I’m not sure if they’re forum users, but we will be looking to release the daily videos I’ve been taking, and to look for written feedback as well… 
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Day 4, and everyone’s still alive… just…
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I suppose the real test is how long it sticks! If they will be in a Welsh speaking environment, it probably will, because they’ll use it, but if not, my experience is that it is much easier to forget than to learn a language!
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Not really - we’ve done previous testing on retention after intensive work - the longest so far was a 40-45% retention after 14 months jumping to a 80-85% recall (self-assessed) after one 30 minute refresher session.
This is the common perception, but it’s a long way wide of the mark. Once you’ve done the work that has built new neural structures that allow you to speak and understand part of a language, it’s likely that never disappears, even if the strength of the network falls below the conscious threshold. If you returned to any of the languages that you’ve forgotten, and did the right work, you’d find that they came back very quickly indeed.
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And - day 5 - no-one died!
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Hi everyone! Having completed the test-run of the 5-day immersive Welsh course I’m dipping my toes into this forum to share my experience.
The set up was that there were three of us, sharing a house for the week. We arrived on the Sunday afternoon, and we were allowed to speak English, but from the Monday morning to Friday evening it was to be Welsh only. This made for some deathly quiet ‘social’ gatherings; when we happened to meet in the kitchen, and at mealtimes, there was really nothing much we could say to each other, and there was only so many times you could say ‘Dw i wedi blino’ 
The good news is, as Aran has said, we’re all still alive Before the course my experience of Welsh was very limited - I don’t regularly hear Welsh (unless I’ve accidentally tuned in to Radio Cymru…), and many moons ago I’d barely managed to get past the first couple of SSiW lessons of the online audio course. I’d worked through a few levels of the Duolingo Welsh last year, and that had given me some very basic grammar and vocab, but nothing that could really prepare me for, or help me with, the 5-day course.
This course won’t appeal to everyone. You’re left to your own devices in the mornings and afternoons, to plough through the challenges, with only a few brief breaks, for 5 whole days. That means finding somewhere where you can cope with studying, on your own, for 5-6 hours per day. For me, I was happy to be cooped up in my bedroom, thankful to be out of the howling wind and lashing rain, which accompanied us for the week, but that would have driven some people stir crazy. My personality tends mostly to introversion, so having to be in my own space for prolonged periods of time was a godsend to me, as I very rarely get time to myself in ‘normal’ daily life. Despite being happy with this arrangement, I still found the mental demands, coupled with the fact that I had difficulty sleeping well (due to my brain working overtime…) incredibly tough, so by Friday the mental exhaustion made it difficult to keep pushing through the last day’s challenges.
The hardest bits for me were the talking sessions. This was, I think, partly due to tiredness, but also due to my brain still being busy laying down neural pathways for what it had been exposed to on that day, and previous days. It felt like Brain was busy laying a road, in several disjointed sections (putting in layer upon layer of foundations, before topping off with a smooth layer of concrete), but before the road was complete, Speech would come along and rudely say “come on, hurry up, I need to get through here”, and Brain saying “whoa, hang on. I’ve not done everything I need to yet, and you can’t come through here - the concrete’s still wet”. So it was quite a battle ground, and conversations were mostly long pauses while Brain ‘put down duckboards’ along a route which Speech could take to where it needed to go As the week progressed, more and more sections had been completed, and it was easier to get from one bit from another, without ‘stepping in the concrete’ too often, but it still wasn’t a straightforward process. On the Friday, though,when I felt absolutely dead, it was as though the ‘road’ was closed due to flooding, and nothing was going to get through, in or out 
So, it wasn’t an easy 5 days, and it was certainly a challenge. Having said that, apart from the tiredness, I felt mostly happy and upbeat throughout the experience. I think this was because I knew that I doing what I wanted to be doing, which was learning Welsh. The trick was to not worry if I was struggling with a particular lesson, but just to keep pushing through onto the next and the next and the next (we weren’t allowed to pause or repeat lessons). I think if we’d been allowed to pause the recordings it would have become too easy to have become snagged on a particular problem, and then lost the confidence to keep pushing forward, and I would say to anyone working through the lessons at the moment, to just not worry if you miss something, or can’t quite grasp something - don’t use the pause button - just keep ploughing on, and you’ll find that what you hadn’t understood is likely to magically make sense a lesson or two later!
So to sum up, it was tough, but it was definitely worthwhile. In just 5 days I’ve learnt a heck of a lot more that years slogging away at night-classes, which I’d been considering doing. I’ve still a long way to go, and fluency is still a distant dream, but there’s no doubt that I would certainly have the confidence now, to hold a basic conversation with a fellow Welsh speaker. In just 5 days, this course has provided a most unbelievable shortcut to this point, and it’s given me a really good foundation which I can now keep fine-tuning and building on. It’s been an experience I’ll never forget!
I hope you’ve found these comments useful. If there’s anything particular you wish to ask, than please do so, and I’ll do my best to answer.
