Hi,
I started doing the Level 1 (“New”) Northern Course about 3 weeks ago and have really been enjoying it. My background is Modern Languages (40 years ago, mind) and I’m a confirmed grammar nerd, but I’ve been enjoying the purely conversational approach and have so far resisted the temptation to glance at the vocab until after I’ve done the challenge. I’m up to Challenge 15 and it’s been fun. Thanks to all concerned!
The reason for posting is that for a new user, it’s really quite difficult to get a handle on what the canonical approach is supposed to be for some aspects of the course and learning process. E.g. There appears to be no place on the website which lays down definitively what is in each course, or how fast one should approach the challenges. (The links in the FAQ, e.g. #3 Learn Welsh the SSIW way are dead, for example).
I’ve done a lot of (enjoyable) reading on this forum and I’ve pieced together what I think is the current advice. The question on how fast to repeat has been asked several times, but it gets slightly different answers over the years in the forum and on the blogs and some of them date back to 2015 and beyond. The upshot is that I’m not totally sure that I’ve understood the latest definitive position.
It would be really helpful if I could post my assumptions so that they can be confirmed (or roundly mocked…) and I can carry on with the learning knowing I’m doing it most effectively.
So, as far as I understand it:
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(Of lesser importance as I’ll probably stick with the Challenges now) The Challenges are the same as the Structured course (and they’re both included in the £10pcm) but the Structured course has weekly class video sessions in addition. The Structure course can come in small daily, or a larger weekly chunk, while the Challenges are done to the student’s own rhythm.
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The advice given several times in the Level 1 Challenges (repeat each Challenge until you can get roughly 80% of the sentences right within the gap, without using the pause button) has now been superseded.
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Instead you should do each Challenge as best you can and move on to the next, knowing that each subsequent lesson will reinforce what you’ve missed. You can go back and repeat the last 5 lessons or so in a block if it helps, but the main idea is to crack on to new Challenges as soon as you can.
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You should also listen every day to the relevant Aron on Helium Accelerated Listening exercise as this quickly builds up exposure to the sounds and rhythms of spoken Welsh, as well as promoting the essential ability to break streams of speech into individual words.
Are those assumptions about right, or have I misunderstood something?
(BTW, High Intensity Language training is mentioned a lot up to about 2015, but seems to have been dropped in the last couple of years as a term at least on these forums. I’ve bought the book tonight – it was a whole 99p – but does it still reflect today’s understanding of the science?)
FWIW, I did the first three challenges repeatedly, then read one of Aran’s posts from 2015-ish recommending the process in 3 above and that’s what I’ve done since. and so far I’m pleased with the way this is working[^Footnote 1].
But it would be good to know if I’m on the right track – and also to put a plea in for a summary of the most recent recommendations to be made very prominent on all the initial web landing pages.
Sorry for all the questions in a first post, and many thanks to everybody involved in producing the courses, and to the helpful people on this forum!
David
[^Footnote 1]: I can’t say I haven’t found it a bit challenging at times, partly because my tongue has been defiantly saes for 60-odd years and refuses to accept that sound combinations such as Ddudodd o fod o’n dallt are physically possible to say in less than a minute, and partly because by the time I get half way through “I know an old woman who met a young man in a pub last night who said that his sister worked for about a month with the young man who said his brother started to try to learn Welsh with your sister who swallowed a fly”, I’ve forgotten how the English ends, never mind the Welsh…
. Whilst we encourage people not to get tied up in the grammar (because that interferes with the speaking process which subsequently can affect confidence), that’s not to say that we discourage posts with grammar questions when they are burning a hole in your tongue! So until that happens, enjoy the conversational approach as you have been, and when it does happen don’t feel guilty about popping in here to ask 
) - it’s kind of split into two directions - the first has been the work going into our new AutoMagic delivery system, and the second has been the work we’ve been doing for the Iaith ar Daith TV series…
)