Now Catrin's a published writer - a little reading practice for you... :-)

I know, I know, we encourage you to skip that whole reading thing…:wink:

But it’s different now, because this is by Catrin, and it’s her first professionally published and paid for article - it will help if you know that bronfwydo is breast-feeding - and don’t miss that absolutely fantastic picture at the end of Catrin and the kids, taken by an uncredited and anonymous but obviously brilliant photographer…:wink:

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It’s going to take me some time to work my way through reading the Welsh - it’s way above my ability at the moment! - but I just wanted to say you have a beautiful family!

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Yes, I can only get the gist of the Welsh but the picture needs no words in any language. Hyfryd gweld llun ohonyn nhw.

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That brilliant photographer should have some credits [size=9](because that was you, I’m sure. :slight_smile: )[/size]

However sharred article wherever my presence is … including Clecks. Hope many people woudl read it not just we from SSi! :slight_smile:

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I had an idea yesterday. Having slept on it, it still sounds reasonable in the cold dark of day (well, there isn’t much light in December), so I’ll risk mentioning it here:

In the the thread offering Skype conversation sessions / lessons, @CatrinLliarJones said she was looking for ways of making more income for SSi. Now we all know she has a great speaking voice, and she is also a writer, not just the article linked in this thread, but she writes or used to write an occasional blog.

Now, we all know that SSi does not encourage reading too early, but at some point, most of us will want to start reading, and although after doing the SSiW courses, our pronunciation of familiar Welsh words and phrases will be pretty good, we can still stumble over unfamiliar words or unfamiliar expressions. Wouldn’t it be great if when people starting out reading they had a voice reading next to them to use as a model as to how it should sound like. A familiar voice, and a native speaker would be ideal for this wouldn’t it? Now who ticks all those boxes? Well, @CatrinLliarJones of course.

So what I’m suggesting is: how about Catrin reading her articles out loud and recording them, and making them available to SSiW members in such a way that SSiW received payment for them. One way might be to make it an add-on to the SSiGrowth club, i,e, add on an extra amount for the sound files corresponding to Catrin’s articles (e.g. the one here and any future ones, or perhaps some of the older blog articles (in Welsh of course), or any new ones that come along). I don’t know how technically difficult that would be to do, but I would think (hope) it would not be too much extra work for Catrin, if she is going to be writing the articles anyway, and would no doubt be reading through them anyway several times for proof-reading, so including a recording stage might not be too time-consuming.

And hopefully, both SSiW and SSiW learners would benefit greatly.
Tagging @aran.

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Oh, yes, that’s such a great idea:) But in general, what do you think about recording some audios of articles or short stories? I’m sure people from other countries, who can’t hear so much Welsh, would be willing to invest!

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I like this idea. Here’s another idea - people who feel they are capable could write a story, or recount, using the vocabulary they have learned so far, and post it in a place somewhere. I would read these as they would be written in a different format to the stock sentences and it would be actually using the language. I might even have a go at writing something myself. It would be excellent reinforcement for learners who write and for those who read. this would be helpful to people like me who are doing both courses and levels while the levels are being completed. It would connect them and keep both fresh in the brain. what do you think?

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It’s almost amazing as I had the same thought the other day … Knowing that audio recording isn’t available I wanted “IVONA” “Gwyneth” would read the article for me, but I dismissed that because I feared that artificial voice would rather spoil the whole thing then enabling for me being more comfortable of what I’m reading. So yes, this should be good idea if it doesn’t give @CatrinLliarJones too much of extra work of course. Well, reading/recording my own stories (which aren’t so short though but rather about half an hour long and in Slovene of course) I know this is not the thing which would always be easy task to do. The reading still has to be without mistakes and fluent. So I’d be for it only if this isn’t too much to expect.

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Love this idea! However, I think it would be great if they were not tied to the Growth Club., Some of us, as much as we would like to join the Growth Club, are not in a financial position to do so. And I think Aran said that at some point, the Growth Club would be closed to further memberships.

This is also a great idea. I wouldn’t be confident enough to read anything aloud because I’m still unsure how to exactly pronounce some words (not lesson words, but some from the dictionary or Memrise), but I’m sure there are loads of capable people who could do this.

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Congratulations Catrin, I’m looking forwArd to the day when I will be able to read and understand the whole article.

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That’s a genuine stroke of genius, Mike… :sunny:

I’ve chatted about this briefly with Catrin - and it’s an important point that the Growth Club isn’t cheap - we’re currently thinking that a ‘pay what you can’ model might work for this. I’m going to do a little scouting around for the best way to set it up, but there’s a fighting chance this will start to happen early in the new year - and provide the temporary bridge to reading that we’ve long wanted to tick off our list.

I’m taking my hat off to you, Mike… :star: :star2: :fireworks:

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And once we’re familiar with most of the words, we can play them at double speed for listening practise :slight_smile:

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Strangely enough, I was talking to someone this morning who teaches English in Thailand to adult learners. He was describing the next lesson he was doing with his class; reading the news in English from the Bangkok Post. The articles are in English, with a translation in Thai and a recording of the article in English (American accent) that can be downloaded!

[Bangkok Post Today’s news made easy][1]

Great minds!
[1]: http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/easy

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