My NPNR challenge: thoughts so far

Welsh General / Questions
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Hello all,

10 days ago I posted my forum introduction and, at that time, I said I was sceptical that the lessons could be completed, one after another, with No Pause and No Repeat. Many of you were very encouraging that I should give it a go. Aran recommended “at least 10 sessions without any repeats”. So, ever ready to learn new and exciting ways of studying, I took my sceptical hat off and have now completed lessons 8 to 20 NPNR :grinning:

As to whether it works; I have mixed feelings.
In terms of vocabulary it’s been pretty amazing and I reckon I’ve now got conscious control of about 80 - 90% of the words. Sometimes it takes a few lessons to “get them” other times they stick like glue.

Sadly, where it hasn’t been so good and, for me, a real failure, is getting to grips with the prefix patterns for each verb that denote the tense. Here I have had almost zero success :cry: Add in the question prefix, the negative pattern and the yes/no responses and I just haven’t got a clue.
Absolutely nothing is sticking. I’m now in such a muddle that even “I am” from lesson 1 is causing problems.

So, unless someone’s got some magic formula for this, my plan is to go back to the beginning and do this bit the brute force way: create flash cards for the patterns for each tense along with all the associated question prefixes and yes/no responses and keep on driling myself, over and over, until I’ve “got it”, employing every memory trick I know.

I’d be interested to know how others got their heads around this part of the language.

I’m off to the Pembrokeshire coast on Saturday for a week. I shall report back on whether I had the courage to try out my Welsh at any point.

Regards
Andrew

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One of the things I’ve found about this course is that you have to redefine ‘success’. You are not going to get everything ‘right’ in one go. In fact, there will be days when you don’t even get half of the sentences right. Sometimes, ‘success’ is simply getting to the end of a lesson without feeling like your brain has been put through the spin cycle of the washing machine.

What I’ve found is that I’m always a little thrown with everything when a new sentence pattern is introduced, but as I go through the lessons and it becomes more comfortable to use, everything falls back into place nicely. It’s something that happens so slowly that you won’t even notice.

But, if it makes you feel better, I haven’t spoken to or read posts by a single person who hasn’t been through pretty much the same thing you have at some stage. The thing is, the brain has a funny way of squirrelling away bits of the language you’re learning. It will seem inaccessible to you for ages, but then, right when you’re in a position where you need it to communicate, it will be there rolling off your tongue. :smile:

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Flashcards, I think, are a very good technique, and I work with them myself (not in my lessons, because it’s time consuming, but I always advise students to employ them at home). Another technique I find helpful is the sentence transformation. It is similar to what we do in SSI, but can be done monolingually – you just take a sentence and start changing parts of this sentence without changing the main frame. For example, you change the tense of the verb from Present to Past, but leave all the rest in its place. Or you change the verb but the tense stays the same. Or you change the person of the verb from “I” to “You” or “he/she” It can be done in a fun way, with consecutive transformations, until the sentence doesn’t even resemble the one that you started with. As in: Dw i’n mynd mas (change person) Ti’n mynd mas (change the last word) Ti’n mynd i gysgu (change to negative) Ti ddim yn mynd i gysgu etc.
A fun way is also to invent stories limiting yourself to only one tense (the one you’re struggling with) and, for example, setting the task of using the five verbs that you’ve covered in the previous lessons. The stories that you get in the end can be really very weird
But the trick here might be the goal to “get it”. It can keep you stalled in one place while you can be doing much more exciting things. There’s also the fact that drilling is quite boring for a lot of people and can make some of them lose motivation in no time.
I think that a lot of people who want to have the full control of the learning process look at the language as to a goal in itself, as if the main reason why you are learning the language were to “get the structure” right. But the language itself is not usually a goal, unless you’re a linguist and you’re studying how things work inside it. It’s just a means that enables us to do things: ask, answer, explain etc. And if we concentrate on function and not the form, it can relieve a bit the anxiety of “not getting it right”.
One task that students always find helpful is, for example, to find three everyday uses for a new structure and then to invent their own sentences. For example, the “going to” form is a natural way to talk about plans, and the students can have a task to make up some new year resolutions. It’s a more personalized form of drilling and helps to concentrate more on the function of the structure.
I apologize if I’ve been stating the obvious, it’s just my own experience with the languages. If you want, I can describe some other techniques I use myself to remember the sentence structures more efficiently.

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What Stella said, in a much better way than I can, but my penny worth follows.

I made and used flash cards myself, they sort of helped.

