The reward will be when you eventually get the feeling that you really are getting the hang of it. That’s what got all these people round here hooked!
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When you know how welcome devil’s advocates are here?! 
It’s all part of the mix, certainly. In the same way as which we nudge firmly in the direction of not reading and writing (which definitely loses us some learners). Our next major challenge with the SSiBorg is to turn it into an online streaming tool that will be able to allow a certain amount of user control of the intensity - but that’s a non-trivial piece of work, so in the meantime there has to be a certain amount of gut feeling.
It might be worth noting at this point that one of the most common patterns of behaviour prior to giving up, when we were saying ‘repeat two or three times’, was heavy over-repetition - ten times or more - which creates negative feelings similar to those described in this thread, but without the benefits of non-conscious improvement (to any great extent).
Broadly speaking, new users seem to divide into three camps - it’s a piece of cake (hello new speaker!), it’s pointless and horrible (good-bye!) and it’s tough but intriguing.
Over the last year or so, I’ve seen more success when people opt for an abcde/abcde pattern of repetition (in fact, I’ve not seen anyone decide to do the full second repetition) rather than aa/bb/cc/dd/ee - so I currently feel that’s the best advice for the ‘tough but intriguing’ sector. As you say, though, it would be much better if we could measure widely enough to be sure - but tricky to test different advice on the open forum without confusing everyone even more than they are already…
This is something we’re very keen to do - it’s a fairly serious piece of work, though, and at the moment we can only afford one full-time developer, who is flat out on the course creation tool. We’ll get there some day, though…
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Although I think it needs to be tempered (as here) with the advice that ‘flavour to personal taste’ is better than giving up…
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Important to try and make sure people don’t feel inadequate about not following the ideal recommendations. (After all, it’s not a race.)[quote=“aran, post:82, topic:8234”]
some kind of gamefication of the system that awards you points for the effort you put in.
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My 10 year old gave up SSI Spanish in favour of Duolinguo (although she had been chuffed at the stuff she could say after 2 lessons) because she preferred to get ‘proper’ points and rewards. (Shame!)
It is, yes - not to the point of not giving the ideal recommendations, though - so apart from commenting that ‘going your own way’ is always better than ‘giving up’, I’m not sure what else we can helpfully do here…
Yeah, Duolingo is much shinier than we are.
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Oh I have to stop arguing, sorry. But one last shot - my point is that there may still be a possibility that the current ‘ideal recommendations’ may not actually be ideal for everyone.
I think I might have gained other things from doing the (more obviously structured) Courses, slower. I think I came out of that process with a more conscious grasp of the basic grammar, for example, than I am likely to have had from doing all the Challenges without repetition. That was important to me as an adult learner, as I do like to have a conscious foundation to fall back on. Personally I need to know that I’m more or less right if talking to teachers etc.
Although the course is amazingly good at getting people to a conversational ability very quickly, the guidance is still a bit hazy about fine-tuning. (You wouldn’t have wanted to speak anything less than excellent Welsh, would you?)
Oh dear, did I say I was going to stop arguing? (You know I think SSI is genius… but…)
One of these days, I will do an intensive on some language I have no knowledge of, just to try it out. (Actually I was trying Dutch on Friday, but it was too similar to German to be a proper test.)
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I didn’t realise you were arguing, sorry!
What are you saying that we should do differently?
[I’d never think that our ‘ideal recommendations’ are ideal for everyone - I don’t see how they possibly could be, given variations in working memory, short term memory, comfort levels in producing new language, tolerance of uncertainty, tolerance of mistakes, ability to deal with challenging emotions, etc. Surely the only thing we can do is recommend what we believe will work best for the greatest number of people?]
Is it? I think we’ve always said that exposure is the key - and that we’re going to try and build some short-cuts for that. There are some interesting questions about why people like your husband still make mistakes in English after high levels of exposure, and I’d love us to get to the stage where we could put some serious programmes of work together in partnership with some universities to look at that particular issue - but we don’t have even a fraction of the necessary resources to be working on that right now, sadly. [And I have no ideas that I’d like to test on it at the moment!]