If I think of anything else useful to say, or if I just fancy rambling on a bit more, then I’ll add to this thread, and of course, there’s still the vidoes to come… 
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How fabulous, achieving so much in a week is fantastic.
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I am an aged forgetter of Cymraeg! (Learned the formal written kind many years ago and forgot it for lack of use, did a few informal spoken-Welsh lessons in our village when I lived on Gower, but lost our teacher, moved to Scotland… suffered hiraeth, turned to Sky-born S4C and realised…help! Found SSiW. Found friends on Forum and kept getting distracted from learning).
Now I am trying to do 1 Challenge a day, but the last few (2.04,05,06) I have used pause and seemed to be getting totally stuck.
Question, which challenges did you find hardest and would you, like @aran, tell me to press on and on!!
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Hilary, thank you so much for this hugely detailed and enormously valuable piece of feedback and inspiration… 
Thank you also for your courage, your determination, your consistently cheerful friendliness, and ALL your hard word - you really have inspired me, and it was an absolute privilege to watch you take on a tougher language learning challenge than I have ever witnessed.
Diolch o galon - you’ve not only achieved a huge amount, you’ve also taught me a huge amount about what is possible…
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From memory i found 2.05 and 2.06 hard and then 2.15 onwards felt impossible at times. Thats when i did 6 in row on a flight. I can only marvel at those who managed more that every day for 5 days.
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Hi henddraig - love the name!
To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to say which challenges I found the hardest - it was just a matter of working through them, without making any conscious note of which was which. Having said that, in a general sense, I found the ones with the very long sentences, or trickier constructions, quite difficult to work through, you know the sort of thing, " Last night, I met someone in the pub, who told me, to tell you, that he works with your sister"… For those challenges I didn’t try to speak the sentences in Welsh - I just let the words wash over me again and again. I found that trying to speak words just got in the way of listening and absorbing. So, although I wasn’t practising the phrases, as such, I found that my brain was quietly getting on with the job of absorbing the blocks, for example, ‘Last night’, ‘I met someone in the pub’, ‘who told me’, ‘to tell you’ etc, so after hearing those types of blocks being said over and over again, when I needed to recall them to make up that type of sentence, the blocks were available, even though I hadn’t been repeating them vocally, or consciously practising them!
Regarding being stuck, I would say that if using the pause button isn’t proving beneficial to you, then just have faith that you should move on past that point, and accept that although it doesn’t currently make sense, or you can’t remember it, it will make more sense to you later on. That’s certainly what I found.
I would suggest you only use to pause button to make sure you’ve heard a word correctly, or just want to re-hear the way a sentence is constructed. You could also use it, now and again, to give yourself more time to vocalise your response, when you roughly know the answer, but just need time to physically say it (some of the gaps are a bit short). If you’re using the pause button to force yourself to keep trying to remember or practice a particular phrase then I would recommend moving on
Hope that’s helped. Apologies for the verbose response 
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Hello,
I was also on the course and here are my thoughts and general ramblings:
I came to the course knowing very little Welsh: I had managed to get through the first couple of sessions of the older SSIW material before, learned (and forgotten) a few nouns from a language challenge I did last year where you had to learn some numbers, colours, countries, basic phrases - really not very much from a different language each month) , what I have picked up from road signs in the 2 months I’ve been living in Wales, some incidental Welsh (bendigedig!, Ffantastig!, Da Iawn, Ty bach, Bore da, barod, etc…) that I’ve learned in the 3 weeks I’ve been working in an English medium primary school in Cardiff, and the ability to sing most of the national anthem at the rugby and the nursery rhyme Gee Cefl Bach.
Day 1, I found the first three sessions fine - I was keeping up with the Welsh and felt OK. Then at sessions 4 and 5 I began to seriously want to repeat the sessions because I didn’t feel like I had got to grips with anything. We weren’t allowed to do that, so I had little choice but to press on. To be honest, I found day one really hard - couldn’t talk to anyone, the house was VERY quiet and I didn’t feel like I was really learning very much. I did manage to string a few words together during the speaking session at the end of the day though, so that was a little encouraging.
Day 2: By lunch time I was thinking “This is ridiculous and stupid and I’m not learning ANYTHING!”. You really do need to be determined to get through one of these courses, because I’m not one to give up on a challenge, so I was going to finish it if it killed me. I also had a phone call to say that my son needed picking up from school so had to speak English to school and then my husband. This was supposed to be forbidden and Aran thought that if we spoke English it would harm our Welsh, but actually I found that having a 10 minute conversion actually made me feel better emotionally, which I think actually aided the process for the rest of the week
Day 3 Now this is interesting. By day 3 (doing the latter stages of course 1 by this point), I discovered that there were great swathes of material that I had NO IDEA about. Huge long sentences where I was lucky if I could get one or two words out. Things like: ‘I met someone in the pub who said that he worked with your brother’ where I said "pub…brother’. HOWEVER, also realised that some of the things I couldn’t get and wanted to repeat sessions to learn on Monday were now no problem. This gave me the confidence not to worry about what I wasn’t learning and press on anyway.
