Skype lessons available

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Shwmae a Su’mae! I hope it’s ok to post here.

If anyone’s looking for a Welsh tutor, I’m available every Thursday and Friday to teach via Skype. I currently offer 45 min slots (I’ve noticed that concentration and absorption levels tend to drop at around 30-45 mins during one-to-one Skype lessons, often making longer sessions a bit counterproductive), but this can be increased or decreased as needed, (everyone’s learning style is different, after all!).

I’m a qualified teacher, registered with the General Teaching Council of Wales. I have experience of teaching in primary schools as well as 3 years experience of teaching Welsh to Adults in Mid-Wales. I currently have 6 Welsh for Adults classes at different levels. I welcome complete beginners and current learners alike. I love seeing my students progress and I thrive on helping them reach their language goals. I won Coleg Llandrillo-Menai’s Tutor of the Year in the Meirionnydd area in 2014, and 3 lovely students of mine have won the last 3 Learner of the Year awards in the Beginners category.

As well as being a tutor, I’m a language-learner myself, in my third year of learning Italian in my spare time, (self-taught until I finally put my anxieties to one side and found a tutor to teach me on Skype!). I know only too well the highs and lows of trying to become fluent in another language!

I offer one-off conversation lessons for £18, or £22 for guided tuition (grammar, language patterns, complete beginners etc). The more lessons you book, however, the cheaper each of those lessons becomes.

I have a new website called www.letstalkwelsh.com, which includes a new blog for Welsh learners, demystifying aspects of the Welsh language!

You can arrange a lesson directly via my website or email me at info@letstalkwelsh.com. I’m well-versed in both the North and South Walian dialects; I live pretty much where they both meet, and I have experience of teaching both versions.

I’d be absolutely delighted to teach you, so please keep me in mind. I wish everyone on here the best of luck with their Welsh! You’ve picked an incredible language to learn. Thank you.

Diolch a phob hwyl!

Mererid Williams

1 Like
How Long Before Welsh Becomes Fun?
#2

Generally speaking, we would take it as a courtesy if people wanting to make commercial offerings would ask for permission before posting. :sunny:

To the people who’ve been kind enough to contact us to express unease about this post, thank you very much indeed for your concern and affection for the community - as it happens, we’re not unwilling to have other providers advertise their services here (particularly when they ask in advance).

If you had asked in advance, Mererid, we would have said that you were welcome, and we would have told you that you’d get the best response if you spend some time engaging in the forum and helping people here before going straight for the sale.

Now that you’ve gone straight for the sale, you’ll probably find that you get the best further responses by spending some follow up time engaging with/helping people on here, with a link at the bottom of your posts to this post. Otherwise, this post will very quickly sink down the list of topics and not get many people reading it. :sunny:

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#3

Noswaith dda,

Diolch for your response, and I’m genuinely sorry and upset for having caused offence. None was intended. It’s down to my ignorance more than anything - I ask for permission before posting on Facebook groups unless it’s a general resource-sharing group, and this is the first time I’ve posted in a forum, following a suggestion from one of your members and forum users. I misjudged the nature of how things work on here, so please accept my apology.

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#4

I frequently read and post on a forum for ESL teachers, and they have a separate section of the forum just for advertisements. It’s called “searching for a tutor” and the tutors can write private messages to students and vice versa. This way they keep the main section of the forum ad-free so we can discuss methodology and other things there. It’s just a suggestion, maybe there’ll be something like this here later. But normally forums like this one are non-commercial, as far as I know, and we mainly help each other for free here.
Anyway, the link you gave to your website doesn’t seem to work for some reason…

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#5

Diolch for your advice, Stella. I’ll certainly be a lot more careful when posting on forums in the future. It’s lack of experience on my part (social marketing, not teaching). Getting my name out there online is something I’m slowly learning how to do, un dydd ar y tro (one day at a time). My faux-pas on SSIW has, therefore, been an important (albeit embarrassing) learning curve.

