New level 1 Listening Practices

Welsh General / Questions
#1

S’mae Pawb,

The new Cwrs 1 Gogledd listening practice files are available now, and they are really great. Having practices that use all the words you know, but strung together in a kind of monologue or dialogue makes these practices feel much more useful and beneficial than the previous random sort.

The files appear at challenges 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25, and those from 10 onwards are dialogues run at double speed. They are designed to be listened to on a loop and you let them wash over you, rather than listen to them attentively. The sped up ones are challenging (as they should be) and should prove especially helpful in following real life conversations or the telly/radio.

Hwyl,

Stu

#2

Diolch Stu. Hadn’t noticed those.

Actually though, I’m not seeing the one for challenge 25, although I can see the challenge ok.

#3

25 is not up yet…

Stu

#4

Wwww… I might give these a listen! Will they alternate each week with a different practice like the old ones did, or will these be the only available practices for the time being??

#5

You’ll have just one practice session for whatever level you’re at - so if you’re working on sessions 6 to 10, you’ll be using the practice session for the first 5 sessions - if you’re doing 11 to 15, you’ll be using the one for the first 10 sessions, and so on.

Each practice session includes every single thing you’ve learnt up to that point - so you don’t need a variety of sessions to try and cover more material (as we did with the old approach).

The result will be that you cover everything far more often than with the old approach, and that you develop a real ability to predict what is likely to come next in conversations, and (since from Session 10 onwards the practice sessions are at 2x normal speed) you will become far better at understanding Welsh spoken at normal first language speeds…:smile:

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#6

You’ll need to read this at twice your normal reading speed, Aran…
Is this new listening practice based on an original idea of yours or on an accelerated linguistic approach new to me?
Also, are there subliminal messages embedded in it which, if I play them backwards reveal something “dark”?

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#7

Is this new listening practice based on an original idea of yours or on an accelerated linguistic approach new to me?

I’ve not come across anyone else doing this for listening work yet, but the neuroscience on adaptation to input is substantial and clear, and our initial tests with it were all good.

I think it’s going to make a massive difference, particularly in getting people to the 4000 word critical mass much faster.

We’ll have to add some good subliminal messages later…:smile:

Send Aran bottles of Prosecco. Send Aran bottles of Prosecco. Send Aran bottles of Prosecco.

#8

Wow, so many shiny new things! I was all set to finish up Course 2 this week when I saw that the new challenge 25 and new-style listening practices were out.

Would you recommend all of the listening exercises for people who have already finished the level 1 challenges, or should we skip to the last one(s)?

I’ve had a listen to the first practice (the one with challenge 5) The narrative style flows very nicely and is pleasant to listen to. Should we be consciously listening, or just running it in the background like the old-style listening practices? I also have a quick question. There were a couple of words I didn’t recognize (Go ddrapia ??) Should this worry me?

#9

I have no problem with speeding up in principle, and in fact think it’s an excellent idea. I think once you can understand at least a reasonable percentage of the words in whatever is being said, listening to fast speaking is actually very stimulating, and even if you only understand, say, 75% of the words, chances are you will get the gist.

However, I’m wondering if the process of speeding up to 2X is actually introducing some distortion, which to me, is a bit distracting. In case it was my laptop speakers, I also tried my earbuds which are quite good, and it was not much better.

Are these produced using Audacity “change pitch”? That’s pretty good, but I think there are limits to it.

I experimented with the new C1WelshListen01.mp3 (the unspeeded up one), importing it into Audacity and speeding it up. 100% (2X) definitely sounded distorted. 75% wasn’t much better. 50% (1.5X) was actually ok.

I then tried slowing down C1WelshListen02.mp3 (the 1st speeded up one), but of course that doesn’t help, because the distortion is already there, and slowing it down by any appreciable percentage just adds to the distortion.

Might you possibly consider making available un-speeded up versions of the later practice sessions, and let people experiment with their own speeding up?
(I’d suggest trying 1.5X, or 50% in Audacity, as a starting point. It still sounds reasonably fast).

Diolch o’flaen llaw.

