Your problems - learning Welsh or other languages - what are the challenges?

[aran]

I’m going to write a few ‘how to fix it’ booklets for common problems I see hitting our learners.

But before I get going, I’d really love to hear about your own experiences (and if you see this, Dee, it’d be great if it could go in the email! :-)).

What are your biggest challenges?

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

What makes you think you might not succeed?

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).

And as a thank you, if you flag any of your responses up as still being a problem for you, I’ll do my best to suggest ways to beat whatever it is…

[Hey, it’s kind of like a Friday Five, but a day early…;-)]

[morganlevans]

The one problem that keeps cropping up with me is forgetting previously learned material. I’m working currently on the first four or five lessons in the intermediate course, and I find I often have to go back and review things from the introductory course that I thought I had firmly in hand. Perhaps that’s normal, but I don’t really know. In any case, I’ve made cds of a number of the earlier sessions and have taken to doing them in the car on my way to and from work. It seems to be helping.

The other thing that gives me trouble from time to time is encountering a word that I find difficult to pronounce properly. The other night it was “defnyddiol”…a “useful” word, no doubt, but it gave me no end of annoyance when I kept repeating and repeating it and could not be satisfied that it sounded right. Again, maybe normal, and I know Iestyn always says we’ll learn more by saying it wrong than by not saying it at all. So I’ll keep plugging away at it. Any suggestions, of course, are very welcome. Diolch yn fawr am wneud hyn.

[wondersheep]

Well, you asked to open Pandora’s box…

What are your biggest challenges?

I seem to be learning to speak, not to converse. I remain almost completely unable to converse with someone, because as soon as someone asks me a question I will miss one part of the sentence and then understand none of it. I’d need pauses between words big enough to drive a truck through.

I try to listen to Radio Cymru, but I seem to recognise so little of the vocabulary (and even when I think ‘I know that word’, I can only go English->Welsh) used I mostly seem to just be training myself to be able to filter out Welsh rather than anything useful with it. I’m starting to be a little better at understanding the listening exercises, but I still find myself translating instead of understanding.

I also can’t ‘just listen’ to the lessons, I have to be doing something else (just going for a walk is fine), else I get horrible claustrophobic feelings that I can’t explain.

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

Feeling like I’m making no progress through C2, largely because of a lack of time listening to the lessons; there seems to be a critical mass, I don’t just learn slower if I don’t reach the critical mass of practice - I learn nothing.

What makes you think you might not succeed?

I seem to be the only person who finds speaking much easier than listening (which isn’t to say that easier = easy). Everyone seems to say “Oh, yes, understanding always comes first, it’s the talking that’s hard”, which is completely counter to my experience.

I think Bootcamp would probably help me hugely, but I can’t conceive of me ever doing that. I love the idea, but can’t see me being in that setting.

Chatting to other learners can be pretty demotivating when they’re vastly more advanced than you (even though everyone’s lovely!), and you can’t understand what they’re asking you.

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

I didn’t really feel like there were significant problems early on, it was challenging, but felt like I was getting somewhere. Towards the end of C1, and particularly the vocab, trying to get through the lessons was a struggle, but I don’t think I doubted I’d manage them if I kept repeating. These days it feels like I’m learning vocab that I can never usefully use, because I can only perform monologues.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).

I only briefly tried to learn once before, with a CD course that turned me off almost immediately. Once I learned of SSiW, no, getting started was easy.

[a_jay]

What are your biggest challenges?

Simply being able to find the time to listen to as much Welsh as I would like.

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

I get very dis-heartened at the slow pace that I am learning. I was thinking about the four stages of learning/competence the other day: unconscious incompetence, concious incompetence, concious competence, unconscious competence. I am aiming for concious competence but never feel like I am going to make the cross-over and often slip back into unconscious incompetence…

What makes you think you might not succeed?

I have a track record of failing to complete anything that I have started. In fact, I have surprised myself and my family that I have managed to keep going with this latest project… Ultimately, I think too slow progress would make me give up in the end. Sometimes I like a ‘quick win’ and I have found with Course 2 that they are not as frequent as they were in Course 1.

Are you main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

Only that in the beginning 20 minutes a day was enough, I really struggle to find enough time now.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started?

Very early on I tried to tell someone that I had bought something using the gen i structure rather than wedi. I was trying to ‘stretch’ my welsh by making up sentences etc. Of course, I was corrected which I didn’t object too at all, but I have been very reluctant to try and make-up sentences since. Mainly because I am always saying to myself, “Perhaps there is a different structure, perhaps you don’t say it that way!”