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#6

I thought that what @info_6 was offering would be very useful for some people, which is why I gave it a “like”. (However, I’m not the person who recommended her to post here, as I was completely unaware of her until she posted).

I suppose I assumed she had either asked someone first, or had been given an implicit nod that it would be ok. (I didn’t really notice the “I hope it’s ok to post here” at first).

Well apart from that aspect, as I say, it would be useful for those people who for whatever reason, find it difficult to make contact with either first-language speakers or very competent second-language speakers/learners. Practicing with other learners is fine and has its place, but there comes a time when one really needs to put the learning to the test with a “real” speaker, and it’s not necessarily easy to find someone like that, who will also have the patience to put up with the imperfections of a learner. Not everyone has the patience to be a teacher, and even when people mean well, their patience can run out. And especially with Welsh, I wonder what’s really in it for the first-language speaker: it’s not like a language exchange, e.g. where you trade your English for another person’s Russian, for example. Very few Welsh people need practice in English!

So unless you happen to have, or are able to make a friend who speaks Welsh, you have to find an alternative. ffrindiath could be an answer, but unfortunately it does not seem to have been as successful as we might wish (judging by the occasional reports here), and that may be partly due to the “lack of reciprocity” problem already referred to.

I have sometimes thought that what anyone who happens to live near a Welsh university should do is put up a postcard on a noticeboard (or the electronic equivalent) of a hall of residence. Students always need money, and surely there must be some first-language speakers there who wouldn’t mind earning a negotiable amount for a regular hour or so chat in Welsh.

But for those who can’t do that, then what @info_6 is offering could be very useful. One thing I would say to @info_6 is though, you should make yourself familiar with the thinking behind SSiW and the methods it uses.

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#7

As one who was glued into social media and especially forums in the past and I was admin of some owning some of my own aswell - may I give you a warm advise if you tend to post on other forums too: please, for your own sake, doublecheck with every forum separately if such commercial things are allowed to be posted on them. And please do this with admins or owners and not members themselves. By my experience some forums have the strict rule of banning members who advertise and I’m sure you don’t want this to happen when posting. Some forums have the rule though that you have to post and be involved for some time having some number of posts to be even allowed to post links what to advertise.

And now … don’t go away but rather live with community as much as your time lets you and get involved. Try to explore how SSi works. It might be something new for you too, you never know …

:slight_smile:

No one is perfect … and from my experience right here on this forum … too much of effort to be perfect harms more then is useful. I’m the living proof of this. So … you’ve learnt something new along your way and it’s time to boldly go further now.

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#8

We’re all human. I’ve recently moved to another city and I’m looking for mew students now, which is proving to be so difficult that I can’t help but sympathize. I hope you’ll stay with us here and will post sometimes. A tutor can always have invaluable advice for learners and this would be the best advertisement for you:)

I agree.

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#9

Unease, I think, rather than offence - certainly no offence taken on my part, felly peidiwch â phoeni dim, ac mae’n braf iawn eich gweld chi’n rhannu eich profiadau a dealltwriaeth gyda’r dysgwyr… :sunny:

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#10

Diolch @aran a phawb arall.

I feel very embarrassed but thanks people for being understanding. I’m a teacher making a part-time transition into the unknown world of actually having to sell myself rather than just turning up to a pre-organised class, so I over-compensated and ended up making myself sound like one of these pushy sales people. Again, sorry. I got it wrong.

The less-attractive reason I’m offering Skype lessons is because I’ve recently had to rethink my life and career in response to having a progressive health issue. I would be devastated if I had to give up teaching. It’s my passion. So rest assured that this is definitely not a ‘get rich quick scheme’. It’s just me thinking about how I can make use of my skills, keep busy and help others when the act of physically going to work and making a living becomes a bigger challenge in the future. Trying to turn a negative into a positive! But, I won’t get it right all the time, especially at the start, as you witnessed!

