Yes! I’m glad you sent in that post as I was starting to think I was the only one like that.
I, too, sit down with the sole purpose of learning some more Welsh. I find it fairly intense and so exclude any distractions. Then I use up my concentration quite quickly so I go away and return when my brain is ready to accept some more.
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I got 8 on first try - and find lessons 9/10 easy
I noticed that as the dot test sequences got longer I was singing them in my head (synaesthesia? not sure - I think just associating pitch with height on the screen) and using a kynaesthetic sense of what shapes they were making. I do think the test is testing spatial memory, but any working memory test would be testing one specific form or another, I guess.
I have noticed before that if an SSIW session feels “too fast”, and I sing the responses instead of saying them, I turn out to have lots more time for the answers (I think the singing tricks me out of panicking about how long I’ve got in some way - and then I often can sing the answer twice to something I couldn’t speak once in the available time before). I think I also have a mainly unconscious (but sometimes I notice it) spatial relationship between Welsh words and meanings and parts of speech in my head, I think.
Thanks for the excuse to take ten minutes away from my work email inbox!
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Ah, yes, I’m not entirely surprised that you juggly types with your dextrous magic trickery would score highly on this… 
Interesting aproach to the learning. I never got idea of that but … it means crying for me as I always cry (sooner or later in the song) when I sing … so I’ll just stay by “reciring” Welsh out before Cat and Iestyn instead. 
Oh yes! … new-mewn grass, the smell after a thunder and rain storm, the smell before a rain storm, especially on a hot summer’s day … all this and many more can take you back half a lifetime or more, sometimes to specific incidents, sometimes to whole phases of your life. I can still remember the various smells pertaining to my first ever bicycle…the plastic mudguards, the plastic pump, the chain lube, the leather saddle (it was a good bike…I’d been waiting a long time). I was inordinately proud of that bike.
I got 5.5 , I’m on Course 1 South Lesson 5 (after a long break and a restart) and I find SSIW to be around a 5/10.
I have a condition called APD (Auditory Processing Disorder) which means that I was pleasantly surprised with a score of 5.5. APD means I often don’t process what I hear or quickly forget what I have just heard as it effects my short term memory recall. I got up to six dots in a sequence which I’m pleased with.
I struggle mostly with the lessons once a sentence becomes longer than a single statement , usually up to the and/or/but stage - partly because I cannot remember the full english sentence I have just heard but also sometimes as I cannot recall the required Welsh word (especially if it has just been introduced).
It’s an uphill struggle at times.
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The key thing here, Gareth, is not to worry about those longer sentences - you know that you don’t process them easily, so just add to that knowledge the fact that if you go through the entire course without processing any of the long sentences, the learning process will still work…
You might enjoy having a look at what Martyn did in 4 intensive days - he found the long sentences mostly entirely out of reach, but he still achieved a huge amount:
Just curious: how he’s doing now. Are Cymraeg/Espaňol conversations with Gaby still going on? If yes, I bet it motivates him every single day! I love(d) the whole story and was inspired with it. My stubbornity to eventually reach my successful end in Cymraeg has grown because of that reading too.
No, I think that would be a little too much to ask from Gaby, to be fair!
Oh, it was just curiousity of mine. I don’t know either of them so can not know how they stand with their time and all that. Didn’t mean to “push” anything just was curious as once I’ve got such “bilingual” conversation idea in my head aswell.
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I was looking forward to trying this but keep getting message "this plug in is not supported. "
Sadly it does not tell me what to do about it. 
Any ideas anyone? I am using Android 4g
Flesh plugin is missing . at least by the appearance of it. You get something like this, yes?
what means you need to find flash plugin. I don’t like to do stuff in browser on the net on Android so I also don’t know where to get this plugin (probably in Google Play app store) and I also don’t intend to install one.
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No, not specific training. I used to enjoy playing brain training games, but they never improved anything other than my ability to do well at brain training games.
What I do have are a lot of techniques for condensing information so that I appear to have a really good memory. If you tell me you went to the zoo, saw an elephant, the monkeys, the giraffes, and had a nice ice cream in the cafe, I’d see in my minds eye the monkeys sliding down the giraffe’s neck while the elephant is using his long trunk to nick your ice cream from you. That’s a long list of things condensed into only two really memorable things.
If you’re interested, I looked up my scores in the WAIS-III, which I took 4 years ago. I was 4th percentile on processing speed, 37th on working memory. My working memory score was biased upwards by the fact that I’m really good at mental arithmetic, which is one of the contributing subtests, but it’s specifically noted in that section of the ed psych report that I “often asked for the question, or part of the question, to be repeated. Such behaviour is often found in people with a weakness in the area of short term auditory memory”.
I was 91st percentile for verbal IQ, so to score on the other end of the bell curve for processing speed was really quite a shock!
I will say that it was really fascinating to see how the psychologist teased out my difficulties quite easily despite the fact I’d had 26 years of doing my best to cover them up to avoid being told I was lazy/not trying hard enough.
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I would say my major problem is lack of concentration!! I easily start thinking about something else!! I never really got used to working… was ‘too’ clever at school. dropped out of Uni and had to qualify part time…just naturally lazy and easily bored!! Mental age of 15, physical age of nearly 74!!! 
Hehe, I love this one!!! When I’m in the mood I’m approximately the same. And I love that!
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Yup, this is the big question mark hanging over working memory training - it’s going to be fascinating if anyone can show strong evidence one way or the other for it.
Memory techniques such as you describe are a great way of improving functionality - which you’ve clearly done very successfully - I hope you feel proud of howwell you’ve dealt with the kind of challenge that can convince many people not to believe in themselves.
my score was 6.5 7/10
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Late to the party, but here’s another data point:
Scored 6.5 on the memory test. I’m quite certain I could do better if I had rested–I was still winded from lifting a bunch of heavy stuff.
Just started SSiW about a week ago, and after 5 lessons of Course 1 (each repeated once or twice), I got the email advice saying to not repeat lessons and to do Level 1, etc. I’ve finished 17 Challenges so far with no repeats, and no pausing. (Hoping to finish Level 1 in the next 2 days or so.)
I find SSiW quite “difficult,” done according to Aran’s more up-to-date instructions, in that it requires more concerted effort than anything else I’ve tried, but I think it’s working well. I’d say maybe 3/10 difficulty. I definitely feel like my brain is melting, and I’m hanging on for dear life. But putting in the effort, it does what it says on the tin. Every now and then I’ll peek at the written form for a word I’m having extra trouble learning, and that helps it finally start to stick. I “see” words in my head when I speak, even when I don’t know how to write them, so figure I can at least try to see the correct word.
I’ve been a compulsive language learner for decades (but never studied Welsh before), so I can compare to lots and lots of other techniques. I’ve always been one of those “visual learners,” which is part of why SSiW feels more difficult. But it also feels hard because it’s very effective at creating “controlled chaos”–we’re intentionally made to lose control and get overwhelmed, but not SO overwhelmed that the lesson no longer works as a teaching tool.
Hope that helps!
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The whole of level 1 in about 9 days sounds incredibly fast to me!! Croeso, llongyfarchiadau and some admiration from this old dragon!!
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