[leiafee]

What are your biggest challenges?

Procrastination! 30 mins isn’t much but if you as practised a procrastinator as me that only makes it EASIER to say “I’ll fit it in later”

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

Slow progress in ‘real’ classes populated by people who insisted on speaking English in the coffee breaks!

What makes you think you might not succeed?

Hmm I can’t think of one for that. The evidence that it works is too convincing!

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

I don’t think so.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started?

“Will this be utterly different to everything I’ve learned in “real” classes so far and confuse the life out of me and/or everyone I speak to using it,.”

[aran]

This is enormously useful input, folks - thank you for being so open and detailed about your experiences. In return, I hope I can give you some useful ideas/suggestions.

Morgan, with reviewing stuff from Course 1 - this is a weakness in the old course that is fixed in the new one - but for the time being, if you just listen to 24 and 25 of Course 1 once a month, you’ll find that you’re getting the interval learning you need - and in two or three months, you’ll be able to scale that back to once every two months, and so on. With the pronunciation, yup, you have to plough ahead - some words just use the muscles of the tongue in a new way, which takes time and practice to get to grips with - I’m afraid there are no short cuts on that one, but rest assured you will almost always be understood even if your pronunciation is slightly off…

Kev - you’re far from the only person who finds speaking easier than listening - in fact, whenever I hear someone claiming that they understand fine although they can’t speak (unless they went through Welsh medium primary education or something!) I feel my left eyebrow itching to rise. Listening is by far the more challenging skill. It sounds to me as though the key issue here is your listening skills, and I think the new course will help you much, much more on that front. How are you doing with the listening sessions for Course 1?

It’s also worth bearing in mind that you’ve got a good amount of material to have a conversation by the time you’ve got as far as you have, but it’s very, very normal to need to say ‘again, slowly!’ lots and lots and lots of times while you’re still in the early stages of using your Welsh. How often are you getting yourself into conversations at the moment? Also - if you’re slowing down with C2, it’s inevitable that it will feel like more of a grind - and also, since you’ve learnt a huge amount since starting, your wins at this stage are far less noticeable. Maybe a day where you fly through five lessons without touching the pause button just to terrify your grey cells would be a good test at this point.

For my money, understanding is the toughest gig of all, and that’s why I’ve been spending a huge amount of time working on how to do it better - and I think the combination of the new listening practices and the post-Course 3 listening practices for the first 4000 words is going to crack it - fingers crossed!

Hope that’s of some help, and shoot again if you’d like me to go into more detail on any of those, or other, points…

Andy - some similar stuff here to Kev - the growth you’re achieving in Course 2 is less noticeable than in Course 1, because it’s a smaller percentage of your overall knowledge. But you are still making real, important progress - you just need to trust the process a little more, because it’s not as obvious to you. Also, if this is coupled with struggling to find time, it’s inevitable that it will feel tougher. As with Kev, it might well be a good time for you to have a shot at doing five-lessons-in-a-row on a day when you feel like scaring yourself…

As for the slow pace - if you could compare yourself to someone who’d been doing night classes twice a week, you’d realise how wrong it is to think you’re going slowly! You’re achieving a huge amount - which I think Bootcamp will go a long way towards proving to you… In particular, it’ll force you to ditch your reluctance to try and make stuff up - making stuff up is the only thing that will keep you going in Bootcamp… And as you know already, really, that’s a vitally important block to get through, because if you don’t try, you don’t use your Welsh, you don’t improve. I’d badger you more about this if I didn’t know you were going to Bootcamp…

[aran]

@Leia - your (entirely correct!) belief in the inevitability of your own success means that you don’t really need anything else from me - but I must say that I always think that those of us who live with procrastination get disproportionate benefits from doing an occasional hyper-intensive day…

[a_jay]

Thank you for the feedback Aran. I will try and remember the advice next time I am feeling I am going slowly. Can’t wait for Bootcamp…!

One thing I was going to mention but didn’t. A sea change for me was to have found a ‘ffrinDiaith’, in fact probably as important as starting the lessons themselves.

I don’t want to embarrass Ro, (Corndolly) but she is amazing, we chat on the phone weekly for an hour and I we have become good friends. I never fail to learn something, and we laugh a lot! I think a regular friend to talk to is VITAL because they know your level and can push you just enough not to frighten you. A weekly conversation reminds you why you are learning in the first place!

