I know what you mean about taking the plunge. My daughter has just started Welsh classes at university to speak to her new Welsh speaking friends. I am visiting this weekend and having read the comments above I think I will pluck up courage to try. Will let you know how I get on .
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YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! 
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Just a quick update on how my āāno Englishāā evening went. In short, not very well. I could think of what I wanted to say in my head but couldnāt find the courage to speak it. It was like there was a physical block.
Iām so annoyed with myself that I couldnāt do it And what is annoying me more is that I did lesson 8 this morning and barely had to think to repeat the sentences.
Iāve found that putting into practice what you learn in the lessons is much, much harder than how you imagine it will happen in your head. Donāt be too discouragedā¦I think I only started to be able to speak with any semblance of fluency (which is still nowhere near ACTUAL fluency, Iāll point out) was after the sixth or so practice session I had.
Donāt let your disappointment stop you from trying again - the more you try, the easier it will get, although you may not notice until you look back at your progress. Even just saying a few words in Cymraeg is an achievement. Celebrate that, and donāt let your high expectations get in the way of seeing the progress youāre making. 
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Donāt worry. Ask @margaretnock how quiet I was when we first spoke via Skype. She tired and talked so Iād say something but I ā¦ there was hardly some sound comming out of me. Donāt give hope now. Try it again. Say it wrong if neccessary, just say it, whatever youāve learnt and it seams right to you. Youād be corrected and youāll learn. I donāt doubt your parthner has the patience to constantly correct you and teach you this way.
Oh, ja, who tells you all that!? I was the same despite I claimed that I am not afraid to speak. No, I was not afraid to speak, thatās true, but I was afraid to be embarresed saying something āstupidā or wrong. I know this attitude was in vain. I somehow (at least I hope so) overcome this all, now thereās your turn to do the same. If not differently, Iām with you at least in my thoughts. Next week you do the same, just blurt out what you think itās right. Youāll see it will go - slowly but steadily - and one day youāll laugh upon your attitude and āembarresmentā of speaking. 
DAL ATI!
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Iāve talked through it with her and her explanation makes sense. She described it like stage fright. Which is odd because Iāve been on stage and never had stage fright, even in front of hundreds of people.
Maybe iām being too hard on myself.
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Youāre definitely being too hard on yourself. As @tatjana said, just say the first thing that comes into your head, correct or not. Actually getting something out is far more important than forming a perfectly correct, sophisticated sentence.
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Yes @Dan_Crosby, and donāt forget the SiW mantra: paid a phoeni or paid a becso.
And while you might not get away with it on a bootcamp, in real life you can throw in the odd English word if it helps to keep things going. People do this all the time (listen to Radio Cymru). Or adopt the bootcamp idea of mimeā¦this should help lighten the situation as well, as it then becomes a sort of game.
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Ooooooooooooooooooooo yes. 
One more of my kind from before. And your parthenr described it right. āstage frightā it is called (I just read this some days ago) no matter how you donāt have this fright otherwise.
You will prevail, youāll see. I believe in you completely. When this happens, we shall speak through the Skype! (If youād want to of course) Remember this!
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Maybe it might help if you identify what exactly youāre afraid of and then explaining to yourself that thereās nothing to worry about? Are you afraid you might have a very strong accent? Well, everyone has an accent and there are as many different ways to speak as there are speakers in the world. Native speakers sometimes struggle to understand each other.
Or maybe youāre afraid that youāll make grammar or pronunciation mistakes? But then again, itās so very common, I think there are hardly any native speakers that donāt make tiny mistakes of usage or grammar once in a while. Everyoneās imperfect. Or maybe youāre afraid that you wonāt live up to your own standards? That maybe you thought that you were doing fine and then you discover that youāre not as good as you expected to be? That happened to me when I just started speaking Welsh with my speaking partner @Karla. Iām quite fluent in English and Italian, and I admit Iāve forgotten a bit what it feels like when youāre at the very beginnings of learning a language. I wanted to speak of art and opera music, and I was quite annoyed that I sounded like a troglodyte!
