May be obvious but good to have data that hints at it. The more speakers in a Welsh Local Authority, the more likely people are to join a course. The Can Speak Welsh trend line being practically parallel to the Population Learning line tells me this. That there’s a relative correlation between the % of Welsh speakers in an area and % of Welsh learners in an area.
Having grown up in Newport, I understand why such a small % of people are learning (To my knowledge at that time, I had met aproximately 3 welsh speakers by the age of 18, and 2 were my Welsh teachers. I’m sure there were more but I never knew that they spoke Welsh), and I therefore naturally thought that no one spoke it. People told me that I “should” learn Welsh, but not why. They didn’t tell me how it could benefit me. It wasn’t until I moved to Carmarthen that I realised how wrong I was. It’s no wonder then that many consider it a waste of money to keep investing in the language.
Just makes me think; as we look to reach the 1 million speaker mark, what we can do to encourage growth within these areas.
(Bear in mind that this of course isn’t a full picture of learners, as it doesn’t take into account people that learn through SSI or methods outside of the National Centre; many learners never touch a traditional course, but I think it gives a good general picture).
It makes sense. If nobody around you speaks it, it’s quite natural to perceive it like a dead language like latin was to us. Even lower in a scale than a slowly disappearing local dialects.
However, in my opinion, these encouraging numbers don’t consider that about 60% are in a mynediad course, and might not carry on learning it to a good enough level to actually use it outside the class.
Also, having met a lot lot of people who did Dysgu Cymraeg courses through the years and people who knew others who did, I believe I can consider a fact by now that only a very small percentage actually goes out and use it in daily life. So is this really going to change the situation you described? I hope so, but maybe other aspects are worth a reflection for the National Centre that seems a bit too focused on showing they’re doing soooo well.
I don’t mean to be totally negative, and of course it takes time for changes to happen but just saying that maybe it takes more than that or maybe something different to achieve that goal.
That’s really interesting, Reilly. Thanks for crunching the numbers!
I downloaded the Dysgu Cymraeg data the other day and wrote a blog post about it:
On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see the numbers going up, but the majority of that improvement is down to a huge increase in 16-24 yos since 2018. That is now the largest group engaging with Dysgu Cymraeg.
However, the drop off between Mynediad and Sylfaen is enormous – around three quarters of people do not progress from Mynediad. Despite the large increase in Mynediad students, they are not staying on and tbh, you can’t do much with Mynediad Welsh.
I have had some good convos on Reddit and Facebook about possible reasons, but I think that it’s telling that we’re probably looking at a lot of youngsters doing a lot of short activities. Mynediad students did some 20k activities over the year - one course acts as one activity, and the most popular category of ‘learning intensity’ was the hourly category, which I interpret to mean people who only did hour-long activities.
So to me, this all indicates that lots of young people engaged briefly and did not progress.
Which is a rather less flattering picture than the headline that more people than ever are engaged with learning the language. The latter is still good, obviously, because you never know when people are going to pick it up again.
But I think we really need more research. I’d like to know what the average learning journey looks like, and what the differences in behaviour and demographics are between people who only do Mynediad and those who progress.
Super interesting, thanks Reilly - I agree there are definitely things to be cautious about, but there are absolutely signs of progress. The next election looks particularly significant at the moment.
I would love to see primary schools thinking more in terms of building (say) five fluent sentences, rather than the vocab list stuff that seems central at the moment. We’re hoping to run some new school trials in the next few months, which I hope will be interesting.
I’ve never been through the Welsh educational system, but from the comments elsewhere, it does seem to need to focus more on creating speakers, rather than teaching to the test. Anything, literally anything, that helps with that is good!
(Especially as teaching to the test doesn’t seem to be working - apparently only 50% of GCSE Welsh students pass, which is a horrendous stat.)
Yes - when national curriculum, local consortium curriculum and SSi were tested against each other in the Ninian Park primary cluster (by a Cardiff PhD student) the national and local curriculum had comfortably over 90% of students in the bottom 10% on a bar chart, where we had a weirdly striking pattern of about 50% in the bottom 10% and the other 50% in the top 10%… which was absolutely fascinating.