Day 4 By now I was an SSIW machine. I wasn’t sleeping well, so started at about 7am and packed in as many sessions as possible. I took a drive to get out of the house and did a session as I drove around (cabin fever was setting in). In the evening I discovered that I was able to understand most of what Aran was saying and even what Catrin said when she popped in briefly and could also communicate (if in a rather limited way) in Welsh.
Day 5: Finished course 2 by lunchtime. Yay!
I wouldn’t say that I was really able to speak that much Welsh, but I do feel that I have enough of a basis to start having conversations. I DEFINITELY need to go back and look at the he/she/we/they stuff because although I can talk about myself and to one other person reasonably comfortably, I find it incredibly hard to find the words if talking about someone else!
My general thoughts and tips on doing an intensive course:
- You really need to be comfortable with your own company because you will, essentially be on your own for 10/11 hours a day, and when you are with others you won’t really be able to communicate, so it IS very isolating
- Understand that there WILL be lots that you don’t get, but keep going.
- Recognise that even if you don’t get it now, you may well do so in a few days time.
- Occasionally, you will get a section in the middle of a lesson that is nice and easy - enjoy those bits!
- I took some crochet with me that I could do whilst learning or during down time. Personally, I found having a sort of displacement activity helped me to concentrate (because I can do the crochet without thinking - maybe something like an adult colouring book would work, or something else that doesn’t need thought. Might not work for everyone, but seemed to work for me.
I hope that is helpful to anyone thinking of doing two courses in a week (you mad fools, you)!
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@hilary @OlwenR Thanks so much to both of you for posting your experiences - they are really interesting to read! Da iawn to both of you - I’m not sure I’d be a good candidate for that kind of experience! Hearing your insights is very helpful. Be sure to come back on the forum and let us know how your Welsh journeys are progressing
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Firstly, yn gyntaf, do not apologise for verbosity! Everything was hugely helpful, I will carry on without repeat or pause button! I suspect your experiences help many of us. You did what we do, but in an accelerated way! Diolch to you and @OlwenR!
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Croeso! I’d love to know how you get on
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First of all Croeso ar y fforwm @hilary and @OlwenR (hopefully you remain and contribute to the whole forum in time).
Then on …
I admire you both! (and the third participant of this intensive journey who didn’t appear on here yet). You did such amount of work that I can’t even imagine I’d possibly be able to do in such a short time. Now that I know quite some Welsh (which is understandable due to how long I’m learning here already) I don’t fear I wouldn’t understand anything but rather wouldn’t I be too tired to cope with listening exercises. I’m notorious about sleeping when I’m tired and I have to listen to something (sometimes even when I’m doing mentally something like SSiW lessons for example) I tend to get into a half sleep stage and miss the whole parts … this wouldn’t be useful at all (I’m living proof of that).
I never used pause buttons but did other stupid things like measuring my progress … - haha! (I better forget about that) for which hapily on such intensive course you don’t have the time to do.
You are apologizing for verbosity @hilary ? Then you didn’t read my (way too long sometimes) posts on here yet … Your posts from both of you are really helpful and I think many of us here can determine if we’d be able to go through such intensive course or not much more easily than we could without such insights.
Good job to both of you. I hope you come back and tell us how your further Welsh jouirney goes. The path is set now all you need is to go for it.
Dal ati!
Hwyl!
Tatjana
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Hi @tatjana. Nice to ‘forum meet’ you
Simon says he will post his experiences when he gets chance
[quote=“tatjana, post:29, topic:6518, full:false”]You are apologizing for verbosity
[/quote]
It’s interesting because I’m not normally verbose I think the experience of learning another language has helped me to access some of my Englsih which I don’t use very often!
Try and stop me
Hwyl!
Hilary
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So last night was interesting. For one, I actually slept well for the first time in a week 
The other thing was that I didn’t do any conscious learning of Welsh yesterday, but it didn’t seem to matter as I dreamt that I was learning and speaking in Welsh! At one point, there was such a strong ‘POW’ moment, as my brain remembered/worked out a word it needed, that it woke me up and then the actual contents of the dream eluded me 
This definitely felt like my first actual dream in Welsh , as opposed to last week when I was more awake and my brain was just processing the information it had been exposed to.
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I slept well last night too, @hilary. I am hoping to say a few words to my welsh speaking friends at church this morning (if I don’t wimp out!).
@tatjana I will admit to zoning out a few (several) times during the week and not even hearing entire sentences, but that tended to be when I wasn’t crocheting at the same time - maybe doing something with your hands at the same time, or perhaps going for a walk, would help?
Do also bear in mind that although we have done a week and got through the material, I wouldn’t necessarily expect us to be better Welsh speakers than people who are doing it more slowly. We are, by no means, experts! Still a long way and lots of practise to go!
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