I know this doesn’t directly answer any of your questions but I thought it important

[steve_2]

What are your biggest challenges?

Perfectionism, an unwillingness to make a fool of myself, a natural reticence. They all hold me back from doing the obvious thing and actually using all this amazing Welsh that swilling around in my head. My biggest challenge is getting over my own character and to start speaking. Having said that, I make small steps every day and am getting adept at catching myself by surprising and speaking before I think of all the things that can go wrong! It always reminds me of that thing in one of Douglas Adams books about people learning to fly by throwing themselves at the ground and forgetting to hit it (apologies if that’s an obtuse analogy).

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

I started learning a few years ago with a great teacher. The things that stopped me then were:

• learning a language is hard
• people told me that I was better off learning a European language (French / German) and because I was a nervous learner, I wanted to believe them.
• watching other people who were better than me.

Things that have almost stopped me since then:

• When I last tried evening classes I didn’t realising that I would need to practice constantly. I still believed that the tutor was going to fix things for me, and that once a week was enough. (Thankfully, SSiW came along and saved me from a complete stall).

What makes you think you might not succeed?

Since discovering SsiW? Nothing. I have good weeks and bad weeks, but I am absolutely certain that I’m going to get where I’m going, I just don’t know how long it’s going to take. The worst estimate I’ve heard for learning Welsh was 37 years (based on someone’s father), I reckon I’ll be functionally fluent before then.

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

Yes. At first, i knew very few words. It was like looking at a map of the world that only has a few islands on it and masses of sea. There were vast stretches of linguistic ocean that I just couldn’t understand and I was massively frustrated at the frequency with which I got lost. Now I know many more words, and my islands of knowledge are starting to join up. My frustration now is forgetting things and having to relearn – I’m trying to explore too many fronts at once. (Apologies if I’ve just cribbed someone else’s analogy).

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SsiW).

Fear of failure. A lack of self belief. A lack of knowledge of what resources were out there – basically, before I found SsiW I didn’t know of anything that I believed was going to work for me. Once I found SsiW I became completely committed to the goal.

[wondersheep]

Kev - you’re far from the only person who finds speaking easier than listening

What a relief

How are you doing with the listening sessions for Course 1?

I, uhm…hadn’t realised there were new C1 listening courses. I’ve only been listening to the C2 ones (and not often enough, at that).

How often are you getting yourself into conversations at the moment?

As I haven’t been able to get to the Mochyn Du regularly for a while, just the once a month in Bridgend - where being the weakest makes conversation somewhat limited on my part anyway.

Maybe a day where you fly through five lessons without touching the pause button just to terrify your grey cells would be a good test at this point.

I have to admit, I’ve never used the pause button while listening to a lesson - I’m never just listening to a lesson, so I don’t have the opportunity (maybe I’d be doing better if I had?). Do you suggest five completely unseen^h^h^h^hheard lessons, or five past lessons, in a row?

For my money, understanding is the toughest gig of all, and that’s why I’ve been spending a huge amount of time working on how to do it better - and I think the combination of the new listening practices and the post-Course 3 listening practices for the first 4000 words is going to crack it - fingers crossed!

I’ll look forward to getting to that stage. 4000 words seems like quite a lot.

Hope that’s of some help, and shoot again if you’d like me to go into more detail on any of those, or other, points…

Thanks.

[amy_j]

What are your biggest challenges?
Opportunities to speak! Understanding Welsh in a non-learner environment. Niggling grammar points that haven’t been covered in ssiw and I’m too lazy to learn for myself.

What has come closest to stopping you learning? makes you think you might not succeed?
Going from a supportive learner environment to trying out my Welsh at Y Caban (is it?) when we were in Cardiff, and having no idea what the lady said back to me.

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

Yes, absolutely. I never considered getting far enough to have the challenges I do now.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).

Never having experience that learning a language could actually result in me speaking it. I don’t think that held me back because I’ve stubbornly tried so many languages before - but yeah, never with the expectation or confidence that it could work, only that it might be interesting knowledge.

[daiwilliams]

What are your biggest challenges?

I’ll answer these as a pre-SSIW learner of Welsh and a present SSIS learner of Spanish (if that makes sense). The main difference (apart from being lucky enough to have the SSI method available to learn Spanish) in learning Spanish is that I’ve already learned another language as an adult - as a result I have a much much different attitude this time round than when I learned Welsh.

When learning Welsh the biggest challenge was (if I strip everything back to the core) simply the belief that it would be possible for me as an adult to learn another language.