There is one hopeful thing that I’ve not seen talked about elsewhere yet, though, but it really deserves some analysis - we consistently see that new SSiers who went through English medium education in Wales get off to a particularly fast start, and often achieve super results in just their first couple of months - which suggests to me that the very passive approach to teaching Welsh in Wales is actually working, it’s just invisible because there’s so little productive capacity - but you don’t need to add the productive capacity on a word by word basis - once the core is switched into productive capacity, there’s clearly some kind of network effect.
Which makes me think that the current situation could be dramatically improved very quickly with the right activities.
Of course! I’m currently doing a course with Dysgu Cymraeg, and I actually find it super helpful. But I think the biggest thing is the mindset around it. I see it as a way to keep myself accountable. I can’t just say “no Welsh this week” I have to go to class. It’s something consistent, and also gives a great route for learning in my opinion. But if you’re not doing anything outside of class, naturally, you won’t be so far.
I’m actually doing Mynediad myself as last year I wasn’t too far in my journey and wanted to build confidence without much pressure, but with the work I’ve put in outside of class I’m now going to be skipping Sylfaen and doing Canolradd in September.
One person that I know of in my class did Mynediad last year and is redoing it this year. And I think there’s a big drop off from signup to a few classes in because of the commitment needed. And then for those that do complete it, signing up for another year of the same commitment is tough. I really love it though personally
That’s great, I believe I saw last year the research that you posted regarding the use of SSI in schools and I think it’d be a great addition.
The big thing is showing kids how it could benefit them individually. If my school, knowing I was interested in the arts, showed me how useful it could be for me specifically, I would have been 10x as engaged.
In my own experience, I learnt a lot passively. Coming into SSI already having known the sounds of Welsh, the numbers, some very basic phrases, and that some things are backwards (black car/car black) was super helpful at getting me going quickly, as opposed to if I were to start learning German say.
That being said, everything else about school was insane. My Welsh teacher for GCSE told us to copy a script on a certain topic changing certain answers to be about us, and memorise it because the GcSE Welsh speaking exam had been about the same topic for the last 10 years so she knew its be about this topic so we’d pass. The speaking exam comes round, the topic changed and she panicked. You don’t teach Welsh by telling people to memorise a monologue of sounds that they don’t know the meaning to.
Yes, I think our 50/50 split was very much about some kids getting an early taste of success, and some not engaging at the start and then not being able to catch up (so we’re trying to figure out some stuff about connecting individual accounts to class accounts so that there’s room for people to play catch up on their own).
I’m hopeful but bloody nervous about the election!
Wir! Just have to hope people vote, considering Y Senedd hasn’t seen more than 50% turnout since it’s founding. I’m sure this year will be the first to break that though.
Also from Casnewydd and your experience is almost identical to mine. Nevertheless, I did have an interest in Welsh at a fairly young age and wanted to be “actually bilingual”, going on to choose it as one of my Year 9 options in school, only to be told they were dropping the subject as an option because only two people in my year chose it! I’m sure that sort of thing wouldn’t happen these days (especially given said school shares it’s grounds with a Welsh-medium school now!), but it certainly speaks to how “useless” people found it when I was young.
I am currently learning with Dysgu Cymraeg (and SSiW! Currently blue+black belt. Diolch yn fawr am yr app!), so I’m clawing back that missed opportunity, but I do hope teachers do more to inspire English-medium school kids to learn the language and expose them to the language in all it’s beautiful, vibrant, living glory… As well as it’s history (I don’t remember being taught anything about it when I was young!).
I remember working for the Celtic Manor when I was 19, and a couple of my coworkers could siarad Cymraeg. I was in awe when they had full blown conversations in Cymraeg with some of the people passing through! As if it was normal!? Like that language “nobody used” and was “pointless” to learn, was actually alive! Wow!
On the topic of getting more people to learn Cymraeg, I think there’s some work that needs to be done on spreading the word (I wasn’t aware of the adult courses until a couple of years ago.).