Anyway, I think itās a very good thing to have no-English evenings, but donāt push yourself too hard or you will become annoyed at yourself. Thereās no reason to be angry at yourself being afraid, fear is a good thing, it tries to warn us of danger, protect us if weāre venturing into an unknown territory. Sometimes it can be slightly over-protective and you could try to calm it down by showing that nothing bad happens if you make a mistake. Just say something that is deliberately wrong: forget a mutation or something like that. Then perhaps your fear will learn thereās nothing dangerous about mistakes and will just get more and more used to it.
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I Wish I could actually Identify what it is Iām afraid of when trying to speak Welsh. I dont have this fear when I say things in Welsh to my parents. They dont speak Welsh but I still show off that I can speak it. So why I have the problem when speaking to my Partner I donāt know.
Maybe you just want to impress her and you donāt want to appear imperfect? This is so very understandable. Look, my boyfriend is English and heās got a very beautiful, correct pronunciation, much like they speak on BBC. Heās the kindest person in the world, but I would still cry secretly after I mispronounce a word, just because I would like to impress him with my wonderful English. Thereās nothing to be done about that, Iām afraid. When someone means a lot to us, our self-esteem depends on what this person thinks of us, and so the stakes are higher.
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I would very much like to speak to anyone in Welsh, although I dont know if i know enough to hold a full conversation in welsh.
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Deal then. This is a challenge ā¦
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Yes, you are, definitely. Go back and have a quick squint at what I suggested - expecting to do a full evening as your starting point is extremely ambitious - why not aim at the kind of 5 minute starter I suggested?
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Dan, just a few thoughts, and sorry if they have already been mentionedā¦
When I first started trying to speak I did this odd āplanningā phase. I used to imagine how it would go and when it didnāt I used to bash myself up about it! I wonder if you are over thinking/planning it?
I also got āstage frightā when I was asked a question. It kind of went like thisā¦
Q. Do you want a cup of tea?
A: Me thinkingā¦āCrap which yes/no do I useā¦ freezeā¦ panicā¦ā arrrggghhh, and failure to answerā¦
So, I developed a different techinque of trying not to directly answer āyesā or ānoā (which I still often use) and it avoids a defininte affirmative or negative answer.
E.g
Q. āDo you want a cup of tea?ā
A. āThanks, that would be good/niceā
or
Q āDid you like that picture?ā
A. I am not sure, I think so!
We also tend to want to be able the same things in our new language that we do with our native tongue. It is not a realistic expectation and we lose confidence as a result. Try and accept that your conversation is going to be a bit more āChildlikeā to start with. You cannot possibly expect to discuss the finer points of the news or a TV programme! Once you can accept this it is quite liberating; and there is nothing wrong in adding in the odd English word if you donāt know something. You can always look it up and use it next time!
Hope this helps!
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I have this too! I think with me itās almost as if I donāt feel like āthe real meā when Iām speaking Welsh because my expressiveness is more limited. I canāt joke (not that Iām hilarious) or do idle chit chat the way I can in English. So itās strange to think that, considering practically every Welsh speaker speaks English just as good as me, I could be having a conversation where I could be more myself. I know of course most speakers are understanding of this, but the other day I was in a class and talked to people just purely through Welsh who Iād just met and was a bit worried that I wasnāt really being very friendly and a bit abrupt, considering they were nice and chatty! Iām sure they were understanding but I just didnāt feel like I was my proper self.
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I am sure that what they really thought was that you were a thoroughly decent chap who was making a very good job of learning Welsh 
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Helo 'na.
Mererid dw i.
This is an interesting topic. Some really important points mentioned above regarding personality change and role-reversal issues in additional-language acquisition. I could talk all night about those issues, but thatās not going to help you in the short term. Therefore, I offer you some practical advice.
When you think that the seemingly āsimpleā act of having a conversation with someone requires ALL these skills at the SAME time, thereās no wonder we develop a fear of speaking. Consider the following skills involved in having a conversation:
Deciding youāre going to say something, constructing a coherent sentence in your mind, saying this sentence out loud in order to be understood by another person, knowing how to pronounce Welsh, voice intonation, reading the other personās body language, listening to the other personās response, making out the individual words in the other personās response, knowing what those words mean, processing those words, thinking of an appropriate response, thinking about how to word that appropriate response in Welsh and so on and so on. All this while your heart is beating fast and your perceived vulnerability levels expanding.
