Published: new advanced content

Great comment and handy tips re Un Bore Mercher scripts - had no idea those were available!
I think I’ll go through all the content and note which ones are South - many thanks for pointing a few of them out for me! Take care

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Hi all - another ep of Daniel Glyn’s diary is up! Find out why he can’t go to Gregg’s anymore… :rofl:

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Thanks Beca. Luke’s piece is still cutting out as soon as I start to play it. Dan’s works all right so I’ve no idea what the problem is!

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Thanks Macky. My understanding is that there are no more than 5 South Walian interviews in the earlier advanced content - numbers 13, 19, 20, 24 and 31 out of a total of 44.

Thanks Gisella, but I’m afraid I don’t have the time (or stamina) to spend 30 minutes listening to people using, for instance, ‘rwan’ and ‘efo’ instead of ‘nawr’ and ‘gyda’. The differences are more than just an accent and I don’t see the point of confusing myself with vocabulary which isn’t used by the people I know.

By the way, I know at least two other SSIW learners in the South who have given up on the Advanced Content for the same reasons as I did.

I would still like a full translation, please.

Just for clarity’s sake here - I asked Beca to provide glossaries only for these pieces, because there is now more than enough fully transcribed and translated content for the south as well as the north for that stage of your learning.

Beca has a very wide-ranging remit with us - as well as writing and recording her own material for the advanced content, and co-ordinating the new commissions, she is also heavily involved with our social media and advertising work, and with our onboarding and retention work. We need to make sure we use her time wisely and to best advantage for all our learners - and that means not spending unnecessary extra time on replicating materials that already exist.

Coralie, if you’ve listened to the five southern interviews often enough to understand all of them perfectly, then it’s very important that you spend more time listening to material without transcriptions and translations. This is fundamental to the SSi ethos the entire way through the course - making things easier is something to be done as rarely as possible, because in general it slows the learning process (apart from very particular steps such as your first steps into listening to longer dialogues).

If you haven’t listened to the five southern interviews often enough to understand all of them perfectly, then that’s the step you’re missing. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find pieces like Daniel’s much easier to follow, and it will be easier for you to see that you don’t actually need the extra translation.

[But you will also find that working through some of the northern interviews will be very valuable - you’ve shown that you’ve already got a clear understanding of ‘rwan’ and ‘efo’, and there aren’t too many layers on top of that kind of difference before it all starts to feel much more like the same language, and radio becomes easier to follow, as well as people in the south using words which aren’t on our southern course - there isn’t a neat, clear divide between the north and south].

We definitely have some work to do on navigation in the advanced content, now that Beca and her team have produced such a huge amount of it - we’re currently working on this. When we get it right, it will show much more clearly that there are three separate stages here:

  • listen to the interviews, read the transcript, listen again, read the translation, then keep listening until that dialogue seems easy
  • listen to the shorter pieces, check the glossary, then keep listening until that piece seems easy
  • listen to the content you find most interesting, because it’s interesting - only check the glossary when necessary, and no further need for repeat listening

Transcripts and translations are just for the interviews. If anyone has mastered the five southern interviews but still doesn’t feel that they’re understanding the shorter pieces confidently, let us know and we’ll look at adding some more southern interviews… :slight_smile:

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I’ve just quickly scrolled through some of the 1048 posts in this topic (sad, I know). Anyway, Wow!! The advanced Content, WSP and particularly Iestyn’s Smaeathon plus the Challenges of course, along real life conversations have given me such understanding and speaking confidence.

Ok, so I’m never going to win a FB debate on some obscure rule, but now I can speak Welsh in any part of Wales. Plus a bit of Manx. Thank you SSiW :star2:

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That’s lovely to hear :star2:

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That is such a shame. Welsh is a national language and we need to speak and understand Welsh as we understand English. Welsh is what everyone is speaking on the advanced course. I have a preference for westwalian welsh but would like to understand and speak with all speakers of our national tongue, maybe that is just me.
Good luck with your learning journey and hopefully we will meet and chat in Welsh one day.

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They have not given up learning Welsh - they are just trying other methods of becoming more fluent because they find the Advanced Content too hard.

I still can’t find the advanced content, anywhere, at all. What am I missing?

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Thank you Aran for taking the time to give such a full reply - I know you and Beca are very busy. I am also extremely grateful to SSIW for getting me to the stage where I am, which is a real achievement for me. I’ve tried to learn Welsh through face to face courses a few times, without much success, and the reason I know a bit of ‘North’ Welsh is because I once enrolled on a weekend course in mid-Wales without realising that it would be teaching exclusively Welsh spoken in the north. It does make a difference when you’re a learner!
My experience is that, having greeted the Advanced Content with enthusiasm at the start, when I found that the conversations were between people in the north and there didn’t appear to be any with people in the south I gave up and looked for other ways to increase my fluency. That was why I was so thrilled to find Dan’s contribution, and then so disappointed to find there was no translation. I would never have discovered that Beca’s conversations numbered 13, 19, 20, 24 and 31 were with people from the south if Gisella hadn’t told me because I probably gave up after struggling with 3 or 4. I hadn’t expected the conversations to be so long, and I’d thought, at least initially, they might be equally split between north and south. If people have the time to get to grips with both, that’s fine, but I’m afraid I don’t.
I haven’t listened to the five southern interviews because, as I said, I gave up after 3 or 4. I thought Dan’s piece would be a means of easing myself into the Advanced Content because it’s short; listening to 30 minutes of conversation, then reading the transcript, listening again, reading the translation, and listening again will probably take at least 2 hours - too long for me. I can already understand most of Dan’s pieces so I will probably use those and leave the long interviews until I feel I can tackle them. I know that’s backwards, but it’s better than nothing!

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Click on ‘Learn’ at the top right hand corner and there’s a drop-down menu which includes Advanced Content.

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Hi there, do you use the app or the website? Here’s a screenshot of where Advanced lives on each platform. We’re currently working on the layout of it to make it easier to navigate as there is now so much stuff there!

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I use both the app and the computer, usually the latter. I found a listing for the Advanced course on my (android) phone, but without any content. I already have some old “Growth Club Content” on my phone (Clwb Tyfu), but that’s all (and I don’t remember how I found it).

Usually I am already in the forum when I go into SSiW (on my computer) so a hint I just found (click on “learn” and get a drop-down) didn’t work because I was in the forum, not on the main site. But I just discovered the difference, though the result doesn’t look anything like your screenshot above. But HOORAY I finally found a link to some more advanced content. It seems to be just one long list labeled “Growth Club Content” so a little hard to tell what is which. Apparently the earliest is at the bottom, but at least I’ve finally found some of it!

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Does this help? Perhaps from scratch on your browser.

https://www.saysomethingin.com/welsh/advanced

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Now that I have found the advanced material, Luke’s piece was the top of the list. When I clicked on it, it appeared to start but immediately stopped. I clicked the ‘pause’ symbol and then ‘play’ again, but instead of doing anything, it just had an X appear next to the title, and I couldn’t do anything else with it.

Edited to add: So I tried downloading it. My computer didn’t seem to know what kind of file it was, but when I added “.mp3” to the end before I downloaded, it worked fine.

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Just a quick note to say that I’ve rechecked Luke’s audio (from the site, on Android phone now and Opera) and it seems to work alright. Same with download and on a Mac at home last week.
But computers and files often behave oddly and differently on different computers!

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