Writing a booklet about the SSi Method - looking for your experiences

Diolch yn fawr, Anne! Yes, I think there are all sorts of interesting ways to contribute to that psychological shift… :slight_smile:

Shadowing has has made a big difference to me too.

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I hope it is still okay to respond to this question.

I am still going through the lessons after starting a number of years ago. I’ve always enjoyed the lessons, but family life became complicated and I dropped everything to care for my parents, my grandchildren, and myself. Just recently, I took up the challenges again, though I’m still listening to the old material (I enjoy the humor). I have been pleasantly surprised to know I’ve remembered so much. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten and was reminded again. They were still there.

I have tried other language programs, including taking classes at the local university in Spanish and using Duolingo to practice Spanish and German, but never have I experienced such a relaxed and fun way to learn… and REALLY learn the language. I have started working with Say Something in Spanish because I believe it will help me become a Spanish speaker more readily than any high school or university classes. The classes taught from books. Reading and writing a language is not the best way to learn to speak it.

The first time I worked on the lessons, I struggles with the “ll” sound. This time it came easily - at least I hope I’m doing it right. I had fun with my daughter today as we drove through town and occasionally saw words in English or Spanish with “ll” in them and we pronounced them as though they were Welsh.

I’m also going through the lessons faster this time. I put them on a CD and play them in my car instead of listening to the news. It’s much healthier. In the last two months, I’ve gotten to lesson 9. Slow, perhaps, but I’m enjoying them. I’m retired, I can go slowly.

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It’s great to hear confirmation of that experience after a good long gap - it seems to be the standard experience, which seems different from many other courses - so yes, thank you very much indeed for answering this question! And definitely useful, since I haven’t finished the booklet yet (hoping to do so by about the end of the year)… :slight_smile:

Did you publish the booklet @aran? If there’s a PDF version I’d be curious to read it!

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It’s kept on growing - it’s pretty much going to have to be a book now - I’m hoping to get it finished next year… :slight_smile:

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Oh ok. I guess this also means it can be useful to post more answers here, then?

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Definitely - always… :slight_smile:

Sorry, it has to take way less than a year, cause I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep my attention focused for such an unnecessary thing, unless I keep quite a fast and intense pace! :smiley:

I repeated a couple of times challenge 2 or 3 in Level 1, but just because I still hadn’t figured the right way to do them: the next day, I couldn’t remember anything!
I also had to repeat challenge 1 and 2 in Level 2: I had left about a week between them and number 3, and again I had forgotten everything (even just a little bit, but every day or almost, is the way to go for me).
I expect to need to repeat quite a few of Level 3 - cause there’s really a lot of new stuff in each challenge, and a lot of old stuff too - but I’ll add a report when I finish them.
Apart from that, I’m rally happy NOT to have to repeat, because I get bored easily - and having always something new helps keeping my attention high.

I tried in the beginning, but it really didn’t work. I seem to need to translate English into Italian and then back to Welsh, the first time I do the challenges - and I need a bit more time to think and recall.
However I notice that the more I go on, the faster I get to recall things - so maybe at some point I’ll be able to do them without using pause button.

Also, when I tried to repeat a Challenge after some time (like 25, or 13 that had been a nightmare) I’m pretty much able to do it without pause button and still do most of them right.

Since I found out there’s no need to understand everything, they’re very easy and pleasant to do!
In the meantime I also tried to listen a bit of radio and that’s really tough, instead - I really have no idea of what people are talking about; all I’m able to catch is a few words here and there (that’s quite frustrating, by the way). :confused:

Very easy, with Slack. I haven’t fully taken advantage of this so far, I’ve only tried a couple of times - just to jump in and see what what would happen - and a couple of Hangouts (which were very helpful to understand what I need to improve) because I can’t really put together many sentences so far and I’d rather spend a few weeks more building a vocabulary and having everything else settle a bit - but I’ll be back!

After trying to listen a bit of radio and TV I realized at the moment I can’t understand what’s the actual differences between accents.
I guess Southern accent is probably easier, but when people speak fluently I understand so few words anyway that it doesn’t really make a difference at the moment! :grin:

Uhm…talking about Welsh language here? Or learning languages in general? never tried to learn Welsh before, but in general, the approach of SSiW is certainly very different from the way I learnt other languages in the past, at school (English and French and a bit of German).

Written Welsh looks so weird and unfriendly that I just HAD to put off reading to avoid getting really confused.
But now I’m starting to read a little bit, especially song lyrics and of course vocabulary lists and examples at the end of Challenges (not much else, at the moment)

Not really, this is pretty confusing, at the moment. I know it’s going to be helpful , to understand other people speaking and to be more flexible in general. I will certainly appreciate it…in the future.

I’m actually very happy not to have to deal with grammar!

I know there’s many very scenic plateaus on the Alps, but I don’t really know what it means in the context of language learning. Therefore I cannot worry about it. :thinking:

That’s very similar to Italian R, so I know how I should pronounce it even though I’ve always been a bit lazy and I often don’t. Actually I’ve improved my Italian R as well, by practicing Welsh!
However I’m not sure I pronouncing the RH right.

This was tough. I watched a few videos to try and figure it out. I’m sure I don’t make a huge unnecessary effort as in the beginning. But someone else should say how good I am at it, I can’t judge it myself. :wink:

I know a bit of German, and this seems pretty close. It’s only complicated in some peculiar combinations…like llwch, for example.

In general, to be honest, I thought learning even just the basics of Welsh would be much more complicated - and I’m sure it is, at higher levels - but for now, I’m enjoying it a lot!

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Diolch o galon Gisella - tante grazie! :star: :star2:

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