The ugly truth is that at the beginning of the 5di we were doing 10 challenges a day. We only slowed slightly as the course went on. It was an interesting experience.
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If only we had your stats for your first two repetitions of 2 - Iād be hugely surprised if they showed a bigger jump in results than your two attempts at 3. I donāt think the claim that abcde/abcde is better than aa/bb/cc/dd/ee is extraordinary - weāve seen it work like that for pretty much everyone whoās done it - I think youāre setting a slightly unhelpful target if ābetterā has to be āextraordinarily betterā instead of just ābetterā. That jump in stats from 3 (take 1) to 3 (take 2) is genuinely excellent - repeated from there up to 25, it would have you ready for Bootcamp (a week of Welsh immersion).
Given your stats on 3, I no longer think youāre on an outside part of the curve for how many repetitions you needā¦
Having said that, what you say about getting negative emotions from your āmissesā makes me think that youāre right not to try and push on with the accelerated approach. Our fastest learners by and large have a very cheerful approach to āmistakesā, recognising them as a vital part of the process, and not suffering negative self-talk about them - which is probably the key element.
I think itās important (for other readers) to make the point that this is not, judging by your results, a matter of ātraining for better runnersā - the stats are entirely consistent with the approach (and as Tatjana has said, theyāre better than hers!).
But itās also important that you find a way for the learning process not to be as unpleasant as youāve found this, so Iām glad youāre now looking at customising itā¦
With regards to your current ideas:
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doing the challenges in smaller chunks - yup, sure. Weāve seen quite a lot of anecdotal evidence now that looks as though thereās a neural adaptation to the process of doing the lessons - the more you do, the better you get at doing them - but thereās no harm at all in breaking them up into smaller units.
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repeating - as weāve covered above - but since you have a tendency to expect higher mastery of the content than is ideal, youāre facing the real risk of over-repeating and getting stuck - so I would strongly encourage you to choose a maximum number of repetitions per challenge and stick to it.
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repeating ānot stuckā - this, I think, would hugely increase the risk that you become overly focused on mastering each individual item - Iād encourage you to operate on a āper lessonā basis and try to increase your tolerance for how many ānot stuck yetā items you can tolerateā¦
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5 in a row instead - if you mean abcde/abcde/abcde then I think that would make an interesting follow up test (more in terms of your emotional adaptation to it than the stats) - I also think that aabbccddeeffgghhiijj would be quite interesting for you, if youāre still thinking of testing that sort of variation.
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mixing and matching - I tend to think that following one path at a time is more effective, but thatās quite a personal thing - you might well find that Memrise or Duolingo offer you something that feels refreshing to shuffle with SSi - Iād recommend that you try shuffling, but also that you try some time exclusively on each other approach that you use, in case one of them feels more enjoyable to you as a main methodologyā¦
Am I right that Anki is just spaced repetition? Iām not entirely sure I see how that would work as an addition to SSiā¦?
Nope, sorry - we build based on conversational models rather than vocab lists, so we donāt have any straightforward vocab list files. @Eigentime - weāre always happy for you to use the material in whatever way you want for personal useā¦
The current record is 35 sessions in two days - and anyone whoās spoken to @novem will tell you that she certainly got a lot out of itā¦
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She is, at least in learnerās eyes, fluent Welsh speaker! I bet if she wasnāt before she is now after adding bootcamp experience into the mix of very intensive learning.
Yes, more or less. I have a feeling it works more like Mamrise. You set the goal of how many phrases (or whatever) youāll study per day and, depending of how you mark your success with each and every of them, they repeat. You study all set phrases until you do them right if you clicked ārepeatā button, but even if you donāt the system gives you repetition of mistaken things in set amount of time. Time is counted here with how many new things is set inbetween the repetition of that particular missed one. But, in the contrary of Memrise, you can set all parameters by yourself and totally adapt what, how and what way youāre learning.
I believe the system is good more for ātrainingā your memory then it would be real official addition or way of studying. Actually SSi system already does some sort of such thing itās just that itās about listening and speaking and not every Challenge/Lesson has all the repetition but it seams (even if itās not at all) more like random one what is way more efficiently Iād say.
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Iāll be using that with the children from now on when theyāre doing maths homework!!!
(although when Iām learning Welsh I donāt so much see it as a mistake, more a momentary lapse in the ability to remember)
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The difference I see is that Anki is interactive, in that you rate your recollection of an item on a scale and how long it takes until it next repeats depends on that rating. That is spaced recollection as I was first introduced to it. It can also temporarily remove vocab if it detects that it just isnāt sinking in, and then reintroduce it as a new item after a period to give it another chance.
My point about it being a possible direction for SSi in the future was that using the same sort of approach SSi could be better matched to each learners rate of acquisition / memory.
Wow - my record is 2 challenges in a row (the maximum amount of dishes that can pile up before they replace all the tables and there are none to eat from). With some challenges I can imagine getting a third in, but with others just the one is enough! That said, I will soon have a lot of time on my hands for a couple of months, so maybe Iāll give Welsh a go at full throttle.
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Ah, right, I see - the rating is a very interesting approach, well done them - yes, weāre definitely interested in being able to customise much more - the interleaving we do (putting items into different contexts) would make it tricky to rate individual items, but I think we could probably do some useful stuff with fairly broad self-rating of whole sentencesā¦ itās probably our next serious piece of work for the SSiBorgā¦ maybe next year, if weāre luckyā¦
I think it is only fair to mention that the person who did 35 challenges in 2 days was, I believe, only 15 at the time, 16 at the most and is clearly a very, very clever girl! After all, after moving from Italy to Finland, she had to learn Finnish and Swedish as well as already speaking Italian and English.
