An exciting change coming down the pipes

Welsh General / Questions
#1

So how would you like an automatic Welsh tutor? Available 24/7, knows what you’ve done already, adapts to your strengths and weaknesses… you just hit ‘play’ and your tutor does all the rest… and you can ask your tutor to go easy on you, or to push you to your limits…

And you can see your tutor - well, choose your tutor, and then see him or her, sitting there cheerfully on your phone (or your computer). And if you get tired of one, you can always choose another… but each of them will always know exactly what you’ve done and what you should be doing next…

And how about if your tutor could tell exactly how well you were doing? What you were getting right, and what was difficult for you? And could adapt automagically to keep you in the ideal learning zone where you make ‘mistakes’ about 10% to 15% of the time, for fast-but-not-too-painful learning…

Okay, so the ‘see your tutor’ and the ‘tutor knows how well you’re doing’ are still a fair bit down the tracks… lot of work to do to make those come true…

But the first stage - knows what you’ve done, lets you choose your speed, gives you the right stuff at the right time - is getting quite close now.

I can’t give you a date, because that would make our tech team scream. This is tech dev - any one of a number of nasty little gremlins might jump up and start eating stuff at any point - ‘quite close now’ could easily turn into ‘another few months’…

But fingers crossed it won’t…

And this is, I think, the most exciting change to SSi since I hit ‘post’ on the very first Facebook post offering 15 half hour lessons back in 2009… :slight_smile:

No more ‘lesson 13 is brutal’ or ‘when should I do listening exercises?’ or ‘why isn’t it in a 6 minute chunk?’ or ‘why can’t I do more than one half-hour session a week?’ or any of that stuff.

Might even be the world’s first automatic language tutor - I can’t find any others. If it is, it’s nice for it to debut in Welsh… :slight_smile:

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#2

@CatrinLliarJones for next week :slight_smile:

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#3

Very intriguing! :slight_smile:

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#4

It’s also a solution for our long problem with not being an ideal fit for children/schools… :slight_smile:

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#5

Sounds brilliant! I don’t believe in magic, most of the time but technology is wonderful, if only it’s easy enough to understand!?
I am a bit slow :rofl::joy::rofl:

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#6

Sounds exciting. Looking forward to it.

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#7

Sounds amazing. Rhywbeth diddoral .

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#8

How excitingly vague!

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#9

Sounds very exciting, but if you could amend it to " I flick a switch and you’re fluent" … would be ace :joy::joy::joy:

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#10

Mae hynny’y swnio cyffrous iawn!

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#11

Sounds great. :grin::+1:

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#12

Sounds amazing.

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#13

Does it involve incantations and a channeling of a magic portal?
I’m in either way :grinning:

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#14

That’s going to be a huge part of it… ‘just hit play’ simplicity… :slight_smile:

It’s the closest we can get to that… :wink:

Mmmm, that’s a good thought, might need to add some of that to the mix… :smiley:

I actually didn’t mean to be deliberately vague, for once! So if you’ve any questions that you’d like to ask, fire away and I’ll do my best.

The key thing is that instead of logging in and choosing lessons and so on, you’ll just log in and hit play - the algorithm will know where you’d got to, and in the fairly near future it’ll let you set difficulty levels, and before too long it will start to notice how long it’s been since you last played, and adapt accordingly… and then we’ll start to get fun stuff happening, like letting you know how much time you’ve logged, how many phrases you’ve done… you’ll be able to do just six minutes a day if you want to, without worrying about finding your place again, or you’ll be able to do flat out intensive days…

I’m excited because I think it’s going to solve the vast majority of the problems that can leave people feeling uncertain enough to stop playing (which is really the only way you can end up not winning). So I really, really can’t wait to see how many more people it helps get through to conversational confidence… :slight_smile:

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#15

Sounds perfect then. I can’t wait! An ap that holds my hand! :rofl::joy::rofl:

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#16

Just for clarification - this will cover Levels 1 & 2 (the main courses) but not Level 3 and the advanced stuff, is that right?
I only ask because with the advanced listening exercises, I’ve noticed from forum posts that some people dip in and out of these without going through them in a set order, and a “where you left off” algorithm might be a nuisance in that scenario.

#17

Sound great. :slight_smile:

#18

Can’t wait!

#19

To me, this sounds very exciting. I use SSIW during summer holidays, just to work on my fluency. It really helps to give my Welsh a boost. However, the 30 minute lessons can be 45 minutes and this is often too long. Trying the 6 minutes a day from Monday just to see what it is like but I suspect this will force me back to the beginning and be too short. Would be great to have taylored lessons depending on how I am doing, what I am weaker on and, most importantly, how much time and energy I have.

#20

Where’s the fun in that!?

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