Hello everyone, hope you are all well. I have been slowly making my way through week 1 and 2 and found week 2 quite hard going (a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights!) I found that the longer the sentences were getting, the more I struggled and the longer the pause button was on for and sometimes my mind just went totally blank!
Has this happened to anyone else and if so is there any advice you could give me?
Also, at what point is a good time to start practicing speaking with others?
What youâre experiencing is very common, so donât worry! One of the main âtricksâ is not to feel you have to get every word right every time. The longer sentences seem challenging to begin with, but if you can try to do without the pause button as much as possible (easier said than done, I know) and just get as much as you can out - even if you have to âguessâ what the words should be - it will help in the long term. Itâs best not to go over and over each challenge - resist the temptation to do it ad nauseum until youâre repeating off by heart, because âparrot fashionâ is not how this method works. You can always go back to a challenge once youâre further through the course, and people are usually surprised how something they thought impossible suddenly comes out without too much effort.
As for when to start practising speaking with others, the answer is absolutely as soon as possible! Yes, there are going to be things you donât know how to say, and yes there are going to be things you hear that you havenât come across yet, but donât worry about those. Use whatever you can, and if you have to throw an English word in every so often, do it and get back to Welsh as soon as you can. Speaking is as much (if not more) to do with confidence as with vocabulary, so the sooner you start, the more confidence you can build and itâs much less of a barrier than if you leave it until you think you âknow enoughâ.
Hi Siaron, thank you very much for your reply. Not using the pause button as frequently has become a lot easier but I will totally take on board what you said and especially about speaking and gaining confidence to speak in Welsh. I think I did go back to week 1 a few times just âin caseâ I thought something hadnât sunk in. But youâre right, I was surprised what I knew which I didnât think I did! Thanks again, I think itâs good to just get some reassurance
Everything youâve covered so far will continue to pop up in future challenges as well, so anything you didnât quite pin down the first time it came up will still get plenty more chances!
The method takes a little bit of adjusting to, because this isnât how languages are usually taught. Once you start to get used to it, it does get easier.