Oh dear, not wanting to offend and all that…
I’m not sure I’ve got time to expand - it’s become the middle of the afternoon. 
I may come back to it later, if I still think it’s anything you might want to hear…
You couldn’t possibly offend! [Well, I suppose you could, if you threatened to shoot my dog or something, but not otherwise… ]
I’m always interested in your thoughts. It’s hard to find people who are interested and supportive but have real points of disagreement with us - and it’s probably the most valuable type of discussion we can have…
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I used to aim to get through a challenge a day at all costs . I would try to do each challenge only once but if I ever felt that I had really hit a brick wall with a challenge then I would do it a second or even very occasionally a third time before moving on and it would always amaze me how I flew through it the second time when it felt as if I only got about 20% correct the first time and that nothing had gone in at all . I used to use the pause button if I really needed to as I wanted a chance to answer every time before Catrin otherwise it felt as if it was all just washing over me .
@Eigentime I would trust the process , there really is no better course for conversational Welsh . I remember on some lessons I struggled so much that it felt like I had reached the end of the road and I couldn’t go any further but if you just believe in yourself and the course and carry on then you will be amazed when you go back over a lesson that you not so long ago found completely impossible , has now become a lot easier
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For me, as a learner. It’s a hard one - because I’ve got two different types of learner of Welsh in my own household.
My wife, Lara, is very much the type who will go through the lessons at her own pace - if she misses a week, then she misses a week. If she doesn’t feel comfortable with something, she will repeat it until she is 100% with something.
I am, what would probably described, as a mad case - as in I have been known to do 10 lessons at a time - and take a weird sick joy when some of the lessons get a bit hard. 5 and a half months in and I’ve completed old course, new course, listening, vocabs (145 sessions I made it?) and i started again a few weeks back - and i’m about to finish the new course for the second time tonight.
The question is, really, how do you keep those two types of learners happy and focussed? It certainly is a difficult one.
If you make the course a bit gentler, you run the risk of losing the madheads like me who want to achieve “fluency” asap - as they search for something else.
If you make it a bit harder, you run the risk of losing the guys who want to take it gently and easily - as they go off and search for something else.
Having said that though, the level of aftercare is simply phenomenal. You would’nt find the owners of Duolingo, Pimsleurs or Michel Thomas (RIP!) deep on a forum post actually giving real scientific level thought as to why a single person was struggling with a course. So for that, very much fair play to you @aran
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Okay, I’m going to jump on the “devil’s advocate” train with @netmouse, and also hope I don’t offend.
This was true for me as well. While the Levels existed when I started, I didn’t really understand that they were meant to be the “new and improved” model, so I started with the Courses. In Course 1 I definitely repeated many lessons a second time, maybe once more if it was a really tough one. And I used the pause button, because without it I felt stressed, and with it I was just having fun and really enjoying myself, and learning to speak Welsh. I think part of my needing to repeat lessons in the first Course was to get my head around some of the structures of a totally new language, and also to get my tongue around the sounds. It took me a long time to get some things like “Fydda i ddim yn” to come out of my American mouth properly…
For Course 2 and Course 3, I went with the newer advice and didn’t repeat any lessons, but I did continue to use the pause button when I felt I needed to. Doing this, I could really see that the spaced repetition works for getting the material to stick. It took me two years to finish all three Courses, because sometimes life just means there isn’t enough time or energy for a lesson every day. But I really enjoyed the process, and for me there’s no deadline. It’s not important to me how long it takes - I’m happy as long as I feel like I’m learning. After starting from zero exposure to the language, I can now consider myself a Welsh speaker. (With much more to learn, of course…) An entirely successful experience!