I do really appreciate your support, though. I’m really heartened to read everyone’s constructive criticism on this thread. One can only learn and improve! Onwards and upwards! :slight_smile:

I just want to say, as well, that the person who suggested I posted on here is not at fault at all! It was up to me to find out how things work on this forum. The person would have assumed that I would have known what to do. This person speaks so highly of the SSIW forum and its members in my class every week, and her Welsh is obviously benefitting from the SSiW audio materials.

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#11

That’s tough stuff - particularly with health challenges as well.

We’ll be happy to make sure that our learners know that you’re available - I wonder if it would help for us to try and figure out a way for learners to know that a particular tutor has experience working with SSiW learners… I’ve been wanting us to build a layer for tutors for quite some time, but money/time/etc.

@Deborah-SSi - maybe we could give Mererid a welcome to the forum in the next email, and let people know that she’s available for Skype sessions? :sunny:

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#12

Aran, there’s a topic here List of Welsh Teachers?. It’s very conveniently called “A list of Welsh teachers”. Maybe I should add it to the list in “How-to” thread, and Mererid could add her post there?

Mererid, you have my full sympathy. It’s very difficult, when you’re a teacher and not a sales-person, to start advertising yourself. If I come across something useful, a website or something like this, I’ll write you. Have you tried italki? They are constantly looking for new tutors. There’s also verbling.com. They don’t have Welsh listed yet, but they’re accepting new applications for languages not currently listed.

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#13

Good idea - but that thread doesn’t really become a list of Welsh teachers - maybe we should start a new one and ask around for tutors who are happy to work with SSiW learners…?

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#14

Or alternatively there might be a thread where learners could write their requests for help and tutors could PM them?

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#15

Mererid,

I think you might be about to experience the ‘full blast’ of support and friendship that this forum can offer!

Life long friendships have been forged here and on Bootcamps… people have travelled all the way around the world to meet up, just for the pleasure of speaking together in Welsh.

For others life changing and magical things happen, just because they embarked on the ‘Welsh Learning Journey’.

I hope you feel able to become part of that, and that you can also find friendship and support when you need it.

SSIW is not just a Welsh course (although it can be if you want it to be). It is also a community.

:smile:

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#16

I can see! You’re a very supportive bunch.

I refer students to SSiW all the time. I think it’s important for them to not just stick with one method of learning. Providing opportunities for Welsh learners should never become a competition between organisations and individuals.

I like the idea of having more of a connection between Welsh tutors and SSiW, especially regarding current students who also use SSiW as well as attending traditional classes.

Syniad diddorol iawn! A very interesting idea!
Syniad da hefyd i fynd ar iTalki a Verbal Planet etc. Diolch.

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#17

As long as we could find some way of balancing the need for the tutor to be a known part of the community, I think - otherwise we could end up with learners getting a lot of different offers and having no workable way of distinguishing between them…

#18

Yes, that could be a problem certainly:( But if I were looking for a tutor (which is something I should do) I would certainly be interested in how well this person knows the subject and methodology, so I think I would be interested in a tutor who’s approved by the SSI team and who writes some advice on the forum, so I can understand what their methods are like.

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#19

Hi Mererid!

I’ve just starting my training as a Welsh tutor with Prifysgol Abertawe. I went to the first session yesterday and it was great to see the positive attitude towards SSiW there. I think the collaboration has certainly grown a lot from when I started learning Welsh in 2008.

Do you know about our weekly email? You can sign up to receive it through the FAQ in the menu above and you can see what else is going on in our community.

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#20

Hi Dee!
Diolch for the heads up!
I’m pleased to hear that you noticed a more positive response to SSiW among Welsh tutors! I’m yet to meet a tutor who doesn’t recommend it, but I’ve only been tutoring Cymraeg since 2012, so I have no idea what it was like before. As I said the other day on this post, there’s absolutely no place for competitiveness in Welsh language provision, like you get in other languages like English, Spanish, Mandarin etc. There’s a need for learners to be able to access different types of learning experiences, though, and that’s where an understanding of SSiW is essential for tutors. It’s a great resource.

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