What helped me more was, as Stella says, using and changing the parts of the sentence to make new ones- whether talking to yourself or writing.

I’ve got reams of stuff at the back of the cupboard with the different forms of verbs, or different patterns in speech, in various forms of calligraphy or unintelligible scribbles. And also did that (rather more) in my head or out loud.

It was using and changing the sentences I found more useful, though simply working out the various forms did then help me to recognise the words and patterns, and recognise the pronunciation as used in the lessons. And writing them down did often help me with that.

The process of working them out and thus recognising them when I then heard them, I mean- though I might occasionally write down stuff in an “amo amas amat” sort of way, I didn’t really then try to learn them by rote that way- but it helped me when I came to use them to form sentences.

So I suppose just saying in my experience, I found stuff like that useful to increase my ability to form new sentences, but it’s important not to get bogged down in success being the ability to pass a flashcard test or remember lists of declined verbs.

And as for remembering the correct “yes” or “no” responses, that is something which a lot of people can get bogged down in for absolutely no reason - it’s nice to know the different forms, but if you can’t remember which one to use off the cuff, join the club of a lot of people who are otherwise happily having conversations in Welsh! Even if you are talking to a Welsh speaker who always uses the “correct” form, (and there are precious few who always do!), it won’t have any effect on the conversation if you don’t.
“Yes” and “no” responses, particularly, are something not to worry about, as a lot of people seem to get bogged down on them, as I say.
[It might help, if you didn’t already know, that “yes” and “no” in Welsh is often ( though not always!) like saying “I am”, or “he is” or “she was” instead of “yes” or “no”- but not in exactly the same spoken form. Hope that doesn’t complicate matters!]

Sorry for waffling, and just my pennyworth, as I say!

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My experiences (and maybe I’m the most relevant for this): I’ve got through the Course 1 once, then had a break for about 14 days and then got back from the beginning because those 2 Lessons 6 really had eaten my nerves and then at 2nd go all of the sudden they stuck in me as much as I could expect (but not entirely that would be too good thiugh). I’ve pushed on with no pause button but yes, quite some repetition as I’ve settled myself kind of a system - 1st day new lesson, 2nd day repeat old lesson, 3rd day new lesson, 4th day repeat previous lesson etc. It did a bit of effect but was not satisfying at all. At the middle of Course 1 (2nd time) I had a feeling I’m repeating too much of everything but going nowhere and also don’t know much more then I did before. So I started Level 1. Since it was quite different aproach (oh, well, still is for those who did old courses first) I first had a feeling I’m flying as I’ve reached Challenge 10 without any particular problems (oh, well there were some of course) but from Challenge 10 on it started to becomming tough and I’ve stucked in Challenge 13 but still pushing further. At Level 1 I’ve used (some of) the pause button but got nowhere anyway.

Then came (oh it did before aswell but my stubborn mind didn’t want quite to listen) @aran’s instructions which were in short summary as this “Go from the scratch and do everything without pause button and repetition” just like you did. I won’t say it’s magicpotion, wand or something like that, especially for people like me who are hard on willing to give up perfection (and control upon everything if you want put it that way), and (if you read my progress reports) I failed to feel any progress and will to go on many times, but it eventually helped me to gain some more memory skills and accelerated my brains to think/process at least a bit faster.

Here I am now with finished all old course and at theh beginning of Level 1 all of a sudden more confident to go on and on and on without any repetition and pause button. Yes, I’ve drilled all the way though this last sequence of all three Courses without any pause button and repetition, many times quite quiet and not so “talkative” but I caught myself my brains are working in the background when I don’t do lessons anymore. There are words floating in my mind without any connections of momental happenings which I didn’t/couldn’t remember previously and all of a sudden they are here. I can understand them, I can hear them in my mind and I know how to use and where to use them. I know there will be a moments of drop down during the rest of Level 1 for sure but I know now at one point it will all come back and get into its place just like it should be.

Well, this is the story … and my advise (as there are many of other members before) just go through, obay Aran no matter what he suggests you to do, stick to his plan (if he’d offer any) and don’t measure sucdess with the time. There’s no time limit in which you have to do or acomplish something, there’s just notion that you’ll accomplish something at the end.

Go boldly as you started and, gather that courage to speak if you’ll get the chance. Speaking in “wild” is something different then Skype practice and one should use every single opportunity that comes to an offer.