One strategy that I use is to get over my fear of speaking to a native speaker is to set myself āsecret tasksā.
To do that, I have to separate these conversation skills and focus on developing one skill at a time, like so:
1)I practise how to ask someone for the time. I then ask a friendly-looking person on the street for the time, even though I know what the time is. By getting rid of that element of fear about not being able to understand the person when they something back to you, youāre concentrating solely on one language skill at a time: speaking. More specifically, speaking to a native speaker and seeing if you get understood. If the person checks his/her watch, then mission accomplished. If not, try again or go back and perfect your pronunciation until another day. It doesnāt matter whether or not you understand what they say back to you as that wasnāt your goal in the first place (although checking the time before asking the person for the time at least means you can anticipate the response). Then either thank them and move on, or if theyāve carried on with the conversation past your current comprehension level, say in English or Welsh (depending on your level) , āoh, sorry, thatā ās all the Welsh I know at the moment, Iām learning. Maybe next time Iāll know moreā, (or something along those light-hearted lines).
- Do the same by asking for directions to somewhere you already know how to reach.
3)Think of similar scenarios where you can ask questions without really needing an answer.
In Italy this year, I struggled to remember the Italian word for ābinā. So each shop or cafĆ© I went into, I would force myself to ask someone who worked there ādo you have a bin?ā while waving some eitem of rubbish in my hand Iām front of them, like a tissue, sweet wrapper, empty packet etc
After a bit, I started remembering the word for ābinā without having to check my pocket dictionary all the time, and Iād practised my āspeaking to real Italiansā skill too.
This is a good confidence builder and the more you do it, the easier it will become to speak to the Welsh people you know, like teachers, family members etc.
Has anyone tried anything like this before?
Itās always my go-to method when I need to give myself a gentle push.
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Very good points, I think itās a great help when youāre in the country where the language is spoken. I like the secret task strategy and will certainly use it myself when I visit Wales. Though we donāt really know whether Dan lives in Wales and/or has constant contact with native speakers, apart from his partner (if we do know it and Iāve missed something, I apologize).
But breaking down one big skill into many small sub-skills is really very useful, because you donāt have to deal with something as enormous as āspeaking Welshā but you can tackle smaller things one by one. If your partner is very willing to help, you could do something like this to train your listening skills: you both listen to a piece of news of Radio Cymru and then she retells it to you using very simple words, while you listen and try to understand the gist. When youāre more comfortable with her speaking Welsh to you, you can start asking some questions related to the topic and express your opinion.
Itāll help if you learn a lot of the āfunctional languageā (how to ask someone to repeat, how to ask to speak slower, how to show that you understand - youāll find it in the bonus part of Lesson 6 Course 1, - then, learn how to say that something is lovely/awful/interesting, how to express admiration or sympathy, how to agree and disagree etc. You get my idea). Then put them into use when talking to your partner or maybe people here who are willing to help via Skype. You can make up situations together when your partner gives you some stimulus āItās my birthday todayā and you have to react quickly - āOh, congratulations!ā
Itās very useful to watch TV in Welsh (I like āBore daā on S4C, because itās subtitled), especially talk-shows. You can first watch it with no subtitles, then turn the subs on and watch again to check the understanding, and repeat what the speakers say. Then, if you feel brave enough, you can make up a small monologue on the same topic. Again, you can watch together and give your opinion to your partner - first it will be something short like āThatās great, I think itās a good ideaā and then maybe youāll start saying longer sentences.
One thing I really want to stress is that itās difficult for anyone (even for a very outgoing chatty person like me, for instance) to speak without a topic or without necessity. We all need motivation to speak (we all become very eloquent when we really want to find something out, for example, the train is leaving in 5 minutes and we still donāt know the number of the platform) and we need some scaffolding to build our speech on. So it might be easier at first to react to your partnerās questions (because some vocabulary will be provided in the question itself) rather than try to say something completely unaided.
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