I started off having forgotten more Cymraeg that I remembered. and still struggle with my slow 75 year old brain!
We are all different. We learn different subjects more easily than others. Some of us learn all things more easily than others do!
Getting discouraged must be the thing which makes learning harder! Try to do whatever makes learning enjoyable!! As small children, we learn like sponges and mostly without realising it! I like SSiW, because it is more like that natural way than any other I have met. But we all need to add to what we pick up as small children! Reading, word listsā¦ whatever helps! (Me? Too lazy to put in the effort!)
Oh, the other way round, actually. I already spoke Italian and Finnish but had to learn English and Swedish 
Ond diolch for the introduction!
Diolch yn fawr for your kind words, Iām blushing 
To everyone who is interested in trying the more intensive approach - itās painful, but also fun if you let it be and relax, and the results possible in such a short amount of time are amazing
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I can sympathise with @Eigentime Iāve just started and Iām having the same problems. The difference in my case is Iāve just completed the Duolingo course so already know a fair number of Welsh words esp in written form but struggle to recall them from memory for speaking purposes, I had hoped this course would help to āunlockā all those words in my memory. The first challenge was ok as I knew all the words bar three so only struggled with the very long sentences; the second challenge howeverā¦my memory shut down on me a number of times. I am following the advice contained in the emails - that is donāt use the pause button and donāt repeat; I did repeat the 1st one a couple of times but not the second as I did not want to revisit that car crash as I found it quite distressing. I have done the third one - I had very low expectations for this one which probably helped a bit but I noted that new words werenāt sticking at all, (by ānewā I mean ones Iāve never encountered before rather than ones new to that challenge). I certainly donāt want to trash this course but I am also wondering if this is the best way for me to learn - it is so fast and furious and the lessons feel too long - brain fag sets in after about 20 minutes. A very long sentence tends to make my mind go blank so I tried this time to come up with part of the sentence. I do wonder if my ageing brain will be able to grasp much as I am used to a much slower pace!
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It happens to all of us, but in trying to say something you are doing the right thing 
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Umā¦ I can see thatās extremely kindly meant, but itās sort of the opposite of what I meant by āfor personal useāā¦!
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sorry - I interpreted it very differently. Was just trying to give something back. Iāll delete the post.
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I absolutely understand that, and appreciate itā¦
I think for us thereās a key difference between people wanting to use the materials in alternative ways, and us actually offering/sharing short-cuts for using the materials in alternative ways - which would rather look as though we were encouraging the alternatives, which Iām wary about doing unless we uncover some evidence that they are in fact an improvement on what weāre doing (rather than just a variation)ā¦
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Well, that was very interesting. I did 8 challenges in a row (18-25) without repetition and was amazed at how much I retained. Iāve just got halfway through #18 for a rerun. A few thoughts about this:
Iāve learned some of the new words in Course 1 , Lessons 1-6.2 and familiar with days of the week from Memrise.
I found Course 1 more initially accessible and think I may have been put off by going straight into the Challenges - Challenge 2 (or was it 3?) was particularly dense. Doing these in blocks of ten I would have found psychologically overwhelming.
I have become used to doing most things in bite-size pieces and find things not overwhelming and easier to digest in that way.
Familiarity with the method and the interleaving means however that there is not loads to digest in any one challenge.
I cursed you a few times (Iestyn says this is to be expected) when things got tricky but just kept pushing through until a more familiar sentence restored my confidence.
The overall conclusion I take from this is that trying to drive home the new sentences by concerted repetitions is less effective (at this stage anyway) is less effective than allowing the material to lightly seep into my consciousness. Thereās a greater sense of faster forward motion too. I will continue with this way of doing it and report back!
@Eigentime its really interesting to hear about your experiences with this, it does seem that not getting too concerned about perfection with this method pays off in the end.
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Weāre getting used to the cursingā¦
That sounds as though youāve got it cracked! Well doneā¦ 
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@aran well, this has been very successful. Iāve run through all 8 challenges three times now and most of it has stuck. Iāve just done the first one (challenge 18) for the fourth time and it was a bit superfluous to requirements as I got 95% of it. On my fourth run through I will start at Challenge 21 amd just do the last 5. When I start Level 2 I will definitely do ten in a rowā¦
Looks like weāve lost M?
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PS, if this still looks like slow progress itās because I just had a ten day holiday in Cornwall where I did the SSICornish challenges!
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That sounds to me as though youāve seriously cracked itā¦
Time to start looking for a regular conversation partner!
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I canāt speak highly enough of āgoing on a mad oneā with multiple lessons in a row.
Without going into the life story. My work means that once or twice a month I make either the long train ride from Aberystwyth to Birmingham, or a car ride from Aber to Bridgend - which gives me about 4hrs or 2hrs time to get some serious SSIW down. In between lessons then I chuck Radio Cymru on āfor a breakā :D:D
A couple of weeks ago I think I managed 12 in a day, before checking into my London hotel and going straight out to the London Welsh Centre to watch the Wales v Serbia match amongst other Welsh speakers! You feel wrecked at the end, but the benefits are amazing. I did dream that night in Welsh, and I found myself accidentally saying Welsh stuff in conference calls (to an audience of non Welsh speakers) the next day!
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Oh my, your memory is bombastic, Eigentime! 
Mine is so much worseā¦I only scored a 3.5. Now, I have a question to this memory test: Are there different ākindsā of working memories? Iām abysmally bad at reading maps, at geometryā¦at pretty much everything that requires spatial sense. Thank goodness Iām doing better at languages and remembering words (probably because I do subconsciously connect them to feelings)ā¦