Pob lwc.
Tatjana
:sunny:

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Very helpful. Thank you

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I’m seriously beginning to think I have somehow missed some subliminal conditioning hidden in these lessons. :wink:

There are many people today who owe their sanity- indeed, sometimes their very lives- through diligently doing the opposite of this suggestion.

I really think it should be made clear that this only works if Aran is speaking “ex Cathedra”, wearing his SSiW Pontiffs Mitre and triple crown, and does not apply to suggestions of what to do with your bank account numbers, fattened calves, first born children or Scottish policemen.

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Oh … the hidden things aren’t in, they’re all around.

Yah, mught be, but … (on the sirious note really) I owe him to still be here at all (and my stubborn mind which just doesn’t want to quit. - hehe).

Hehe, he can have them (my bank acount numbers I mean) … it’s constantly emptying every single month. - LOL :slight_smile:

OK. I believe we should stop confusihg @andrewstebbing … Siriously, go for whatever you feel it’ll help but too much of a hard drilling. I’m doing that eventually from time to time and I’m not in the good mood at such occassions. :slight_smile:

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I find flashcards helpful but mine don’t have any words on them; they are all pictures, which avoids the need to write and the risk of problems of incorrect pronunciation.

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Hi Andrew. Just to add to the reassurance that your experience is completely ‘normal’ I also found I struggled at times with patterns. I found that on occasion it did me a lot of good to spend 30 minutes whilst walking just making up sentences which ran through I, you, he, she, you (pl), we and they - in present, past and future (and negatives). Just simple sentences I made up running through those structures really reassured me that I DID know them, but sometimes during the actual lesson that gets lost in the pressure of producing it quickly, with new words and long sentences you can’t even remember in English! Dal ati!

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I repeated lessons 1 and 2 quite a few times because I wanted to feel confident. Once I got past lesson 3 though, I’ve somehow managed no pause and no repeat through to lesson 11.

I would say I’m still remembering vocabulary and tenses/sentence structures fairly well. What happens is that often when there are long sentences, I go “uhhh” and have trouble finishing on time. So after a lesson with new concepts introduced, I feel like I was muddling through and desperately trying. But on the next lesson, when those concepts are reviewed, they feel much easier. And on the most recent lesson I even managed a fair few long sentences!

I do feel like I’m barely keeping up sometimes, though, and my plan is to get through maybe to the end of course 1 and then start from the beginning and see how easy it feels the second time. I wonder if that would help for you? Perhaps even a second round of NPNR would be easier than this first round, and slowly the concepts would get cemented in your brain. Personally I just don’t like repeating a lesson too many times as I like the excitement of new material.

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It feels easier. At least this much I can asure you.

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However long you do it, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, five minutes or longer, sounds a great way to do it!

Just knowing or learning by rote the whole declination of verbs things won’t help you- but knowing them and then using them in different sentences and practising them differently in this manner, whether on your own or with other people is a good way to practise!

In my opinion, anyway. It seemed to work for me!

And SSiW gives you marvellous tools and structures with which to do this.

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“And here is a photo of a lovely German couple we met near Nepal…”

-“Ble mae’r estrys?”
-“Nagwi’n moyn mynd yno eto ar ôl beth wedodd y Dalai Lama i fi…”
-“Ges i ‘y mhen yn sownd y tro diwetha’…”

[sounds like a very good idea! Good way to make up sentences freely :blush:]

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As always, thank you to everyone for your words of support and encouragement. This forum really is quite exceptional in that respect :grinning:

This is exactly what I was doing in the early lessons but the trouble now is that I am in a complete mess with the tenses. So much so that I can’t even begin to try new sentences as I have absolutely NO, and I mean NO, mental association to recall any of the tenses other than the present.

That is also why I felt the NPNR method had been a failure in learning that part of the language.

When I compare how well NPNR has worked for recalling the vocabulary I find it quite dispiriting that it hasn’t worked at all for these ‘tense’ patterns.

I use mental images for the vocabulary which might be why I’ve been able to get decent recall here. I just haven’t been able to devise any imagery for the tenses as they sound (to my ears at least) all so similar.

Never mind. I am compiling my flash cards for the tense patterns and I’ll see if that works. Taking the time to slowly examine how they’re constructed will help me devise some imagery and hopefully cement the associations in this old brain.

Thanks again everyone.

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I think I remember @iestyn or @aran saying to someone not to worry that much about tenses in the practices. Even if it doesn’t feel like you’re learning them, somewhere in your brain they’re there, and eventually they’ll just make sense.