I agree here - this was my own experience doing the old Courses, too. There’s a structure there that really appeals to me. I am most of the way through Level 1 now, and while I can see that it’s great for getting people to “real” conversation more quickly, I find it really jumps around - there’s all kinds of tenses and forms, but I don’t see much of the structure from the old Courses. In fact, some things sort of threw me, like why we learn “Hoffen i” for" I would like", but then we learn “bydde fe’n hoffi” for “He would like”. I understand it’s good to learn different ways of saying things, but I keep feeling like I should know the short form for “He would like”, and I don’t (yet). (On the other hand, I really wanted to learn how to use clauses, and it took a while to get there in the Courses, while it certainly happens quickly in Level 1.) I’m not saying that the new Levels aren’t as good, but I think they have a different focus and maybe appeal to different learners. I’m not sure I would have been as successful or had as much fun had I started with the Levels. That’s me, personally, and I’m not saying that would be true for everyone, not at all.
I think that maybe instead of feeling like the Courses are “old” and the Levels are “improved”, and moving toward retiring the Courses completely, we could consider them as two equally valid methods, and maybe some people would prefer the proven successful but possibly slower method of the Courses, and others would prefer the also proven successful jump in, move toward conversation more quickly method of the Levels. Like @Nicky says, some people want to take their time, and others want to romp right through. Both of those are valid choices. Add the variables of whether to repeat lessons (within reason, NOT ten times), and/or use the pause button, and there’s a whole lot of variety to appeal to various “kinds” of learners. By “kinds”, I don’t mean visual or auditory or whatever, but more the differences that Aran is talking about here:
I hope this hasn’t just been a big ramble and there might be something useful in there for you to think about, @aran. And again, I don’t intend to offend in any way. I absolutely love SSIW, I would never have thought I could learn to speak a language to the level I’m at with nothing but the SSiW lessons and this forum. I hugely recommend the method - I guess that’s why I wrote this, because I wouldn’t ever want anyone to give up trying the method because one option didn’t work for them. I’ll end by echoing this:[quote=“Nicky, post:91, topic:8234”]
Having said that though, the level of aftercare is simply phenomenal. You would’nt find the owners of Duolingo, Pimsleurs or Michel Thomas (RIP!) deep on a forum post actually giving real scientific level thought as to why a single person was struggling with a course. So for that, very much fair play to you @aran
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Your presence and willingness to really dive deep to help each individual learner is a huge part of what makes this place so special. Much more important, I think, than being “shiny”! Diolch yn fawr iawn!
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I think that the process of not repeating lessons works better for the new course than the old course. Thinking back I remember having to repeat a lot more lessons on the old course (which I did after the new course) especially on some of the vocab lessons at the end of course 2 .
I also second what Nicky said on how great it is that people with questions or new learners always have Aran so readily available on the forum
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Just off to try and get some sleep - but thank you all very much indeed for your input… 
One small request for me - I’d be hugely grateful if we could put to bed (yup, sleep on my mind) the idea that discussing both sides of an issue is in any way unwelcome here - quite the reverse!
I fret (mildly) that lurkers or new forum users might see ‘I really hope this doesn’t offend’ and think ‘Gosh, there must be some angry Gods around here’…
What I’d love them to see is that we have a wide range of opinions and ideas as a norm, and that everyone takes that so for granted, there’s no question of needing to worry about causing offence… 
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Point taken! I just try to be so careful about the whole “tone of voice on the internet” thing. And I would never want to give the impression that I think I know more than you do about learning languages and all you have created here. Just trying to be respectful, definitely not worried about angry gods
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OK then. I’m not feeling quite so with-it at this time of day but here goes.
[quote=“aran, post:87, topic:8234”]
the guidance is still a bit hazy about fine-tuning
Is it? [/quote]
Well, yes! After the courses, you just said “Read read read!”, which I did - and it basically worked, but it’s not very specific is it?!
