Hi, I have gone to college for the last 3 years and completed up to sylfaen 1. I am thinking of trying ssiw for this year as I felt I got a bit behind in the class last year and don’t feel confident continuing on to the next level. Can anyone advise me if this is a good idea? Or if the two courses aare completely different? Or any advice would be appreciated. Diolch michelle
This is only my personal experience but i know of several who have only used SSIW.
They can compliment each other. However most people i know who have used SSIW are with a year ahead of people doing traditional courses. Eg. someone i know has just started sylfaen2 although she could probably do canolradd.
For me its all about regular practice. And the confidence which took me a long time to speak with others.
SSIW is very different to traditional courses but if you are on sylfaen i would be tempted to run through the SSIW stuff possibly the levels followed by the old courses and vocab units.
But i should add it depends on your goals. If you want to be a better speaker SSIW all the way. If you want to pass exams maybe do both.
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While everybody has different needs, and I am most certainly not an expert, there are a number of people who have done the course here and then moved onto doing Canolradd or even Uwch courses after finishing only what’s available here (and you could do all of that in a handful of months). The two courses are completely different and focus on different things. Firstly, the Say Something In courses focus exclusively on speaking and listening. This will make you better at those two skills than the majority of people who do classroom based courses and in a shorter amount of time, but at the same time it doesn’t teach as wide a vocabulary and reading and writing are ignored entirely. You will encounter things you already knew, and you will encounter things that you didn’t know almost from the beginning.
I haven’t done any of the classroom based courses, and while I do have a narrower vocabulary than somebody who does a classroom based course (and supplements that with spaced repetition in the form of flashcards or software), what I do know I can use with relative ease, and I never had any of the problems with mutations that many people doing traditional courses seem to.
In short, I’d say it’s worth a go. You’re probably best off starting with Level 1 rather than Course 1 - it’s a better written course overall. After you’ve done Level 2, it might be worth going through the older courses, because while they’re not as good they do have a lot of material not yet covered in the newer ones. This depends to an extent on how much of Level 3 is done by that point and what it covers though.
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I don’t have experiences to share regarding classroom (traditional) courses of Cymraeg simply because i’m not even a bit in position to do one and what regards SSiW @petermescall and @hectorgrey said it all.
What I do know is
Croeso ar y fforwm! as you’ve just joined 2 hours ago (at the point I’m writing this).
On more serious note: Give SSiW a go, perhaps really starting with Levels and finish with Courses and Vocab. If nothing more then it can’t hurt to try them and see for yourself if it gains anything to your knowledge.
Pob lwc a hwyl!
Tatjana 
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Do SSiW.
It does not matter whether you carry on with any other course, of any other type, at any level.
You will find it helps you.
Whether you then carry on with other courses is immaterial (ie, there will not be some friction between whatever you do and SSiW.)
The fact is that SSiW will help you whatever you are doing, and whatever you decide to carry on doing after doing it.
It will not affect anything else you are doing for the worse, and it will help and assist (I would say greatly) with anything else you are doing.
So just do it. 
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Hi, I have been doing college courses since last February, I’m starting Canolradd Fasttrack track now. I did Mynediad and Sylfaen Fast track.
I also did the SSIW courses alongside the college course. I did the old levels 1 and 2 then the new stuff.
Personally I found the Fasttrack courses much better than standard classes because they focused more on speaking and listening than writing, and they tended to have a bit more momentum, there were less people on them who might be doing it purely to get them out the house;)
I found the SSIW complemented and supplemented the college stuff well and made it easier to respond naturally when in welsh conversation, but I also found the college stuff valuable to flesh out why some things are the way they are in welsh.
Realistically I’ve tried to supplement my welsh learning experience witan much as possible, S4C, Radio Cymru, going to the eisteddfod, clwb clonc, etc. Personally I see SSIW as a part of the whole, and would say whatever else you do it’ll only benefit you to do it!
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I’m going to echo what has already been said and say it really wouldn’t hurt if you carried on going to college and complement the college work with the SSIW course.
SSiW is very different to college in the sense that, as mentioned before, it concentrates more on conversational Welsh and doesn’t offer any reading or writing practices. Also, as yet, there are no recognised qualifications available for SSiW (but I feel there should be!).
