Life after level two

Ok I have found level 2 much tougher than level 1. But have persevered and have just finished challenge 13. It’s got me thinking what next?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

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Well, you could do the northern levels… :dancers:

In any case, many congratulations!

Congratulations, you’re doing excellently!

By the time you finish the published sessions for Level 2, we should have a few more ready for you - and then the Level 3 ones should be coming out before too much longer… :sunny:

But the key step for you now is to get into as many Welsh conversations as possible - ideally, to have a one hour ‘No English’ conversation once a week, which will push you on extremely quickly… :sunny:

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Thanks @aran I’m pleased to say I had a marathon session on the plane coming back from holiday and did the last 5 lessons at once. I did find them very difficult so am doing them all again and am pleased to say I’m getting about 3/4 of it correct.

Dwi’n falch iawn efo faint dwi 'di dysgu yn barod ar ol tua mis. Dylwn i trio ymarfer siarad hi yn fwy aml rwan. Yfory dwi’n mynd i drio ond dwi’n poeni bo fi’n mynd i anghofio popeth! Gwydrad neu ddau dwi’n meddwl!!!

Diolch yn fawr iawn Aran. Dwi’n aros am “Challenge Three” yn barod.

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Awesome - way to go! That’s a huge result - because once you’ve done as many as that in one go, it’ll feel perfectly achievable to do two in a row any time you have the spare time - and that can hugely accelerate your progress… :star: :star2:

Thanks Aran

On my journey into work I can get through a challenge - get some funny looks as i talk to myself in the car but it means I can easily do two sessions in a day. I’ve started doing this as opposed to taking the train as it means I can practice speaking as opposed to just thinking about what to say.

I’m greatly looking forward to level 3 coming out and to putting trying the odd phrase out in the wild.

What will be difficult is to stop falling back on English - it far too easy isn’t it.

I’m guessing the key now is to practice speaking more, getting more confident in the structures learnt and practice listening and understanding too. :slight_smile:

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Yup - definitely from where you are, next step is real conversations - as many of them as you can have, but aim for an hour a week as your first target… :sunny:

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Ok. Dwi newydd dechrau yr hen cwrs 2. O’n i’n meddwl oedd cwrs 3 yn ychydig o annodd a felly nes i ddechra cwrs 2. Dwi 'di ffeindio lawer o geirfa newydd yn barod!

Si I’m going to go through the old course 2 rapidly just to help expand my knoweledge and then either the old course 3 or the new level 3 if its ready.

And of course practising whenever I get the change to speak. :slight_smile:

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Peter,

I did the old courses and Level 1 and now progressing through Level 2. I am now a convert to the new levels, but the differences were a bit unnerving at first - you get used to some patterns.

Switching the other way - I was unnerved by Level 1 initially, because I kept asking myself why have you started say things like that and wondering what do people actually say etc etc - but this just made me listen more to what people were saying and you soon realise that people say virtually the same things in so many different ways, simply for emphasis or style.

I think the old Course 2 - it used to be my favourite - is really good and some different stuff in there, but for some reason I never really took to the old Course 3. This is just my opinion and I still listen to the odd random lesson here and there, but it seemed a bit listy, in terms of introducing stuff in too organised a way - verb after verb - future and past - I’d still do it, becuase it is really good and there’s some really good stuff in there, but not a patch on the way things are done in the Levels or the old Course 2, where things seem more nicely jumbled up and there’s more switches to throw your brain off-balance.

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Thanks

having done the first couple of lessons I’m going to stick with the old course 2 until level 3 comes out. I’m finding it useful to expand my vocabulary.

I’ve also just watched “Cegin Bryn” on S$C - picked up a fair bit so was pleased with that. Think I will build a bit of welsh television in to my daily routine too.

I have 5 weeks until I go to Gernany for the weekend - I’m determined to be able to speak as much welsh as possible when I am there! (Long story)

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TV and Radio are great - so many different styles and personal ways of saying things. I’'m slowly getting used to the news and general stuff now, but the random speakers that get interviewed rarely conform to anything you could expect. There was an interview with Dewi Pws on Radio Cymru yesterday, which was brilliant, but I was totally lost in lots of places, sometimes because he was half laughing while he was speaking and other times he was racing and jumping from one thing to the next, using lots and lots of colloquialisms. I suspect a lot of people who remember him from “Grand Slam”, which was repeated every year, until a few years back, probably didn’t understand half the things he said in English either.