#10

GO DDRAPIA… Something like: sod it/dammit

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#11

The Transcript and Translation on the webpage has go ddrapia as “Dammit!”

Hwyl,

Stu

#12

Doh! I didn’t even think to look at the transcript.

I also see that the instructions for the later listening exercises explicitly say to ditch the early ones. I guess I’ll have a listen to them all, then stick with repeating the later ones. The double speed lessons are certainly a wild ride.

#13

Mike: Might you possibly consider making available un-speeded up versions of the later practice sessions, and let people experiment with their own speeding up?

^^^^^^
THIS!!!

I am extremely sensitive to noise. And frankly, I am very skeptical of this speeding up approach. It may work for some people especially those who can already understand some. I still cannot understand normal speed. I’m not even sure passive listening is going to work for me either. I would like to see some more active listening exercises. Like the regular lessons but you give the Welsh and we respond in English.

#14

Having done sped up listening practices for some time now, mainly at x2 and x3, I can vouch for the efficacy of this approach. Sure its hard to begin with, but the benefits do become apparent. These are not necessarily linked to better comprehension at the higher speeds, but to the ability to work through more material in less time. I really recommend presisting with it, even if your noise sensitivity makes it uncomfortable to start with; your brain really will adapt to cope with processing the Welsh in a most remarkable manner.

The idea of responding to a welsh prompt in English would seem attractive, but I would say that it promotes translation, which is not what is needed here.

Hwyl,

Stu

#15

@Stu

I will certainly give it a try. I’ve been proven wrong before. :wink:

#16

I consider myself a terrible Welsh listener, and I’ve been doing the South course and there are only North sessions and the distortion annoys me, yet I was still shocked by how much of the 2nd session I understood after one or two listens. So I’m willing to give Aran the benefit of the doubt here (although I hope there’s a nicer way of doing it at some point in the future without causing what my wife politely called ‘sounding like chipmunks’, and the distortion).

#17

Jeff: Would you recommend all of the listening exercises for people who have already finished the level 1 challenges, or should we skip to the last one(s)?

Given that they are pretty much the deep end as far as this kind of work goes, I think you’d probably get a fair bit of value from working your way up through them, maybe listening to each for a week or so before moving on to the next…:smile:

@Mike/Craig - no, I’m afraid we won’t be doing that - and actually, Craig’s initial response here is (in the nicest way!) exactly why. This isn’t a standard approach (I don’t know of anyone else doing it), and even advanced learners like Craig will have doubts about it - and if we offered a different, less effective method (where a lot of people would choose not to speed up the files at all), we’d be helping people choose to slow down their learning process, and that would feel to me as though we were letting them down.

As far as the quality goes - the files are produced by Jeff, who is a professional sound engineer, so they’re as good as it gets right now - Jeff has already tried different approaches, and I’m sure he’ll carry on looking for ways to improve it - and better tools will come on the market eventually, no doubt…:smile:

Craig: I still cannot understand normal speed.

I’d recommend that you listen to the first exercise for Level 1, which is at normal speed, until you feel confident that you’re understanding most of it, before you move on to the first of the faster exercises…:smile:

Because these are structured exercises, instead of randomly generated, your brain will (fairly soon) start to predict what is coming next with the first exercise - the kind of memorisation which is a problem when it happens with the lessons, but which is ideal for listening sessions, because the more you can predict what might come next, the easier/faster it is to understand it.

#18

The fifth one is up in session 25 now…:smile:

I can’t wait to meet the first people who’ve gone through just Level 1, and can do session 25 and the last listening practice well. I think they’re going to be speaking (and understanding!) some startlingly natural Welsh…:smile:

#19

Aran: I’d recommend that you listen to the first exercise for Level 1, which is at normal speed, until you feel confident that you’re understanding most of it, before you move on to the first of the faster exercises…

So is it recommended that we consciously listen to these exercises, trying to understand, or should they be entirely in the background like was recommended for the old style listening exercises?

#20

I think you probably will get the best results if you cut in and out of the two approaches. Each set is five minutes - so maybe you could listen consciously once a day, and then run it on a loop for as long as practical/possible without paying conscious attention?