Hi
Just as an aside…I am writing the English down as I cannot remember the phrase exactly that required translating !
Dunce that I am…
Bobbert
I’m sure you ARE normally gifted - the ones who can breeze through a challenge once and get it all right are the abnormal ones! Snails may be slow but their impact is mighty…
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You are not the only one who can’t remember what they are meant to be translating. I tend to translate the longer sentences with a few words followed by “dw i wedi anghofio”. I am determined not to use the pause button.
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Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ…after repeating Challenge 13 for the fifth time, I’m starting to be able to keep up and remember how to form the different tenses, the expressions and words! Mamma mia 
Oh dear, different tenses! I sometimes manage the past, but the future still eludes me every time. I moved on from 13 to 14 to 15 and then collapsed in a heap. Maybe it is time to go back to 13 and have another go.
I’m not sure if Aran would approve of you going back to 13 because you’ve managed to reach Challenge 15, after all! Maybe it would be better for you to just study the future again and then move on to Challenge 16. You know, I really do have a special needs brain, but you seem to be doing just great!
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Regarding challenge 13, take heart that the challenges tend to go in cycles of six or so. I don’t know if it is intentional or not. So, I have found that challenges around about 6 and 12/13 tend to be the hardest and then there is a backing-off to consolidate stuff while advancing at a less hectic pace.
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That is quite encouraging, thanks to both of you. Maybe I shall have a go at 16 and see if I can get a few words out between my best goldfish imitations.
Bobbert, did you find that it helped to say the words loudly? I think that perhaps it does.
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Cheers everyone…All these comments are much appreciated and taken in to digest…
Betterlatethan…yes I do feel better for saying out loud words, it was good to have the space and freedom to say things aloud, even though there’s no one else about at home, it seemed better outside for some reason?
I find myself just blurting out phrases and making up sentences from these, even though I am only on lesson 1…
Regards
Bobbbert
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Well, I went through 16 (South). I said a few words in each blank, though not necessarily anything approximating the right ones. I don’t get even half way through the longer sentences, partly because my tongue is slow getting round the words and partly because I have forgotten what I was supposed to say. Then I listen to the answer but I can’t quite remember what I said. Not surprising. Often I can’t remember words in English, and that’s my first language. It comes of getting old. It’s all good fun though. Maybe I’ll go straight on and try 17. I am a bit nervous about 18 if JohnYoung is right about cycles of 6.
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Strangely, I don’t recall 18 being so bad, you might just sail through 
I did try 17 and then 18. You are right, 18 is no worse. My proportion of responses consisting of “um, er, …?” has gone up, but I get a few words in more often than not. Longer sentences are hopeless. Having started the experiment, I plan to continue with no repetition and no pauses, either until I reach 25, or until “um, er…?” becomes my most common response. Then I shall go back to 13 and see what happens.
I am still waiting for a sentence along the lines of “I met an old woman in the village shop yesterday, who told me that Mary Jones from Church Road has died and the funeral is on Tuesday.” Then we could have a few references to hospital appointments, cataract operations and broken hips. That’s what we really talk about round here. Not in Welsh, unfortunately.
Bobbert, would you consider a similar approach, or would it not work for you? Blurting out phases and making up sentences - that’s excellent.
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Hi Betterlatethan…
Thanks for the message…I’ll be happy with any method that gets me beyond level 1 at the moment…
Bobbert
Hmm…maybe it’s really me being too perfectionist. Maybe putting the blame on my brain is nothing but an excuse for not being able to let go of control, dive in, have fun and trust the method. I must work on this, lock away my vocab printouts (crutches), relax and soldier on…and not losing heart and confidence when I feel lost, stupid and not able to come up with any answers. I’ll try to follow your example 
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I used to be a perfectionist when I was younger. Now I am old and I don’t worry so much. I have no need to learn Welsh. I am just doing it for fun, so I might as well relax and have fun.
If you don’t know the answer, that’s not stupid, just a temporary lapse of memory. I hope you have fun and enjoy yourself.
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You’re dramatically under-estimating your own brain here (and it’s very sad to see you being so harsh on yourself).
The fact that you’ve got to Challenge 13 shows that your brain IS in fact acquiring vocab in this way - the only problem is NOT your brain, it’s your expectations of what is ‘normal’.
You’re repeating the challenges on multiple occasions because you don’t trust yourself - and despite however many million times I’ve said on this forum that mistakes are gold dust, that mistakes are the lifeblood of learning, you’re still telling yourself that your mistakes are a sign that your brain is bad.
Please stop undermining yourself like this!
Your brain is a miracle of creation - it has approximately 100 billion neurons, and each of them can form thousands of connections to other neurons - synapses - so no-one really knows how many synapses are in the brain, but it’s got to be well north of about 100 trillion. It’s the single most complex thing we know of - and everything, everything I’ve seen in language acquisition tells me that ordinary assessments of ‘intelligence’ have got VERY little to do with capacity for learning a new language.
It doesn’t really matter if you repeat each lesson four or five times - but you might find that running through to the end of Level 1 before coming back to do the repetitions would show you some surprisingly encouraging things about how your brain functions…
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Is it normal that even at the beginning of Challenge 14 I’m by far too slow and unable to form even half of a sentence? Sometimes, I need to concentrate hard to even fully understand the sentences in Welsh. After the English phrase, the time is almost over when I can eventually remember the first two words. See, I cannot make any mistakes because I cannot come up with even a fragment of a sentence in Welsh (Challenge 14). I wish I could blurt out sentences with lots of mistakes, like other learners have explained their experiences. But I cannot blurt out anything. It’s as if my brain needs time to even start searching for words…and it completely drains my energy to overcome this “freeze” every single time. All I can do during Challenge 14 is listening to the teachers, unless I repeat and repeat the lessons like a madman, until I know the sentences almost by heart.
Instead of working normally, my brain lets me mirror write with both hands effortlessly (I’m an ambidexter)…but these “talents” are utterly useless 
Helo Claudia! Just writing quickly before I finally go to sleep (I travelled back to Finland today) to try to give some tips. So…
One thing that helped me a lot when I was running out of time badly was talking over Catrin (or Cat in the southern lessons). Also mumbling something for words I didn’t remember in order to not get stuck on them
Oh, and just remembered something else - I think Aran once wrote something somewhere about starting to speak/mumble/make some sound as soon as the English ends. So you might want to start with “Uuhh… Dwi’n…” instead of just waiting silently for the “Dwi’n” to appear in your mind 
This might be bad advice, but do you think it might help you to try to stop concentrating? I noticed while doing intense days that everything started feeling a lot easier as soon as I got too bored/tired to concentrate properly and instead just said whatever came to mind first.
Hope this helps! Good night! (also that mirror writing thing sounds cool!)
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Ciao Novem!
Thank you so much for your advice! I’m going to try making sounds as soon as the English ends right now. I can imagine that it helps to relax and to sort of stimulate the brain to remember. Like the purrrrrrrring of a cat. 
To stop concentrating…that’s an interesting thought. Yes, I do concentrate very hard; and you’re probably right, too much concentration seems to close the door to the place where the words are memorised.
I’m still totally amazed by your ability to do intense days…18 Challenges in a row…you must have a phenomenal working memory! A neuropsychologist (she needed the cleaning lady for an experiment) found out about the mirror-writing thing. She gave me a pencil and told me to do it. I’ve never done this before and felt totally flabbergasted when it actually worked, with both hands. When I do it for a long time, I suddenly cannot remember how to write or read normally anymore for a while (even thinking of mirror-writing has this effect)…it’s a strange state.
Mille grazie e sogni d’oro 
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