3 Likes
I haven’t been able to commit to doing high intensity weekends lately, but in the past 4 weeks I’ve done 30 lessons working through lesson 22 of Course 2 (Southern) and 11-17 of Level 1 (Southern). I’ve also started doing Level 1 (Northern), but that’s mostly revision, so I’m not counting it. I’ve been doing about 1.5 lessons per day during the week and taking weekends off (except for listening). I haven’t repeated any lessons and listen to the listening exercises quite a bit. I have still been rather fond of my pause button up until the past week or so, but I’ve been really trying not to touch it this week. I feel like I’m retaining the material and not going into critical meltdown. I’m able to use what I’ve learned when I record myself talking about various things, which I do to work on my accent (helps me spot sounds/words that just aren’t coming out right). I know it’s not quite what you have in mind for these guys, but feel free to ask me any questions you might have!
1 Like
I think recording yourself talking is a great idea. I keep meaning to do more of this myself, but have been a bit lazy in that respect (well, in every respect dweud y gwir…).
One of the things I love about a high intensity approach is the range of options for implementation - and I think what you’re doing is absolutely fascinating - at some point, I think it would be really valuable for us to have some kind of online high intensity conference, for everyone who’s done stuff like this to swap thoughts and ideas. I’m going to put it on my ‘to do’ list! [So it has a fighting chance of happening this year…;-)]
The first question that comes to mind is - have you been doing the accelerated listening exercises too?
Yup! Well, not 5 min/day…I do 20-30 min of listening to it on loop 3 times a week or so. Also, if I’m having a “brain cannot Cymraeg” day with a lesson, where I keep missing things, I’ll go listen to the accelerated listening exercise a time or two before going back to the lesson. Usually when I go back to the lesson it’s as if a switch has been flipped and I can remember everything I’ve learned. I will say that at this point the exercises feel only a little accelerated, as if you and Catrin have just had too much caffeine (and are trying to imitate the Chipmunks 
). I don’t know if speeding them up more would be useful, though…might make them unintelligible.
Do you have any ideas you’re looking for a guinea pig for? 
I’d happy participate in a high intensity learning conference! Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help organise it!
2 Likes
Fantastic, thank you. I’m giving a talk on high intensity to the northern Welsh for Adults conference for tutors next month - and an online thing would be a great next step - before maybe arranging an irl conference one of these days…
Really interesting feedback, diolch once again - you can test what the next step up in speed is like as soon as we have listening exercises ready for L2 But the science points strongly in the direction of the brain continuing to respond to input a long way past what we would intuitively expect…
You’re probably too good to be a Welsh guinea pig now - but we’ll definitely be looking for guinea pigs to test stuff with unfamiliar languages in the not-too-distant future, at which point I will bear this in mind (and be shouting loudly on the forum in general terms…;-))
Just let me know when and I’d be happy to help with both. 
I have some experience with organising events and people, although I’ve never done an entirely online event.
The brain really is a wonderful and fascinating thing. I look forward to testing the next step of listening exercises.
Hmm…maybe, but I’m always interested in trying out new approaches when it comes to learning. 
The SSi approach feels a bit like hacking my brain. Unfortunately I’ve had five years of Spanish classes and I’ve lived in Italy, so using me as a guinea pig for Spanish or Italian or really anything Latin-based is probably out (if we’re going completely unfamiliar). Got any Slavic languages in the pipeline? Or maybe Icelandic? It’s supposed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn… 
1 Like
Ooh, brilliant. I’ll definitely be in touch at some point in the next few months
Yup, the whole hacking the brain thing is, I think, an increasingly interesting part of what we’re doing And as the SSiBorg course creation tool limps into real existence, we’re going to be able to produce a lot of new material very quickly - so with luck, we should have a whole bundle of new courses starting to publish before the end of the year
And as the SSiBorg course creation tool limps into real existence…
Interesting choice. I’d have thought Klingon would be more popular 
1 Like