You anticipate me, of course! (I hope I haven’t gone on about this kind of thing ad nauseam in the past!) I don’t think it’s necessarily a safe bet to rely on exposure alone, as it depends so much on the receptiveness of any individual.
To get back to the courses - a load of stuff has been buzzing round my head all day, but I’m not sure it’s going to come out too coherently now - if not, sorry!
I think I managed to learn very effectively from the original Courses, in terms of ‘effort in’ v. ‘Cymraeg out’. But I remember when I was going through the Courses getting an almost guilty pleasure from sussing out the underlying teaching point of any particular bit. Even then, the inference was to just ‘go with the flow’. From the point of view of an experienced self-taught language learner, the courses were an absolutely huge leg-up in getting to grips with Welsh. But I thought it could only be an advantage for a learner to actively engage with the learning process with a certain amount of analysis and extrapolation - not too hard with the very clearly structured courses.
In addition to the clear structure, I found the occasional explanations in the original courses very helpful. I find it slightly worrying that the newer style seems to have moved further and further from giving explanations and teaching points at all. I think it’s a big ask for adult learners to take everything ‘on trust’, and wait for it all to gradually fall into place. I’m not quite sure what is to be gained by withholding explanations and teaching points, if they were to be offered in a light-hearted and non-threatening way.
Over the last few years, I’ve often fantasised about my personal ideal language course - which would be extremely similar to what you have made. However rather than leaving the grammar to be mainly unconsciously assimilated, the language would be presented in a more obviously structured way, with slightly more explanation for those who seek it. (Appropriately played down for those who like to gloss over it.) I think it could be a bit more up-front about what it was drilling you on at any time - I don’t think that would detract in any way from acquiring an instinctive feel for the language, and could help cement it into conscious brain quicker. That in no way precludes the spaced repetition model, which is central of course.
A couple of years on, I still feel a little bit shaky about some aspects of every day grammar, even though I have a pretty good handle on the basic stuff that’s covered in the courses. That’s not a complaint, just an observation, as I’ve just gone with the flow to see how much I could do by exposure. (I learnt German by reading a grammar book first, and never really had that kind of doubt. However I’ve never got past the second page of a Welsh grammar book!) I wonder whether it would be possible to design a course along the lines of SSI that could give an even more solid foundation, so that nobody could even doubt its rigour - compared to say Welsh for Adults… (Aargh!)
I think I might be rambling unhelpfully now, so will stop. It’s a relief to divulge my deepest darkest course fantasy though!!
Night!
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Sorry @Eigentime for hijacking your thread! If you’re learning Welsh because of curiosity about the SSI method, maybe it will be of interest. But then, I don’t think you ever did say why you’re learning Welsh, so sorry!
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Progress log - Challenge 7
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27 hits - things I got more or less right
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15 errors - not enough time or wrong word
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80 misses - not remembering parts at all
Similar stats to what I got on the last challange. This seems to be what I can get with my short term memory and a hand full of remembered words.
Cheers, Michael
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No worries @netmouse, I find this discussion fascinating. I am happy that a thread of me moaning and whining can work as a catalyst to produce some useful discussion.
About my motivation, the idea of learning Welsh had been brewing inside me for a long time because I love Wales - the land, the people, the culture. I had been planning a long vacation travelling through Wales this summer, but work related issues forced me to reduce that to two days in Cardiff. Learning Welsh is a bit of a substitute for not being able to come to visit.
Cheers, Michael
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I’m not sure that’s exactly what I was thinking, but structure I find very helpful. Moons ago, I learned the rules for mutations in the way books and conventional classes teach, and it seemed to me they boiled down to what was easiest to say! OK, that is a simplification, but people do tend to say what comes easily, so it makes sense. In the Lessons, as I remember, we are told, “you will hear… just copy and it will come naturally”. So the fact of the mutation is mentioned. I’m not sure what is said in Challenges, but some sort of explanation for each kind met. surely is helpful, together with, “just copy what you hear and soon it will come naturally”? 