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[jstetson]

In my particular situation I do all my lessons in the car while driving making it utterly impossible for me to refer to any sort of written material.

Similarly, I do them mostly on the bus/train, so I can't refer to written material, unless I want to arrive at work nauseated and with a splitting headache.

I don't think I could do them while driving. I often have to concentrate so intently, I'm afraid I'd drive into a tree!

[LozzieGal]

I think that there are a few issues, and while in the end I'd be reluctant to go against what works for you, I am concerned that you might be getting a short term gain against a longer term benefit.

The learning methods that the course is based on, does depend on a basic theory of learning, that you are trying to stimulate a listening response in the mind in a secondary language centre of your mind. While you may get a quicker understanding of the sounds you are hearing, if you depend on the written word to gain the understanding, you may not be triggering the appropriate response in your mind.

You are not only trying to learn the course, you are trying to stimulate your listening ability too. So although you can get through the course looking at the guides, you will not have that crutch outside of the lessons.

I have only resorted to looking things up if after several listens I simply cannot work out the shape of the word in my head. There are some Welsh sounds that my English brain simply does not latch onto - the soft sounds are more difficult than the hard, shapely words. This links into your other comment - these are foreign sounds and you cannot as readily adapt to them BUT this is what you are trying to train your brain into learning, and by ducking out, your brain is being given the excuse not to adapt to them.

Just to emphasise, that is exactly the problem you are trying to solve with the SSIW approach - training your listening so that is no longer the case. There is another danger of the written word - it emphasises the word rather than the phrase. SSiW is trying to encourage you to hear and produce patterns rather than syllables and words. If the written word was the solution to speaking language, there would not be the tens of thousands of Welsh people who have a Welsh GCSE to a high grade who are incapable of communicating.

So, if what you are doing is really working and the words are sticking then that is good. However, if after a while you are struggling to keep up, perhaps those early lessons are dropping out of your mind because you haven't been through the pain barrier to force them in using the ears rather than the eyes, then you should consider revisiting your approach.

Ah, it must be Monday morning, that did sound rather crabby , but hopefully it is food for thought.

Customising my own approach has accelerated my learning. By typing up the sentences I have two points of reference, an aural reference and a photographic one. Also, having the sentences allows me to practice my Welsh when I email, use facebook and sms people which I have been doing for the past week since I got here. When I type the words I hear them in my head. And when I walk down the street reading signs and browse through the local paper, I recognise the words I've already learned and hear them in my head, which again reinforces them. The people across the road and my colleagues have been astounded by the amount of Welsh I can speak and write.

but if you start looking at written material WHILE you're doing the lessons, you really will be putting the brakes on!

Again, I wish to emphasise that typing out the sentences is NOT a replacement for the aural teaching - I am listening to the Welsh and then typing up the lesson as a supportive activity. To do this when you are a child learning your first language would not be feasible, but as an adult I have the luxury of other skills that I can employ to accelerate my grasp of Welsh. As I currently live by myself I am not able to practice speaking Welsh all the time but by being able to read and write a little I can learn new vocabulary to try when I speak to Welsh people, instead of waiting to hear it in one of the lessons. There is some basic Welsh that isn't covered in the beginners lessons (which is fair enough, you can't learn everything at once and I understand that the course is reviewed and people can give suggestions). For example I'm currently up to 22 in southern but so far have not encountered the numbers, days of the week, months, how to ask / tell the time, how to ask where or when something is. I didn't know how to say "my name is" until I met up with the learners last week. I admit patience is not one of my virtues but I feel I can't really afford to wait to hear what I need in intermediate.

I know we're not trying to learn "tourist" phrases but sometimes they come in handy!

How do you learn new vocabulary unless you learn how to read words and have a go at pronouncing them?
The "cheat sheets" on http://www.clwbmalucachu.co.uk/cmc/cheatsheets.htm have really helped me to pick up on those words when people have said them in conversation.

I really don't want you guys thinking that I am doing this because the website isn't enough - that is not the case - the website is brilliant and I have been boasting about the course to anyone who will listen to me. I'm just really trying to immerse myself.

I should mention that I am an avid watcher of S4C and use that as a listening activity because I have no idea what they're saying. The most challenging part is trying to work out where words start and finish when people speak.

If the written word was the solution to speaking language, there would not be the tens of thousands of Welsh people who have a Welsh GCSE to a high grade who are incapable of communicating.

They are incapable of communicating because there is not enough aural training - I do not believe that written activities should be removed from the curriculum, rather just more balanced.