This may also just be my mindset and this may not be the best approach for everyone, but I think there’s a tendency to want to want to “take it easy” on learners and take things incredibly slowly as to not “scare” them off… But, especially in today’s attention-starved world, people want to speak Cymraeg “now” and the longer you keep them in a place where they can’t say very much, the bigger that mountain is going to seem. And people are so much more capable than we give them credit for, the issue (and something SSiW does really well at taking the time to remedy) is that people really dislike feeling uncomfortable! But we need to learn to be okay with the uncomfortableness, that it means we’re learning! Demonstrating that learning at regular intervals, showing people how far they’ve come is also so so good for motivation (like, going back and revisiting material that was previously really difficult, and is now super easy.). Anyway I’m rambling now so I’ll cut it here lol
I’d agree with you there. Everyone knows about Duolingo (which I’ve used and find utterly useless in my opinion. If you want to learn grammar, Anki Flashcards is the way to go, and it’s terrible for learning speach patterns, so I don’t see the point).
I always tell people about SSI when I can as I really think it’s the best thing to get you from nothing to like… actually using it. You just need to build on your vocab, which I think the Dysgu Cymraeg coursebooks give a great guide for what vocab to learn.
But with regards to those courses, even for the people that DO know about them, I think they have a bit of a PR problem. They’re definitely not for everyone, but I thought it was going to be like when I was in school (BORING), it’s definitely not as fast paced as SSI, but the difference it makes having a group of you together who are 100% interested in learning the language, and who meets together every week at the same time, I think is powerful. I knew about them when I was 19/20, and it took me until I was 26 to decide to actually take it, I could’ve been doing them for free pre-25 this whole time! Mixing traditional classes with SSI was definitely the way to go for me.
It was a few years ago now but our daughter and granddaughter were visiting. Granddaughter was then aged about 8 or 9 and attending school in Cardiff and learning Welsh there. We went to visit the Gloddfa Ganol slate quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog and her eyes were round with astonishment as she heard the guides just speaking Welsh to one another as though it was nothing special. (Which of course it wasn’t, to them.) Until then I don’t think it had occurred to her that Welsh was just a language, like any other, something that ordinary people spoke as a matter of course.
So I think it’s important to expose children and adult learners to situations where they are surrounded by Welsh speakers who are speaking Welsh because that’s what they always do.
Definitely! And for those learning now, that they use it with their kids, even if they’re not a confident speakers themselves or feel that they’re not far along enough in their learning journey; still using what little they may or may not know with them would make worlds of difference.
totally agree, dysgucymraeg doesn’t go fast enough to keep motivation up, and learning is bitty, half of the verb forms (just me, you e.e., ) then a few weeks later when you’ve forgotten stems etc, presents the other half.
A friend of mine origianally from England did his first degree at Bangor uni, and started to learn Welsh when he was there. A fellow student (on a foreign-language course) who was from Newport asked him why he was learning because "it’s not a real language - it’s just on road signs and stuff). And that was about 10 years ago…
If you use Anki for spaced repetition, and ensure you’re using what you do know outside of class, you’ll never forget But I get what you mean!
That being said, I know multiple people that have gone through Dysgu Cymraeg and are now fluent users of the language, it’s just whats right for you. For myself, a mix between SSI, traditional classes, having conversations in the language every week outside of class and occassional grammar study to understand concepts that aren’t sticking in my head is what is working best for me. I feel that I need to hit it in multiple angles for things to really embed.
I think I might have said this to you before, Reilly, but “traditional” classes just weren’t for me. Too slow-moving, and I’m quite comfortable with learning things in a more organic/haphazard way. I know the gaps will get filled eventually and I’m not too proud to ask or to admit when I don’t know something. I did a couple of one-day courses for level Uwch, but didn’t do anything more official until Gloywi.
But I do realise that’s not everyone’s preference, and many like to have things a lot more structured and methodical. You’re completely right though about the need to do lots more outside of the class if you’re going to progress.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Irish go about teaching when I go over there next month…
I’m sure that sort of thing wouldn’t happen these days (especially given said school shares it’s grounds with a Welsh-medium school now!), but it certainly speaks to how “useless” people found it when I was young.
Diolch yn fawr am yr app!), so I’m clawing back that missed opportunity, but I do hope teachers do more to inspire English-medium school kids to learn the language and expose them to the language in all it’s beautiful, vibrant, living glory… As well as it’s history (I don’t remember being taught anything about it when I was young!).
But I get what you mean!