In here for ideas about how to help more learners succeed by increasing their frequency of usage…
Is there a direct way to work on this? I can only think of indirect approaches, depending on knock-on effects.
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Cymry Cymraeg have this same issue, and one of the best things about learners is that they often shake up expectations about which language to speak. Obviously hanging out with Welsh speakers helps normalise the language for learners, making them more inclined to use it. I don’t think it’s so well known that it’s a two-way street: learners can cause first-language speakers to speak more Welsh too (especially the ones that otherwise speak Welsh only to people they know well). So: yet more community events unashamedly in Welsh (not Bilingualish). More mixing - definitely not separate events for learners.
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Anything that normalises Welsh as a community language. Removing the visual clutter of English signage within y Fro Gymraeg would be a good start.
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I wonder if there might be possible tech nudges… I wonder how many Welsh speakers would use the language more if they had a Facebook/WhatsApp environment which was Welsh only (so they didn’t have that permanent ‘Oh, but what about my English speaking friends…’ thing.
I wonder if there would be mileage in a tech tool that let you ‘tick’ days where you spoke Welsh, and be part of local and/or interest ‘teams’ aiming to be the most regular users…
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Also, I’d love to see/build an integrated tool for the forum that would make it easy for people to record snippets - so that we could have thread conversations with actual audio…
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I can do that in audio and video. :). I’ll demo it for you in the next week or so.
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Whoa, seriously? I’m kind of speechless here…!!
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Well, I can show you a basic setup of recording audio and video from the browser and playing it back… what I originally wrote (some time ago) is more like visual email. I can adapt it to what you want. Then, if you like it, we can work to integrate it with the forum (I’m not real sure about that level of effort, but it is completely doable and I"m excited to do it)!
We’ll have a lot of decisions to make at some point:
- Who should be able to do it. I’m just thinking of limiting to be people we know are positive people we want to get audio/video from.
- Media storage.
- I’m sure many more.
I have a lot of time next week and, btw, I’ve got a couple of weeks after bootcamp in Wales with no particular plans. Maybe I could work with your tech guy a couple days while I’m there?
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Ifan’s not here very often - he will be for the Eisteddfod, I expect - otherwise, he’s in London at the moment, I think, although it probably won’t be very long before he wanders off overseas again…
With the storage - I wonder if there’s anyway we can piggy-back on SoundCloud or YouTube or something like that? Because ideally, we wouldn’t throw any conversational stuff away - apart from the immediate benefits of the conversation, it’ll have all sorts of knock-on benefits for people wanting to practise listening, expand vocabulary, and so on…
Be aware that soundcloud have recently laid off a bunch of people to cut costs, meaning an increased chance they might not be around in 12 months time…
Something to keep in mind for long term storage of audio are the big cloud providers where you typically pay pennies per month per GB of data stored (e.g. Microsoft’s Azure charges 2p per gig). You have to be mindful of the bandwidth costs associated with streaming those audio files out to people. But definitely worth considering on the basis that most stuff would be accessed infrequently.
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There are loads of “habit forming/training” apps around aimed at this kind of thing. Perhaps a task for one of the groups is to go and research what existing tech could be utilised for some quick wins.
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Just some quick investigation/calculation at YouTube, if I’m reading it correctly, tells me that by default we can upload ~500 videos per day via the API.
Something tells me that doing more than that a day would be a great problem to have. :).
I don’t know much about how to do it, but again, it seems very doable.
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We have a new tool (we’re meeting the developers soon) for post-op patients that sends reminders to do exercises and links to videos of the exercises. It keeps a log of doing the exercises too.
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I’m on a bit of a gamification kick at the mo
Some existing apps…
https://www.diigo.com/user/leiafee?query=%23gamify
Some of these let you share targets with the wider community - having a Welsh set could work
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A stand alone app just for Welsh learners would be good though. Targettting works really well when looking to build a community. For example fitness app Strava targets only people doing Running/Cycling/Swimming only. It provides great data, goal setting and a social platform.
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Yes, targeting a specific Welsh one would be supercool, but using an existing one would work to test out the idea and see what works.
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“a Facebook/WhatsApp environment which was Welsh only”
I kind hoped Google’s Plus’ “Circles” things would do that but kinds never got there.
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As if on cue I had this happy email from Google Translate today
It’s an interesting tactic because I haven’t actually logged in to do any in some time… And I kinda straight away wanted to. And the button to do it is right there. And each of the tasks is only tiny, and you get a lovely happy animation when you do.
And badges and stars and "this is how much is left to get to the NEXT set of badges and stars.
Rewards can be really quite intangible and work!
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Strava is just so good at engaging people of all abilities.
Of course a Welsh learning app would need to replace physical activities with language activities, and your Translate submissions would be an ideal activity for more advanced learners.
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I had an idea for an app to directly encourage learners to use their welsh. I wrote about it in my “Learner Support idea” thread. I am just finding my way into this subsection of the forum. Do people here like the sound of it, do you think it could work to encourage learners to use their welsh?
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It’s a good idea - but it’s probably going to get more eyeballs on it in the original thread, in the main forum, than in here - which is a bit quiet at the moment!.. 