I’ve never learned Welsh through college myself, only through online sources (BBC Catchphrase firstly helped me with reading and writing Welsh, and SSiW speaking and listening), and I can definitely say that SSiW accelerated my learning of the language much more than Catchphrase did. It’s certainly helped me put what I did learn on Catchphrase into perspective, offering me more natural pronounciations to Welsh words and understand better how letters in the Welsh alphabet are pronounced. Of course, if you come into SSiW without this pre-knowledge, the reading side of things will go right over your head at first! This is where you’ll be ahead of the game since your college course will include all aspects. But following the SSiW course alonside your college course will put you ahead of your fellow students in that you will develop a more confident approach to speaking Welsh. Bear in mind that much of the Welsh you learn on SSiW is colloquial and what you will expect to hear in the wild as it were, where I should imagine that college Welsh will teach more formal pronounciations and might not cover regional dialects (I really wouldn’t know).
Whatever you decide to do though, best of luck in your Welsh language journey!
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I started with SSiW and, after 6 lessons of Course 1, started on classes. From my experience, I would say definitely do SSiW because that will give you extra confidence in classes if you decide to carry on with those.
I often say that it is doing SSiW that keeps me going, because sometimes the formal classes seem to hold me back - I am so busy trying to get things right that I don’t say anything at all!
The most important bit of advice I think I can give is to do SSiW for certain, and do classes only if you enjoy them!
You can certainly make quick progress doing SSiW, listening to Radio Cymru and taking up any opportunities to practise your Welsh outside the classroom environment. Or you can do all of that and ‘supplement’ it with classes as well.
The most important thing is to enjoy learning Welsh! Have fun!
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The Welsh for adults courses I have been to have certainly taught regional pronunciations and dialects (as well as more formal stuff) - it depends on the tutor you get, I should think, but nigh on all of the ones I have had have stressed the local, spoken stuff when speaking.
Just my experience, of course!
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Absolutely! That’s one of its greatest strength as a way of learning Welsh, imho.
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I started with SSIW, then did a couple of terms of Welsh for family before switching to mynediad2. I’m now doing sylfaen 1. I completed SSIW level1 over the summer and started level2. I have found that SSIW gave me more confidence to speak both in class and in the wild which I think helps make a classroom experience feel better. I also try reading in welsh to my daughter so I’m glad I’ve got the mixed experience to be able to do that although I realise the accuracy of pronunciation may be a little dodgy. Personally I think there are benefits to doing a mixture of learning methods because it fits with my aims of both being able to speak Welsh and also help my daughter with her education. So I guess you need to make your decision based on your aims.
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I think I’ve heard/read (and I can’t remember where, so I can’t find a source) that there’s going to be a bit of a change (or they’re in the process of doing it) to using more regional forms/words in the courses, rather than trying to teach a generalised language that isn’t really anything.
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In my experience, for all the rests of the faults in the courses, that’s what they are doing now!
I can only speak for the ones I’ve been on, but the words they teach and encourage the use of in speech are
A) mostly the ones I seem to come across people using in the area
B) mostly ones I come across in SSiW.
The only difference is they teach other forms (standard, literary firms, might mention forms only used in speech elsewhere) as well.
This may not be other people’s experience, but it’s the getting the stuff over, getting people to actually use the language stuff where the classes don’t seem generally as effective, rather then the actual words and forms taught as it were.
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In which case, what I heard was probably old news! But that’s a good thing
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They were beginning to move to that when I last went!! They should have arrived by now!
Hi
I started with classes and first Ysgol Haf was great
After that I could not attend all year two hours a week so classes were inflexible. Managed a fast track for a bit but it didn’t get me to speak really and that was my aim
So thank goodness for SSiW or I would have given up. My vocabulary is broader as I speak to people and I can fill gaps from published materials. I use the SSiW course outline as my structure - add vocabulary and back fill holes with friends or radio etc
Such is the richness of resources and how we would learn naturally. That for me is what SSiS has done and forever grateful
If I can do Bootcamp with dim Saesneg it is working
Sue
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