This is my first post on the forums, so hello to everyone.
As the title suggests, I’ve feel like i’ve hit a brick wall with my learning. I’ve made my way through course one to lesson 6-2 and I’m really struggling to do it. I either forget the easy things i’ve done in the previous lessons or find that the sentence I’m trying to say feels so, ‘unnatural’, in English that I’m thinking ‘Who would say that??’ and the finding the Welsh difficult. For example, I don’t think ‘I will not buy the young dog because I bought the old cheese’ has ever been said in conversation.
Any tips, help or encouragement would be greatly appreciated as I just feel down about the whole learning process at the moment. (Sorry for the wall of text)
I wouldn’t worry too much, especially seeing as the 6’s are notoriously the nightmare lessons! They are by far the hardest lessons in any of the courses, at least from what I’ve done so far. If you’re finding the slightly strange sentences jarring, maybe try switching to Level one - it is more geared toward actual conversations, rather than just teaching general pattens and vocab. That’s not to say that Course one isn’t very valuable, but doing the refurbished course might help to ease you into the way this course is taught, and prepare you a little better for the time when you want to start using your Welsh.
Before that, Croeso!! You have already read from Karla that you’ve hit the worst lessons in the Course and everyone suffers!! You are (boringly!!!) totally typical!! Like all of us!
But as to that sentence… you never know. “I will buy the young dog because you bought the old picture!” was said to me years back!!! Not a cheese, I admit, but swapping, in effect, a Picasso print for an Irish Wolfhound is not something you forget!!
I find pushing on through the next two or three lessons, then return to the one where the trouble started, and it is so much easier. * I skipped 6 bonus after a try or two, finished the rest of the lessons, then did almost all the new course 1, and only the other day went back to the bonus and it was relatively easy. as an example.
whatever you find works for you, best of luck. it is worth it.
In the old course, this kind of sentence aimed to achieve 2 things:
To help the learner to use and interchange different words with the patterns in Welsh - whether they made sense or bordered ridiculous! It diverted away from stock phrases and made the Welsh you’re learning feel more adaptable and expressive, so the learner could use the words without too much forward thinking! And
To add a bit of the fun element to learning Welsh! Make it to the bonus lesson 6 and you’ll be hearing about Iestyn (or Aran) parking their giraffe!!
But as Karla has mentioned, the new Levels will concentrate more on the conversational Welsh you are likely to use, without many of these fun elements, and with a better chance for you to retain what you learn as the lessons have been crafted with this retention in mind.
Yeah; I’m going to join the other folks here in recommending going over to the new Level 1 - while the old course is mostly pretty good, the new course is much better. It might be worth heading back to the old course afterwards to pick up the extra vocabulary and a couple of the extra patterns (depending on whether Level 2 is finished by then), but Level 1 is a much better place to start.
Wall of text? Then you don’t know what the wall of text is. - hehe. Go to see some of mine and you’ll find out you were super short with describing your problem.
And now for the encouragement: You feel exactly as I felt when doing 6-1 and 6-2 first time and I know the feeling very well as I know many of other learners here do. Now I know repetition isn’t the best way to handle it unless you really don’t know what you’re doing at all. I repeated it once or twice still had no clue what this is all about and then I’ve one day decided to just go on even if I don’t understand and do right much of the stuff. After I finished entire Course 1 (not without crying, being engry at myself and many times determined to quit though) I just decided to go over the Course 1 again, however not from the beginning but from that famous Lesson 6-1. It was way easier to do all things now. I don’t say my way is the best one to do, but it might help. And most of all: have in mind you’ll one day do things right. They will never be 100 % correct but they will sit in your mind and all of a sudden come out of nowhere. Don’t give up, no matter what! Cary on. I know you can do it and I can freely say all the others know this too.
Yah, and don’t think what you’ll most likely to buy in real life or what’s possible and what not Even more strange sentences are awaiting for you if you’ll carry on with old courses like “the dog ate the cat on Saturday” - hehe - etc… have fun with expressions. They’ll bring smile to your face. And by all means do the lesson 6b! You’ll hve endless fun, you’ll see.
Oh, oh, did you see? Here’s one of my walls of text.
Thanks eveyone. I managed to get through lesson 6-1/2 yesterday evening and had a quick try of lesson 7. Again my brain seems to has shut off and refuses to remember any welsh. I might try moving over to level 1 tonight and see what happens.
Sorry to hear that you’ve having problems with Course One, but do persist, it gets less scary as you progress!
I think Gav (faithless78) has summed up very well what the “bordering on nonsensical” sentences are all about. I don’t think they were ever meant to be taken literally, i.e. that you’d actually be saying such word combinations in actual conversations…it’s just practice in combining stuff that you’ve learnt so far, and speaking for myself, I do find that the more ridiculous and amusing the sentence is, the better I can remember it!
Lesson 6 is indeed a bit of a “stinker”, and I found the bonus bit (6b I think) for interest and amusement only - I passed over it onto Lesson 7, without even bothering to ask where I can park my giraffe!
I believe Level 1 is an improvement on Course 1, but I can personally only go by Course 1 (which I recently completed). I enjoyed about 95% of it, and my overall verdict was “great”. So stick with it, and pob lwc.
Thinking about it, there is a long tradition of teaching unlikely sentences!! I seem to recall a famous one in French about the pen of my aunt, but I’ve forgotten the rest, although it involved something belonging to my uncle!!
That sounds as though you might be getting a bit tired, Dan - intense brain activity like this burns calories, so that tiredness is very real. The learning process would almost certainly still be working for you, but when you’re not used to it, it’s easy to feel despair!
You’d be fine if you pushed on, either on Course 1 or on Level 1 - but I’d certainly go with all the other excellent encouragement you’ve already received from this lovely community, and give Level 1 a shot…
And if you come on here and ask for support every time you hit a wall, you’ll definitely end up a Welsh speaker
I think you might have hit the nail on the head Aran. The lest few days I have felt more physically tired than normal. Maybe a few days off will help before getting back to it.
This is always a good approach - and you don’t need to worry about losing what you’ve done so far - I spent yesterday with someone who had taken a year off after her last lesson, and she was straight back into the swing of things with new lessons, no revision…
As for the tiredness aspect, I have a long drive to and from work, so I easily get in one new lesson each way (if I’ve remembered to have them downloaded), so I do that five days a week. Then I do NO practice on weekends, with exception of rambling to myself and listening to some Welsh music or a tv show.
‘May’ help you?
et la plume de mon oncle est sur la table de ma tante.
I remember it as a song, except that I don’t remember what might have come next.
But at the end of it, you are left in no doubt that the correct article to use with “plume”, “table” and “tante” is “la”, and that “oncle” takes “mon” in the possessive.
So it was kind of doing what SSiW does, but without “le vieux chat” or “le jeune chien”
Is a French cat male??? I don’t really remember, but if I had to speak French suddenly and a cat appeared, I think I’d presume ‘la chat’ because I’m so used to Cymraeg!!! (I always had female dogs and male cats, causing confusion in my poor mind!!!)