Sounds like you are flying through the lessons - I’ve done that, but maybe not quite so fast and I have then taken months off and ignored Welsh completely and I have found that it does start to wane even after a couple of weeks or so. I did spanish like a bullet once and got really good, but now can’t remember a word, so SSI spanish will be interesting when I decide to give that one a go, to see if things come back and how quickly it can be done.

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It’s definitely not my best piece of writing - fell subconsciously into some pretty traditional approaches to learning in there, which I’ve now stamped out of myself…:wink:

Well if that’s bad, it means you’re setting the bar very high and I’d still recommend it.

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Diolch yn fawr iawn… :slight_smile:

But it’s utterly understandable for anyone not to like it much - there’s a fair bit of stodge in there…:wink:

I didn’t spot the stodge - it was the groupings of things that got me, although to be fair there was a bit of mashing things about every now and again, but in the main there were long spells where I got away with a fair bit of free-wheeling I think - which was definately a bit less effective somehow. I did course three twice from start to finish though and have repeated several of the lessons many times since, because it covers some really useful stuff.

I’m loving Level 2, although only done 7 lessons so far (3 this week after a few weeks off) - certainly no freewheeling going on there - i have to listen carefully, because some of the sentences are rediculously long and my short term memory is being pushed to the limits - as a last resort i sometimes just make up an ending, because by the time i get there i’ve forgotten what I was meant to be saying - just like in real life I suppose.

P.S. are there no listening practices for L2 south yet?. I don’t mind, I just don’t want to overlook them if their around somewhere.

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I woke early today so downloaded duolingo. Big mistake! Well maybe. A bit of fun to leatn new vocabulary perhaps but after the joys of arans lessons this was just frustrating beyond belief.

To learn you fail. To improve you get positive feedback. Im afraid duolingo doesnt for me, hit the mark.

So my journey to work today will consist of challenge three of the old northern course two and my jpurney home challenge four. Unless of course i manage to fit in a couple of lessons in my frees this afternoon!

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The best thing about Duolingo is that it will increase interest in Welsh - now at 150K learners in no time at all. Does it work for language learning - I’m not sure on that one either, but it might help in reading some books I suppose. I hate to be critical of something that is going to achieve something good in other ways though, by spreading the word and profile of the language. Also, I get the impression that there has been a lot of effort and dedication put into developing the course by a few exceptionally driven individuals

This puts a bit of perspective on SSIW cwrs 3, because that is an order of maginitude more effective than Duolingo and positively abstract compared to the compartmentalised nature of Duolingo. I understand that the Duolingo course is built on material from the Welsh for adults courses so everything is in discrete modules. I suspect if I was a teacher, I would have to design a course like that, but while it might help the teaching and assessment - I don’t think it leads to the optimum learning process…

There’s quite a few SSIWers I think who have signed up and some have finished the tree and waiting for the next one. If their other traffic could be driven to things like SSIW then there’d be a lot more Welsh speakers around, that’s for sure. I will do the next tree if they do one, I won’t be able to help it, but not sure I will learn anything.

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Well yes it’s just a bit of fun I guess. Although having watched Cegin Bryn last night it was nice to see some words cropping up! eg. llysiau…which last night I had no idea what he was on about! Ond dwi’n meddwl bo fi’n gwybod sut i gwneud mayonnaise efo wystrys, olew a melynwy! .

I’m chomping at the bit waiting for level 3 to come out if I am honest. In the past 5 weeks I feel I have built up a fair head of steam and I don’t want to lose momentum!

Sorry @aran I’m not impatient really ha ha.

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Hope I haven’t put you off the old course 3 - I’d definately do it - you’ll probably finish in a couple of weeks, the rate your going. Never knew melynwy - obvious when you think about it. wasn’t expecting the efo - did you do southern or northern or is efo about to come up in level 2 southern?

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I’ve been doing the northern course - and I find duolingo frustrating as a result. Excuse my poor grammar if I used the wrong word,I did like watching a few cooking programmes in welsh (Rhaglen coginio???) - obviously it helps being able to see what they are taking about - but nevertheless I think its another aid on my road to being able to converse even a little bit!!!