I find it fun to listen to everyone who has posted. It’s great. It took me a few tries to get my entry done. Once I lost track of where I was on the list. A couple of times I went completely blank, and finally I got something decent out. It was strange hearing myself talk.I could definitively hear when I lost focus and started pronouncing words with a more American (Southern) accent towards the end of a sentence.
I felt I was ready after listening to several Welsh shows and a couple of techie podcasts in Welsh while prepping part of my kitchen for painting. I also will be painting a hallway and guest bedroom in the near future. It will be a great way to do some listening practice and to listen to others here.
It keeps me listening longer when I’m busy with my hands. We’ve bought an older house that has not been updated since 1989. With my sisters, we’ve painted the upstairs and hallways. They brought the Champaign (8 bottles) and I supplied the paint, brushes, and rollers. This year I’m painting the downstairs. My husband put in a new stove and oven in the kitchen and we added a workshop behind the garage. The next project is rebuilding the deck on the back of the house.
I’m trying to get an hour in of listening a day, with another hour in on lessons/speaking during the drive back and forth to work.
Right now’s a good time for me, later on in the summer I’ll be too busy to keep up such a schedule and will have to back off somewhat. But I’ll at least have Cymraeg on in the background to listen to.
Dw i ddim yn teimlo (rŵan, eto) ar un peth y gybl efo chdi am “badges” requirement. I am on the 6mws course and was fine with it back in Weeks 1-3 before the requirements started appearing in bits in the weekly emails.
Dw i gwybod bod RHAID i mi/fi gwneud what seems like “jumping through hoops for a badge or a series of badges I have no wish to display”. It reminds me (still) intensely of newly independent /ex direct-grant [or newly academised secondary] school abuses of status badges, prizes, honorary scholarships, and testing/certification for no good reason. It is associated with requirements to “toe the party line”, as experienced as a teacher, too.
Also of my repeated failings to record sign language tests to camera when “CACDP” moved from “stage 1, 2, etc” video-taped but with live examiners, to “Signature” with “Levels 1, 2 etc” & more and more use of exams to camera alone.
The “daily practice of sentences requirement” has now also silenced what was happening quite naturally to me, ie the same babbling that young kids do as they learn the language, or what as a teenager/young adult before interviews etc just before sleep, or some other quiet moment, the simply silent mental or indeed out loud rehearsal of “what I need/want to say” in a specific context. I think I am on strike, really.
I have still as yet no hang-ups about speaking/signing with/to people in the wild, I have struggled a bit with Hangouts and being on YouTube, associated with techno and (as with this public forum) privacy issues, but I am utterly hung-up on this badge requirement now.
I am trying to find some way to regain my former enjoyment. I was hoping to confront this at bwtcamp but the weather turned scorching, so I did not go, and I doubt there would have been time anyway before the end of teabreak first day.
Forgive me if I misunderstand your concern about ‘badges’, but since your comments showed up as a response to my celebration about making progress through speaking practices by moving through the different coloured tags, I would say ‘different strokes for different folks’. Something that gives one person a boost may not appeal to someone else—fair enough, that’s OK. More importantly, it sounds like you truly ‘know yourself’ and what makes you tick, or not. Great, that puts you the perfect position to tackle your learning in whatever ways give you most joy and satisfaction.
One of the blessings of SSiW is the variety of approaches to learning it offers, and reading various posts on the Forum is proof of the many ways folk have made use of the flexibility and, if necessary, adapted the programme to their own learning goals and styles. Having not grown up with computers, leave alone the web, social media and ability to record and upload my efforts for others to respond to, simply leaarning to navigate the various aps and enlist a young friend to show me how was a bonus that I celebrated as a spinoff benefit to this process of learning to speak Welsh.
You have the option of bootcamp—lucky you! Like many others, I live thousands of miles away so that poses logistical as well as financial obstacles for some of us. No matter, we adapt and take advantage of what we can.
I can appreciate and sympathize with your comments—in different situations I might find myself saying something similar, but SSiW is serving a whole cross-section of people, so don’t let what others may find helpful be a barrier for you.
Many years ago, I was on a rock-climbing course and ‘froze’ near the top of what was for me a difficult pitch because someone on an adjacent climb fell and was dangling on the end of a rope until they could regain their footing. With directions and encouragement form above, my partner talked me through my fear, but when I reached the top he said ‘Never compare yourself with someone else when you are climbing because the distraction could be very costly—not least because it takes away the pleasure. It’s just you and the rock, let that be enough’. I share that only because I hope you can say ‘It’s just me and the Welsh’ and not worry about how others tackle it, or what may encourage them or make them happy—it’s your happiness that counts, so find a strategy that works for you (if you have not already).
It may be hot your end, but it is cold and wet here
Your lovely (and immediate) response deserves a good, immediate response. I have tried to do your comments justice, but so far I’m still working it all out: I mean, how I get over my metaphorical/emotional hump! Rock-climbing is a great analogy, and I felt (until I had brought myself to sound like spoilt brat teenager I needed to be) that unhitching myself from a rope/process I did not trust was the only way to go. There has been a lot more tugging on the line and I have found a few more footholds/handholds, and perhaps I have permission to use them. I never wanted to cheat, but as climbers go perhaps I am of the sort who easily gets disengaged from the group. If more of me are to arrive in the dizzying wealth of beauty and challenge that is theSSi language learning experience on 6mws course and the like (SSiW Forum + meet-ups in all directions + bwtcamps and top end intensives + Slack workspace) + a whole New World that is being generated, has long been in the making thanks to @aran@Iestyn @Deborah-SSi and many more volunteers, then this was me signalling distress loudly and perhaps selfishly ‘cause the ropes were tangled around me.
You’ll be perhaps glad but unsurprised that my temporary distress, my mewlings, have been heard, and generously responded to. Thanks @MarilynHames for being a very skilled responder… I hope I end up feeling about weekly tasks including the Forum badges - learning process and status communication system that they are - as positively as you do.
I’m not sure if I’m in the best place to post this, but I’m really struggling to do the daily speaking exercise (leading up to recording the 5 minutes) - I feel as though I don’t have enough words to say more than a few things so it feels quite repetitive between sentences and very artificial. Also, I’m not able to say what I’m thinking as I don’t have the vocab, but struggle to think of the vocab I do have.
I’ve just got to week 7 and there are now different beginnings to use for the sentences, but off the top of my head I still feel like I don’t have many different things I can put at the end of them. It’s probably relevant to note that I have dyslexia and a severe working memory defecit.
I’m no expert as I learnt before the new courses. But Id say don’t stress over it as long as you are saying something. Perhaps when you remember an alternative word a bit later, just try swapping to that word, not necessarily in a recording, just out loud. As with most things its just practice.
That will be making the process tougher, so in many ways you’re doing even better than you might have realised - don’t worry with the sense that it’s repetitive - that’s a combination of not having many words, and not having done much practice building them into different structures - but it’s why this work is so important, so keep hammering away at it and over time you’ll be building a stronger and stronger base…
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