Halo
I’m now on lesson 22 of Course 1 (south). Other than early on (by error - when I once went on to challenges instead of lessons) I’ve stayed on Lessons and not tried challenges. When I’ve finished lesson 25 would it then be best for me to do the challenges &/or Vocab 1 - 10 before moving onto course 2? Or should I in hindsight have done challenge 2 after lesson 2 and then challenge 3 after lesson 3 etc? Sorry this might have all been explained in the initial intro and I forgot!
Diolch
Hi Rich.
Ideally, you should have been on the more modern Challenges, but no harm done. I’d say stick with the “lessons” for this level and then perhaps do Challenges 24 & 25 before advancing to level 2 of the Challenges. Check with @aran or @Iestyn, first, though.
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Hi John
Thanks for replying. Ah,do you mean that the lessons are just still in existence for the benefit of those who started them (and wanted to stick with them) before the new ‘Challenges’ came into existence with the intention of replacing the lessons? Ah well I’m sure the language hasn’t changed so nothing lost but thanks, I’ll do as you suggest. Are the Vocab sessions still current and is there a suggested time to do those?
Hi Rich,
Well I can only speak from my own experience but like you I did Course 1 South, but very sporadically as I was doing other studies at the same time and it took me for ever and a day. Then by complete contrast I had the opportunity to do the 5-day intensive last October during went through virtually all 25 lessons of Challenge 1, which is, as it says, somewhat more challenging and I’ve had to go over certain bits of it again since. But there’s no doubt that it has given quite a boost to my speaking ability, and in recent weeks & months I’ve had a number of online chats. I still find it quite challenging! but others tell me that I’m not doing badly with my spoken Welsh. After having done Challenge 1, I then went back and did the vocab units 1-10, which are very useful.
I don’t think there’s any hard-and-fast rules about these things, but why not try Challenge Level 1 and see how you get on - if you find it OK then you might achieve more with pushing on with it; but if it proves a bit too much at this stage and you’re more comfortable with the Courses, you can then revert to Course 2!
Alan.
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That’s great, diolch Alan. Good plan. Hopefully I’ll know most of at least the first 12 challenges and it will be a good reminder/practice of those bits + I’ll get the benefit of learning new stuff.
Hi Rich. Speaking as a fellow student here. The newer Challenges have been written with the benefit of further research and evidence by the Ssiw team. So nothing wrong with learning from the older Lessons, but the Challenges should be more efficient. That’s all it is. No change in the language. Some of us have done both types to obtain all that is available. 
I wrote the Levels (which are made up out of Challenges) some time after the Courses (which are made up out of Lessons) - as a result of a growing understanding of why the methodology worked, and also after witnessing areas of difficulty on Bootcamps (the first fix for those was the vocab lessons).
So you’re on the older material - but we have plenty of confident speakers who came through that early material, so if you decide to stick with the Courses and do Course 1 -> Vocabs -> Course 2 -> Vocabs -> Course 3, you’ll get there.
If you decide to come over to the Levels, though (which I recommend, partly because I believe they’re significantly better, and partly because they lead into our new accelerated listening exercises, which are hugely valuable), then you’ll need to go back to the beginning of Level 1, because there will be some bits in there which aren’t in Course 1… 
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Diolch Aran - yep I’ll move over to Challenges once I’ve got to lesson 25 on course 1. Nos da
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