Back from Welsh weekend

Had another great weekend at Abergavenny learning Welsh – I nearly said speaking Welsh – and that is certainly one of the big motivators for me. I haven’t yet found a local(ish) person or group. Obviously working on learning a language without opportunity to speak it (except to the dog) is a bit problematic, and although my background as a Welsh second language speaker helps enormously, it was great to be able to focus on this for a weekend.

I opted for a higher level class which had a tutor I have had before who puts a fair emphasis on grammar. This is undoubtedly a good thing for me: I know I have big holes in my grammar – and I find working on these hard on my own, and much less tempting than reading, listening to the radio, watching Welsh TV or even occasionally writing in Welsh. Karen got us to do a test (from some examination paper, or course, I think) at the beginning of the weekend; took it in; worked on the things that most people in the class were getting wrong – and re-tested us at the end. Classic pre-post test stuff. I had to leave early to catch the train and so took the marked test and promised (1) to redo the test on the train and (2) not to look at the marked version until I had. I kept both promises and found the result really interesting. I had indeed improved on some things that we had been taught – but had introduced new mistakes! I cheered myself up my reminding myself that this is exactly what happens in skill development in children – and indeed in language development; new things are often over-generalised leading to a dip – which is of course followed by an increase in performance. Looking forward to seeing that – and promising myself I will do some grammar exercises before the next course as well as looking out for and noticing grammatical structure in my reading

Talking Welsh in Wales

I'm really looking forward to getting the opportunity to talk Welsh over the weekend. The course, like the others I have been on is in Abergavenny, which of course is right on the edge of Wales and has spent part of its life in England. Apparently, around according nto the 2001 census just 10% of those living in the Abergavenny area are able to speak Welsh. This seems pretty low to me who comes from Caernarfon in North Wales where the percentage of Welsh speakers is is quoted as 90 or 80% (depending on the source) but is a substantial increase since the last Census back in 1991, when only 2% of local people spoke Welsh. However, even though there might not be a lot of Welsh spoken outside the course, there will be plenty of opportunity over the weekend - and I have to say I am getting quite excited about it now. It will also be good to have some of the responsibility for my learning handed over to a teacher, as it were.

Weekend course ahead and the gift of on-demand TV

Bit of a gap since the last posting! I am not managing to make the number of entries here that I had expected to. I guess the practice of blogging has not become sufficiently embedded into my life - and of course I have kept the subject matter of my blog fairly narrowly confined to my Welsh learning - and sometimes wonder just how much there is to say - though my husband would say I can go on about it quite a bit. The main focus for me right now is that I have another weekend course coming up. The timing of this feels very good in that work is very busy and I have a difficult day ahead in my personal life so I think I am going to be really ready for this course by Friday. I have now suggested that I go into the level 5 class - one up from where I was last time. It would be good to think I was doing this with more grammar sorted and under my belt, but hey, I must be picking some up along the way and I will have a good go on the train. I do think my vocabulary is increasing though. One of the resources that has really helped is the Welsh channel (S4C) making many of its programmes available on the web - the equivalent of BBCi. So I am trying to replace some of the TV watching that I would do anyway with watching Welsh TV. I tend to move between pretty low demand soaps (there is one from near where I come from so the accent and dialect is right- but the vocabulary is not very stretching, nor the storylines.....) and news type programmes. It is really helpful being able to pause etc. I have watched a programme on bullying in the workplace 2-3 times now, and have written down a lot of the vocabulary.

There is also a new nature series by Iolo Williams - see
http://www.s4c.co.uk/c_watch_level2.shtml?title=Natur%20Cymru
I already have Iolo's book - mentioned in a previous post - and so am looking forward to watching this. So what I am finding is that I am using different resources at different times as and when they become available. I have moved from being a regular Welsh news listener to watching more Welsh TV. I have run out of books for the moment and will restock at the weekend. I am also trying to produce more Welsh, but of course don't have anyone to check it. Here is a recent poem. If you can read Welsh - feedback welcome, (there may be all kinds of mistakes) but be kind!(and I don't know how to do the accent we put on mor - must find out - till then it looks more French!)

Ger y mór, y mae y tywod
Yn disgleirio ar ol y cawod
Ar haul yn gweny ar u traeth -
ac ar fy hiraeth