Hello all, firstly thanks to everyone involved in the production of SSIW as it’s been a superb tool for me. Last night I finally reached the end of Level 3 North in the new course and started the first lesson of the Advanced section. It seems like a heck of a jump based on the first couple of minutes listening! Is this now the recommended next step or would it be worth going over to the Old Course or somewhere else completely in order to bridge the gap? I’m aware this is probably subjective but any input and advice will be welcomed. Thanks again everyone, Dave France
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Congratulations!
Lots of people do do the old course after level three and highly recommend doing so. Some also go through again but doing the ‘opposite’ dialect (i.e. North finishers do South and vice versa). You’re already into the advanced section, so that’s great - the only other thing to do really is to use your Welsh at every opportunity as often as you can - speaking, listening, reading, writing - there’s still a lot to learn of course (it never really stops!) but you’ve got a good grounding now, so it’s time to say chocks away and get flying!
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Where have you started in the advanced content Dave? By far the easiest are the chats with learners- Deg y dysgwr i think they are called. The early Beca chats are very long, so I found these hard at first. Also depending on which course you did (North or South), it can be easier at first to follow someone with the same dialect. I did the southern course, and find Daniel Glyn really easy to follow (and hilarious). Once I had built my confidence up I moved on to the ones with northern dialects and am getting better at understanding these.
I also did the old course following level 3 and found it very helpful.
Well done for finishing level 3!!
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Thanks so much for your reply and anyone who gets “chocks away” into a response is a winner by me! Judging from yours and the later reply from Emma I reckon I’ll crack on with the old course and cherry pick my own order for the Advanced course as I seem to have started with the hardest sessions- typically! Thanks very much again, Dave
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Emma, thanks for taking the time to respond and help me. I reckon I’ll move over to the old course and pick my way through the Advanced course starting with the ones you reckon are a bit easier- I started with the Beca a’i Phobl lessons which you thought were more difficult. Thanks very much again, Dave
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Since finishing level 3 I’ve gone back to the beginning via the 6 minutes a day Welsh which has given me access to Welsh chat sessions. I’ve combined this with reading books for learners and Lingo Newydd (a fantastic magazine for learners), and the listening exercises in the Advanced section, plus regularly watching S4C. For writing practise I write the occasional letter to lingo newydd and there’s always Clwb Cardiau Post. It’s taken a while to organise a routine - really miss the simplicity of just doing the course but I think anything you do keeps you going in the right direction 
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Hi Judith, I think you’re right about the simplicity aspect, I definitely need most things organising for me. The worry with the old course was that I’d be revisiting a lot of learning, rather than progressing but with these other ideas you’ve suggested I believe I can continue to move forward. Thanks so much, Dave France
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I highly recommend going through the old course. Its format is more repetitive and to begin with you’ll find it very easy, but it covers a lot of material which is ignored or barely touched upon by the new course.
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Hi Alan, thanks very much for your reply and I’m definitely going to start on the old course as well as the Advanced level. I appreciate all the input from you all, Dave France
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@DaveFrance thank you for asking this question and hope you don’t mind me jumping in at a bit of a tangent. I’m not yet halfway through level 2 but have been wondering about further steps. In particular, what’s the best thing to do if you want to become proficient in written Welsh and really understand the grammar? Would you work your way through the Gareth King workbooks? Or do a GCSE in Welsh?
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Hi @ruth-22 I’m glad you asked the question 
I too am part way through level 2 and have been wondering the same thing! I really enjoy the challenges and am a little worried that I’ll finish level 3 with a good grounding but not fluent enough or have learnt enough to be confident as a speaker. Basically, I want a comfort blanket of a next stage in supporting my Welsh language journey! So going to follow this conversation with interest
Cofion
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OOOh! That rings alarm bells for me! Please don’t let your brain con you into thinking this!
Fluency is like a rainbow - you’ll never get there if you set it as your goal, and confidence as a speaker only comes with speaking, not how many words or constructions you know.
You are fluent enough - you were fluent enough to have conversations even after level 1 (if not before!) - even if you don’t feel you are. They don’t have to be perfect conversations, or long ones. You are allowed to make mistakes or throw in English words now and then, but it’s so important that you start having them as soon as possible, which is where the confidence (or lack of it) comes in.
The only way to build confidence is through experience, so the more you find an excuse for putting off that experience (e.g. I’m not fluent enough yet/I don’t know enough words yet) the more your confidence will stagnate and even drop. The key is not what you learn, it’s what you do with what you’ve learnt 
The course will end but your learning journey won’t - there will always be new things to discover. I’ve been speaking Welsh as a second language for 20 years and still come across new things. But then again, I’ve been speaking English as a first language for over 50 years, and the same is still true! 
Amdani! Go for it!
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As a second-language English speaker, i just want echo @siaronjames’s words: if you’re aiming for perfection or some ideal level of fluency, you will never say anything. English is my marital, ministry and community language, and has been for over 25 years; I still make mistakes, I still have a stupid Swedish accent, my children still correct my choice of words, and I still find I’m suddenly not sure what the “correct” way to say something is…
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This is a really question-I finished level 3 and haven’t really spoken enough since. I want to try the old course. How do I access it?
Amanda
I’m not sure about the layout on phones, but on a pc, there is an option to go to the old course at the bottom of each challenge page (accessed through clicking on ‘Learn’ in the top bar)
Do remember though that to speak more, all you need to do is speak more - no matter how many levels and courses you do, speaking will only get easier by speaking! 
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Just a quick update and advice for you Amanda, I moved on to the Old Course and have found that after the first four lessons or so there is a lot of ground being covered that isn’t touched on in the New Course, so it’s proving very useful. Thanks once again to everyone who was kind enough to reply to my original question, Dave
Thanks Dave, that’s just the advice I’m looking for and the inspiration to give it a go. Diolch o galon
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Hello,
Similar to the other posters here, I have finished Lessons 1-3 in the new course (North). The advanced course is too big a jump. Is there a transcript or a vocabulary list to help with the advanced course? I think learners need more support with this.
The advanced content is a series of listening exercises with transcripts in English and Welsh. The idea is that you use it like this -
Listen once - without reading anything
Read the transcript
Listen again - still without reading
Read the translation
Listen one last time - still without reading.
I’ve only seen vocab lists for the south version of the old course (is that what you mean by ‘advanced course’?) but someone may have done some for the north version. It’s not an advanced course as such, just a different way of presenting the material (the ‘new’ course is the improved version!).