With Spanish it’s finding someone to practice with and the time to do that!

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

When I originally learned Welsh I didn’t really come close to learning once I finally got underway as I’d reach a point in life where I was sort of ready. That sounds a bit odd as I write it but basically I had gone off travelling and in my travels began to appreciate more my own background and culture. So by the time I came back I was absolutely determined to learn. I was also “unburdened” by a job, relationship or kids at the time so I had plenty of free time to fill! As far as learning a language it was a bit of a perfect storm really. Had I not had the time and determination to study Welsh intensively at the beginning I’m not sure I ever would have succeeded - as it was during this intensive time at the beginning that I began to see the wood for the trees and understand that it’s all about sentence structures and not memorising 1000’s of new words.

Spanish has been totally different - I don’t have the same motivation from an identity point of view and with a full time job, two young kids, an allotment and moving house twice within six months - I have virtually no free time! The initial motivation this time was that I would one day like to spend some time in the Wladfa in Patagonia. However this on its own would not be enough, the major difference is that this time I actually enjoy the learning process and due to travelling over an hour a day in the car the SSIS course suits me perfectly both in the fact that it’s an audio course and in the fantastic way it builds up your ability to use the language. The only reason I’ve had to “stop” learning is waiting for new lessons (disclaimer - I’m not moaning I promise, I appreciate your very busy Although what this has highlighted to me that even with a global language such as Spanish there is nothing out there that holds a candle to the SSIS method. I’ve tried and looked for other resources but have soon tired of them. If it wasn’t for SSIS I definitely wouldn’t have persevered with learning Spanish.

What makes you think you might not succeed?

When I first began to learn Welsh the overwhelming barrier was the idea that it would be impossible for any mortal human without a language learning superpower to learn another language once they’d passed the age of 7 years old. I just could not see how it would be possible for me to remember the 1000’s of new words of a new language. I’d always wanted to learn Welsh even before I went travelling but there was a deep seated feeling that I never thought it possible I could do it, which always held me back from really trying. This I believe is wide spread and fed by the poor courses and materials out there and previously poor experience in schools or night courses. The vast majority of language courses seem to be designed the overriding aim of ensuring whoever uses them never succeeds in learning the language and putting them off ever trying again in the future. They seem a bit like as if you go to your first driving lesson and the instructor insists that you wear a bind fold, well of course your not going to learn to drive like that but it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to drive, you just need to find an instructor who doesn’t insist you wear a blindfold when he teaches you!

Learning Spanish (having learned Welsh) I didn’t have the problem of not believing whether I was able to learn another language and it’s like the world being lifted of your shoulders. This time I can simply enjoy the journey, laugh at my mistakes and be far more relaxed when I feel like I haven’t quite understood something (confident in the knowledge that it’ll appear obvious at some point further down the line). This time I simply play the CDs in the car to break up the monotony of my commute and enjoy the challenge. I’m off to Majorca next month so am looking forward to my first real experience of using Spanish with native speakers - although I’ll have to learn to apologise for not speaking Catalan first!

(Anyone know what “I’m sorry I don’t speak Catalan” is in Catalan?)

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

Having learned Welsh and now use the language everyday both at work and at home I suppose the main challenge is the refinement of the written language.

Regarding Spanish, I don’t think I’m far enough down the line yet to have change my main focus which is to reach a level where I can confidently converse in day to day matters.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).

As I mentioned above really, the over riding barrier was the idea that it would be simply impossible for me to learn another language as an adult. I still remember the sort of Eureka moment with Welsh where it finally hit a after a couple of weeks of solid study where I sat back and thought “hang on, this all just comes down to the different sentence structures and how to change the verbs to express these in the different tenses, which actually doesn’t require you to learn all that much really. The vocab just follows with practice - and the more you speak the more you remember by providing a context for all the stuff your trying to remember”. After that hit me everything got a lot easier!

[aran]

Steve, Amy, Dai, diolch yn fawr iawn i chi… That’s a hugely generous amount of detail, can’t thank you enough…

@Kev - sorry, I wasn’t clear - I meant the listening practices for the old Course 1 (the new ones aren’t quite ready yet, although they won’t be long) - how are you finding the listening practices for Course 2? Doing them before you’ve got to the end of the course ought to be a bit of a headache!

