luck! Wish I had stopped by earlier to find out about it. I will just have to participate on my own. Reading Harry Potter in Turkish now and it is the first book I have just sort of lost myself in. Yea!

    Aaron | Apr 4, 2011 | Reply

  6. @Aaron: I tweeted the contest organizer asking if it was possible to join late. I’ll let you know when I hear a reply. The contest is held every 3 months so even if you can’t participate this time, it will start up again in July.

    I just bought the Japanese translation of the first Harry Potter book from the bookstore today. I have the audio version sitting on my hard drive. I’m going to try to read while listening to the audiobook. I’ve heard that it can help reading speed. (check @doviende at languagefixation.wordpress.com/)

    thomas | Apr 4, 2011 | Reply

  7. Hello,Thomas.
    Thanks to you, I enjoyed the contest very much again.
    May I introduce this post of yours in my blog?
    I’d like to write about the contest, and I don’t want to miss writing about who and what encouraged me to participate.

    sloppie | May 2, 2011 | Reply

  8. Never heard about this read more or die contest. Very interested in checking it out!

    John | Oct 18, 2011 | Reply

  9. I would like to take part in such a competition! It is a good motivation to read a lot! Last year there was an event organuized by some people, liek you should read 1 book for 2 weeks and tehn there a discussiin club, it’s always good to have more motivations!

    anna | Oct 20, 2011 | Reply

  10. This competition sounds really exciting. This method seems a bit unusual, but I would love to participate in one!

    Alicia | Jun 2, 2013 | Reply

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