Maybe I’m too used to Pimsleur where you strictly do one lesson a day. I don’t know if I am suppose to do that or not. Also, it says my membership is ‘6 minutes a day’. How can this be when the lessons are 30 minutes long? My preference would be to do one 30 minute lesson a day, but then I don’t know if I’m completely messing with the aim of the course. I’m so confused
Also, I can’t find any mention of ‘6 minutes a day’ on the app, it only mentions this on the website.
Thank you
If you want to do one a day do one a day, you can just work through at your own pace. I have also used pimsleur in the past, there are similarities as you’ll have noticed, although with SSiW you won’t end up sounding like an American businessman (sorry if you are one).
@narinjutogh
The 30 minute blocks were created before the structured tutor-assisted courses came along, in the days when people would just work through them by themselves. So the ‘6 minute a day’ uses the same material, but it’s broken down into smaller chunks for those who can’t do a whole block at once, but there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t do as much as you want in one go, so if you want to do 30 minutes in a day, that’s fine. In that case, I suggest that you use the emails you receive as part of the course as ‘revision’.
The only aim of the course is to get you speaking Welsh - there are no time limits, it’s totally flexible. It can be used however suits you best
It’s not actually broken into 6 minute chunks - the Challenges are all about 30-35 minutes long - but if you were to do one of them over the course of a week, a little each day, it would come to around 6 Minutes, hence the title of the structured course.
But as others have said above, you’re very welcome to do as much as you like. If you click on ‘Learn’ above to get to the learning webpage, then ‘Learn’ again, you’ll see Challenges in the dropdown and you can access them directly from there.
On that webpage you can also try out the latest AutoMagic learning system by clicking on the link to that. It doesn’t have the learning material broken into lessons, so it’s up to you to do as much or as little as you want in one session. If you want to return from there to the main webpage, just click the ‘SSi’ at the top.
Have a try of the different ways of learning and see which suits you best
I too worried about how to approach this course at first and here is what I decided to do.
When I get a new lesson/challenge I go through the whole recording (almost) every day. So, I am not listening to the 1st 6 minutes of the recording only one time. I am listening to the entire recording every day for 5 or 6 days. Sometimes if the exercise seems easy I will skip a day or two. So, every Monday morning I have a new recording to listen to and to try to emulate the speakers. Works pretty well for the most part. I usually do the exercises as well but I have misread or skipped some. Listening to high speed Welsh for example, or remembering to repeat some of the written exercises. I know this affects my acquisition speed but, hey, it’s not a contest.
One thing that sometimes trips me up is that Katrin and Aryn often do not say the same thing when repeating a phrase and since I have made a habit of trying to repeat out loud the second iteration of the phrase in Welsh it can get confusing.
I think that this approach is an excellent way to acquire a new language and I applaud your decision to start down this road.
I agree Brian. I get a bit hesitant when hearing differing versions of a phrase. I tend to listen to the first 10 minutes the first day and build up as the week goes on. So by about Thursday I am going through the wholes lesson in one go. That’s the beauty of this course, you can go at your own speed to some degree.
@christine-33 what you can do is pick either the female or the male speaker and model your responses on theirs. That way you’ll develop consistency in the way you speak, but you’ll also understand people who speak the way the other person does.
Just to add that I think the speeded up Welsh listening is essential. You can slow then down, you can slow anything down with the speed control. I was better prepared to listen to the speeded-up Welsh by Level 2 but it helped enormously to comprehend what was being said to me by native Welsh speakers. I didn’t even use the listening excercises frequently but they have helped and so has Radio Cymru. I would say don’t skip anything as this is such a cleverly put together course that the more you do the excercises the more fluent you will become. Especially say everything out loud all the time not just in the gap but as they speak too.
It’s essential to put a language into spoken word over and over again or else we spend years comprehending what is said but not speaking. I have a friend who lived in Finland for 20 years understanding Finish but not speaking and the same is true of many Welsh people. Speak, speak and speak again. I have been learning with SSiW for 11 months and surprise people with how much I can say, now that I am working Christmas in a large food store in Cymru.
