During lockdown my mother (80) started learning Welsh with duolingo. She’s enjoying it and has kept up an impressive streak. I’m not anti-duolingo, I use it myself for French and worked through all the Cymraeg too, alongside SSIW. But I’ve met enough people who’ve learned the SSIW way to be able to tell the difference - there really is something special it gives you, both the framework of the language and getting a good accent. But she tried it once and declared it too hard and that she can’t handle not reading what she’s working on.
If I press harder she starts to dig her heels in and claim she only wants to learn a bit so that she can understand ‘Station Welsh’ and get to the right platform ahead of everyone else in Cardiff Central (because the announcements are in Welsh first). But she has some close friends who speak Welsh or are also learners and I’m sure really she’d like to be able to impress them by turning round and speaking in Welsh (stubborn and likes showing off, not family traits at all…).
Any ideas for getting her to try again? What made you take the plunge?
I’ve tried many times to persuade my parents to do things that to me seem perfectly reasonable and good and comfortably within their reach to me (also, I realize while writing, just a couple of hours ago).
Fact is that every single time, the more I try illustrating all the advantages and proposing easy solutions to any side issues, the more thy seem to resist and NOT want to do what I suggest.
So I guess the best honest advice I can think of is…to stop trying to convince her!
On a slightly mystical note, the only times I ever succeed (not only with them) is when I change my point of view:
Does she feel Ssiw is too hard or not working for her even she could do it if she wanted? Fine!
Is Duolingo the only thing she enjoys to do? Alright!
I don’t know exactly why, but it often happens that as soon as I stop wanting the situation to change…it just changes all by itself!
And if it doesn’t, well, that’s ok anyway, after all. She’s already doing well, especially considering not many people want to start learning a new language at 80!
P.s. Like the new Datblygu song stuck in my head says…Hidia befo!
There’s something in what Gisella says. I tried for years to get my daughter to try SSiW, and finally gave up mentioning it. It wasn’t long after that that she joined!
Your mother, though, seems to have very specific needs. Perhaps the best way of enticing her is to persuade Iestyn and Cat to produce a special Cardiff Station challenge, with phrases like: ‘Is the train going already? The time really flies by, doesn’t it?’ And ‘Please get out of my way, I have a daughter in her thirties and we’re getting the train to have a glass or two with a few friends‘.
A travel themed lesson would definitely entice her! Otherwise I might have to try some reverse psychology and tell her I’ve actually decided it’s probably too difficult for her …
When your train is cancelled and the next one is very late and you hear the same announcement twenty times or more followed by the translation you tend to get the gist of it.
Sue
It’s a tricky one, isn’t it? I know a couple of older people who are perhaps also visual learners who have struggled with doing things wholly through listening.
I am not sure Aran would approve, but I vaguely remember when I was doing Levels 1 & 2, someone had created some transcripts for them and put them on the forum. Worth having a search for them, maybe?
I too am an older learner and have found ssiw very difficult to learn compared to Duolingo. I have got to lesson 10 in level 2 and all those phrases I left because I couldn’t pick them up straight away and they would be repeated in subsequent lessons have all caught up with me . I have been trying this lesson for
three weeks now and can’t get much right at all. I need the written word to help and I am very poor with technology so sound cloud is not available to me. I paid for a years course and will eventually finish it but will then seek other providers for my Welsh Tuition this teaching method probably is very good for most people but it does not suit all
The thing is, it will suddenly click and you’ll be talking Welsh. You will already be aware that you don’t need to learn everything as you go. Not even those tricky sentences that have come back. There are a few bits that I still haven’t mastered after years but to be honest, I have found myself using other ways to express myself.