It’s great if you can survive without the pause button - yes, I’m definitely thinking you should try five sessions that you haven’t done previously - it should make you feel as if your brain has turned to porridge, but it also ought to be a genuinely valuable neurological kick onwards. Yes, 4000 words is quite a lot, which is why it usually takes a long, painful time of listening to radio and TV before people get to the critical mass - and that’s why we’re working on a different approach which should be a lot faster, and much easier (for people who’ve finished doing the courses)…

@Andy - yup, regular conversation is the magic ingredient, no doubt about it. And if you’re understanding anything with Tili, you’re doing excellently! I’m looking forward enormously to hearing how you go on Bootcamp - I think it’s going to be a watershed experience for you…

@Steve - great Douglas Adams analogy, and you’re 100% on the money there - and since you know that’s the main issue for you, I’m certain you’ll crack it at some point - and you’re already doing all the right things about making some Welsh interaction a regular part of your day, and that sort of stuff. Your commitment and belief mean that you are an absolutely bolted-on future fluent Welsh speaker…

@Amy - I think the hearing/understanding issue is absolutely key, and not currently satisfactorily addressed by any course materials I know of, including our own. I’m really looking forward to that changing in the next few months… I hope we’re going to be able to help more with the opportunities to speak side of things as well - I’m imagining our improved approach to meetups helping as a first step, but I’m also hoping that we can get to the stage where there’s almost always a Welsh conversation (maybe via G+ Hangouts) happening on the site any time you log on, that you can easily join or eavesdrop on…

@Dai - really can’t thank you enough for such a detailed response, diolch yn fawr iawn y muchisimas gracias!..:seren: You clearly don’t need any tips… And the good news is that we are very close indeed to publishing the new Spanish course - probably with 10 new sessions off the bat, and then another 15 following in pretty close order (they’re being mastered and imported at the moment)…

[jonthomas]

What are your biggest challenges?

1. I suppose the big one is the lack of opportunity to speak and hear Welsh in the wild. Seeing as I live in SE Wales, it’s one that’s unlikely to change, unfortunately. More bilingual events needed to promote the language and connect speakers, I think.

2. Rolling my r’s! I know it’s not that important, and it might sound petty, but there are so many words that make me cringe when I say them because my tongue won’t work properly! It does really bother me sometimes because I think it makes my Welsh sound unnatural.

What has come closest to stopping you learning? What makes you think you might not succeed?

Since starting with SSiW - dim byd! However, sometimes there are overwhelming days when there seems like there’s just too much to get my head around and I’ll never get to where I want to be. But the forum is a great antidote to that.

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?

Even though the specifics are different, in many ways it’s still the same, i.e. needing to focus on being pleased with what I can say/understand rather than frustrated with what I can’t.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).

I’ve always wanted to be a Welsh speaker, but there was so much negativity surrounding the language when I was young (school, community, sometimes at home) that my initial short-lived attempts were almost doomed to fail. Diolch byth for my Welsh-speaking relatives in Ceredigion and SSiW. That’s all I can say!

More prosaically: just not having the time to commit to regular classes. (Although now I’m glad that I didn’t!)

[aran]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Jon. Really interesting points.

It’s probably medium term rather than short term, but I do hope that we’ll reach the point of being able to make it easier and more natural to find and fit into Welsh speaking communities even in the south east - some of the findability stuff that will help for international learners should also be useful for learners in Wales, but if we can get a growth model with other languages, we’ll be very keen to plough as much as possible back into promoting real use of Welsh throughout Wales… I’m also thinking that the next stage of ffrinDiaith, which is very likely to have S4C involved, will be a huge step forward.

Those Rs - cross it off your list and roll with it. Most everyone knows first language speakers who can’t say their Rs - and I share your pain when it comes to ‘…TR…’, which just doesn’t work for me - but as with all examples of self-consciousness, pretty much no-one else will ever notice, and those that do will remember it for all of about a second or two. It’s only front and centre for you, so if you ignore it, it stops existing.

needing to focus on being pleased with what I can say/understand rather than frustrated with what I can’t.

Oh yes. That’s a vital element for every language learner in the world…

[kime]

I’m not long home from a depressing & demoralising Welsh class, I left early after the unnecessarily stressful experience of practising exam listening comprehension - I’m not actually doing the exam but half the class are.
So, it seems a good time to contribute to this thread.

What are your biggest challenges?

1. learning and retaining vocabulary
2. listening comprehension - I’m on Course 3 lesson 5 but still don’t understand course 2 listening sessions.I’ve been listening to Radio Cymru for a couple of years now; I recognize many more words & phrases but rarely understand even half of what is being said

What has come closest to stopping you learning?