It’s this thing about conscious control that we all seem to have so much trouble letting go of. As adults, we become so obsessed with doing things ‘right’ that it stilts our learning because we don’t allow ourselves to be ‘bad’ at things…you see it in other disciplines too. Here, there are no exams, there’s no competency test you have to pass. It can be frustrating when you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere, but your brain is taking things in - it sometimes just decides not to tell you. :smile:

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@andrewstebbing : If you wish to go back to the beginning, fair enough.

However, I would caution against using flashcards for the actual lessons, because that’s not giving the SSiW method a fair chance on its own.

Where flashcards might come in useful (if you like flashcards) would be after, say, Course 1, or Level 1 (not sure which you are doing). to help learn additional vocabulary which is not taught in the courses (or the vocabulary lessons in Courses 1 & 2).

One of Aran’s mantras (which I think came out before “no pause, no repeat”).is “trust the method”, and it can work. But implict is that you don’t write down anything and you don’t read anything (from the lessons, although reading the summary after doing the lesson is allowed, but only if you are really not sure of what you heard).

Many of us started SSiW under the “old” rules which strongly discouraged reading and writing, but did not particularly discourage using pause, or repeating lessons. And that worked for us. Actually, though, once you get further in the course, you find you tend not to want to pause anyway. And I found repeating became a bit boring, and only really necessary if something had been distracting me on the first time around.

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I think you’ve got this almost perfectly the wrong way round. :sunny:

Andrew, thank you for your excellent detailed feedback - and this:

is much higher than I would have expected, so you have clearly achieved a huge amount.

But I hear your frustration, so:

Can you try and remember or figure out a few of these for me? So that I can be certain I know exactly what constructions you’re talking about. I don’t think going off-piste and working with flashcards for a while would be the end of the world - but if we can dig out a faster way to deal with it in here, it’s worth a shot…:wink:

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I shall give it some thought whilst I’m away. For the moment I can say that as far as vocabulary is concerned the words fall into 1 of 3 categories (for me).

  1. Those that ‘stick’ straight away like rhedeg bant - simply because it sounded funny.
  2. Those where I get an immediate (usually silly) image: dechrau (sounded like it started with duck so I instantly got Donald Duck starting an old car)
  3. The remainder that I get after a few lessons (I do find I often get random words from the lessons bubbling into my consciousness and then vanishing away which I take as a very positive sign)

For the tenses I managed to make up a few images for those that appeared in the early lessons (1-7 in my case before I started NPNR) For these I only have the affirmative statement as I never managed to produce a suitable image for the negatives: too many vavi bavi sounds for my ear plus some vim for good measure. I can recall those affirmative patterns from their images but, when @Iestyn introduces a new “person” (he/she/we/you) I haven’t managed to fit these into the image.

What I find is the following. We practice say, for example, we did something then we didn’t do something and I happily say the phrase. Next we introduce the questioning version and that too is ok but, as soon we get to the reply (which we’ve just been practicing), then it’s gone: absolutely no recall at all. Consequently I just end up just listening back to what Iestyn and Cat are saying, trying to find some kind of hook to latch on to. Addtionally, these verb tenses never bubble up into my conscious mind and, whilst I have BBC Radio Cymru on for 30 minutes or so each day, I never spot any familiar pattern for the tense being spoken even though I do manage to catch words from the course.

In some of the later lessons, when patterns for you (pleural) are introduced, @Iestyn does a wonderful review of the I/you/he/she patterns which is great: except we’re not practicing those so I forget them again. It was these review sections that I planned to use to create my flash cards.

I do so want to get a grip of these patterns as I quite enjoy making up sentences (I tend to buy and sell and awful lot of old cats and young dogs when I’m out walking) but I find it frustrating that I can’t practice saying the same sentence but in different tenses.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling for now as I have to pack for my Pembrokeshire holiday :grinning:

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Thanks for that very detailed response. I think there might be a couple of things going on here - partly, that they just haven’t bedded down yet, so you’re not conscious of the elements of them that have been learnt (your ‘vavi bavi vim’ stuff, for example, although it suggests that you haven’t heard the ‘th’ sound yet, which is common enough, shows that you have learnt how many syllables are in them, which is an important step)…

And then also there might be some genuine gaps as well - in which case, it would be really good for us to try and figure out which patterns you’ve been exposed to, and which of them are accessible/partly accessible/inaccessible for you at the moment - and also, how that pattern changes as you continue to progress through the course, and/or revisit some of the latest sessions you’ve done… :sunny:

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