Gary may be able to confirm my suspicion that the reason why there is not much aural training in schools is because teachers can't offer sufficient time for one-on-one conversation practice with the students - it's far easier to just give them a textbook and tell them to do exercises and homework. Yes this is all WRONG but generally speaking, the way students are taught and tested around the world is based on convenience rather than effectiveness. Why do you think they have "Multiple choice" tests where theoretically, a person who has never taken the subject could pass simply by GUESSING! It's so they can run the results through a computer instead of spending money on human assessment. Oh I could go on forever about this issue.

Anyway I hope we understand each other.

Crikey I've just realised there is a massive thread about this on "Should I finish the course before I start reading Welsh" or whatever it was. It really isn't meant to be a war of reading vs speaking... ideally you'd do maybe 75% speaking and 25% writing, but I doubt I'll live to see the day it happens in government schools.

[Aran]

In my particular situation I do all my lessons in the car while driving making it utterly impossible for me to refer to any sort of written material.

Oh, that's a relief...

I'd much rather you were a road safety hazard than that your Welsh got slowed down...

[Aran]

Again, I wish to emphasise that typing out the sentences is NOT a replacement for the aural teaching - I am listening to the Welsh and then typing up the lesson as a supportive activity.

Great - that's the key issue here. Supplementary stuff is obviously fine - but if you're doing the lessons (and not just listening to them, but saying the Welsh before Cat (with or without the pause button!), then it's all good...

For example I'm currently up to 22 in southern but so far have not encountered the numbers, days of the week, months, how to ask / tell the time, how to ask where or when something is. I didn't know how to say "my name is" until I met up with the learners last week. I admit patience is not one of my virtues but I feel I can't really afford to wait to hear what I need in intermediate.

As it happens, this isn't a beginners/intermediate issue, it's a cumulative vs one-off issue. By which I mean, we focus intensely on cumulative elements of language in the courses, which is why people get excited about how much they can say after just a couple of lessons, and why they keep on feeling that they're progressing well. Things like days, months, numbers and so on are one-off elements of language that need to be learnt in chunks - and often form a large part of what turns people off languages at school (for the reasons you mentioned), because very few people actually enjoy learning lists.

We're trying to find a way round this - there will be 'to do at the end of the introductory course' vocab units in due course - and once we get feedback on them, we'll see how plausible it would be to bring some of them to an earlier point in the course (the earlier they are, the more limited we are in what we can use in them, and the closer they will be to being ordinary boring lists).

How do you learn new vocabulary unless you learn how to read words and have a go at pronouncing them?

By hearing new words in context often enough for you to understand them. Once you're using your Welsh on a regular basis, this is a much faster process than you might presume...

Having said that, there's no harm at all in doing extra stuff with reading, once you're far enough into the course for it not to affect your accent.

I really don't want you guys thinking that I am doing this because the website isn't enough - that is not the case - the website is brilliant and I have been boasting about the course to anyone who will listen to me. I'm just really trying to immerse myself.

No, absolutely, not at all, don't worry - we know perfectly well that the course isn't the complete package yet, and we very much want to make it that - and feedback from people in the middle of using it is an enormous help to us in that process...

Gary may be able to confirm my suspicion that the reason why there is not much aural training in schools is because teachers can't offer sufficient time for one-on-one conversation practice with the students - it's far easier to just give them a textbook and tell them to do exercises and homework.

Yup. I have a bit of a rant about this in our How to Become Fluent in Welsh little booklet thingy: http://www.saysomethinginwelsh.com/home ... t-in-welsh

Crikey I've just realised there is a massive thread about this on "Should I finish the course before I start reading Welsh" or whatever it was. It really isn't meant to be a war of reading vs speaking... ideally you'd do maybe 75% speaking and 25% writing, but I doubt I'll live to see the day it happens in government schools.

Absolutely not - SSiW doesn't do wars... It's a fascinating subject, and there is as yet no clear answer to it. Personally, I think it would be good to do about 10 hours of a good audio course before starting to read, and from then on a 75/25 split would strike me as fine.

With luck, SSiW will be able to help get that to happen in schools in Wales...

[tahl]

Loz, if you're still shopping for a dictionary, here's a link that will let you poke around inside the Gareth King Modern Welsh Dictionary that we discussed earlier in this thread:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yry3 ... sh&f=false

[jstetson]

Loz, if you're still shopping for a dictionary, here's a link that will let you poke around inside the Gareth King Modern Welsh Dictionary that we discussed earlier in this thread:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yry3 ... sh&f=false

I often find that, even though I own the book, sometimes it's easier to just get it up on Google books, or on Amazon, where I can search, like a civilized person

[LozzieGal]

Loz, if you're still shopping for a dictionary, here's a link that will let you poke around inside the Gareth King Modern Welsh Dictionary that we discussed earlier in this thread:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yry3 ... sh&f=false

Oh cool!!!! Thank-you so much!