A recent trip to the Highlands to pick up my daughter from her independent geological study in Ardnamurchan meant that I faced a car journey spanning 2 days on my own just to get there. After consulting with Aran on the best way to try some sort of intensive Welsh session during the trip, I finally settled on making a CD up with each of the Cwrs 3 lessons interspersed with episodes of Beti a’i Phobol or Pigion. The results were very interesting. With each 35 minute lesson separated by 20 - 40 minutes of non-attentive listening practice, the fatigue of justing working through a solid programme of lessons was avoided and the whole thing became rather addictive! Over the 2 days, I managed 11 lessons, 5 Beti’s and 5 Pigions, which wasn’t bad going (that was just over 10 hours of material).
After a couple of weeks of feeling quite jaded (coinciding with completing Cwrs 3 I think), doing these intensive revision sessions has certainly given me my mojo back. I’m back reading in Welsh again and am really looking forwards to an Agored assessment in a few weeks time. So I can recommend something like this approach if you can find the time.
Assuming that you have the lessons and podcasts in iTunes or a similar program, just make a playlist, order the tracks as you want then by dragging and dropping them into the right running order, and hit the burn to CD button. Remember to burn the tracks as mp3 files, or they will not fit onto a normal CD! My disc has an estimated running time of 1 day…
My CD will also find use for the drive to the Eisteddfod, so I hope you manage to get one made up!
Am I correct in thinking that your car CD player must be capable of playing MP3 files? (Perhaps most modern car CD players can these days - haven’t checked ours, but traditional home stereo ones would not have done).
A conventional audio format CD would not have had the capacity for what you have described, unless you made loads of CDs, and kept changing them. EDIT: OK, I see you used MP3 format).
@Stuart: Lots of ways probably, but “imgburn” is a nice free utility.
Assuming the CD player can handle MP3 files, I think you would just use its option for writing files and/or folders, i.e. writing them out as data files.
A good way to download that kind of thing guaranteed ad-free is to use “ninite” (ninite.com). I’ve used ninite loads of times and not had problems so far. Doesn’t have everything, but it does have imgburn.
I did the whole of the new course when I was going back and forth to Mum’s (Newcastle Emlyn to Flintshire) a few weeks ago. it certainly makes the drive go more quickly!
Syniad da, Stu! Will definitely keep it in mind for the next long journey I have to make. Pob lwc gyda dy arholiad/asesiad. Dw i’n siŵr byddi di’n iawn.
I’m a big fan of intensive learning, and I’m a big fan of regular revision while driving, but the idea of combining the two left me feeling distinctly nervous!
That sounds much smarter than what I tried - which was just listening to C3 lessons (my first time trying C3) straight on a trip to London. I got to about Reading and had to pull over because my brain had stopped working - I think it was after three lessons, but I couldn’t swear to it. I haven’t dared touch them since!
I’ll grab the podcasts and put them on my playlist, I think, thanks.
Yes, alternating lessons and listening (where the objective of the latter is to let the Welsh wash over you) makes driving and intense lerning possible without it all ending up in a massive pile up!