1. negative experiences in classes
2. slow pace of learning in classes; it seems to take motivated adults, who are not studying any other subjects, 5+ yrs to get to GCSE standard
3. sorry to have to say this, but, the most significant factor for me is wondering why I’m persisting with it when so few Welsh speakers respond to my efforts to use Welsh. 10 trips to Welsh speaking areas in the last 2 yrs - often hear no Welsh, but, even when people obviously speak Welsh, they usually speak English to me. I can literally count the positive responses on the fingers of one hand. So, when I speak Welsh, it’s with other learners - probably not the best way.
4. realising how much I still have to learn

What makes you think you might not succeed?
See question 1

Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
Yes, in the main
When I started I went to classes and was pleased to learn anything - seemed to make good progress initially, but I struggled with pronunciation. When I started SSinW I loved it; I could see my progress in small steps - every lesson was manageable and a definite step on the way, and there was constant repetition of a correct model - success bred success.
I’m still not confident abut pronunciation - have to resort to Ivona to check. Other challenges are different: I’m more aware of how much I don’t know and/or haven’t learned fully securely; my rate of progress has slowed because I find it harder to retain new learning.

Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).
Not really. I’d decided that, as I was living in Wales, it would be a courtesy to learn the language. Then it was simply a matter of finding a course I could attend fairly regularly while still working part-time at a pretty demanding job with irregular hours and frequent changes to my programme. I asked around to see what courses people recommended and settled for Wlpan through Bangor uni; interestingly, no-one mentioned SSinW - that came later from fellow learners.

[aran]

Oh, kime, I’m sorry you’ve had such a demoralising class - it’s obviously given you a bit of a kick in the teeth, and that’s the last thing anyone needs. Listening comprehension is a particularly nasty one, because generally the only time there’s any consistent focus on it is prior to an exam - and it’s probably the single most challenging part of learning a new language.

I hope that the new material we’re developing to help with listening will be useful for you - in the meantime, it might be worthwhile to remember that the process of decoding a new language in real time is incredibly complicated - more challenging in many ways than what went on at Bletchley Park, and with a LOT less time available! - so finding it hard is absolutely normal.

With regards to Welsh speakers - unfortunately, it has been very heavily drummed in to Welsh speakers, over and over again, that speaking Welsh to someone who isn’t a Welsh speaker is at best rude and at worst ‘racist’. Yup, it’s nonsense, but it’s helped create an environment where most Welsh speakers will automatically use English with people they don’t know. You have to take the lead with this - ask them politely to speak Welsh with you because you’re trying to learn, and the vast majority will be delighted and will do exactly that - and remember that you want to speak Welsh the next time you meet them…

As Jon said, thinking about how much you still have to learn is a bit like looking down when you’re on a tightrope - not a good idea! There’s always more to learn, in every language, including your own first language - and the key is the celebrate what you can say - which of course is trickier if you’re finding it hard to get into conversations.

It’s normal, also, to feel less progress as you go further, although your rate of improvement is almost certainly slowly increasing - but as a percentage of what you know, it’s far, far less, so it doesn’t feel as impressive. Have you tried to find a conversation partner through ffrinDiaith? It sounds as though that might be a really valuable step for you.

With the Course 2 listening sessions - when you say you don’t understand them, do you mean that you have gaps of comprehension (ie even if you replay them, or pause to think, they still have sentences that you don’t understand) or is it about not getting all of it when they’re going at full speed? If it’s the latter, it might be interesting for you to try listening to them at 2x normal speed - there are various programmes that can increase the speed of an mp3 file - a couple of weeks of that, and there’s a very good chance that you’ll find their ordinary speed much easier to follow.

I hope some of that helps - if you can cope with Course 3 lessons, you’ve definitely got a huge amount of Welsh, and almost certainly only really need a regular conversation partner to realise how far you’ve come (plus our improved listening exercises in due course).

I hope this is some help, and thank you very much for taking the time to share in such detail.

[aran]

Just posted a blog inspired in part by this thread, so thank you all again…

The joys of making a fool of yourself – and 3 vital ways it improves your...

[amy_j]

From a book I’m reading by Kató Lomb:

“…language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly”

In other words it’s no good for a doctor to know only a bit of medicine, or a concert pianist to sort of play the piano, but knowing even a few words of another language is always useful. I like that

[aran]

That is rather lovely.

There must be other things, though? Or my life as a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none is starting to look a bit misplaced…:shock: