Stick to a course or jump ship?

[Ionatan]

I am looking for a bit of advice from other people who have preceded me on the path to learning Gaelic.

I have started with Can Seo and it is great in many ways and I have made what I consider to be fairly rapid progress. By lesson 13 of Can Seo I am covering concepts that courses such as Speaking Our Language don't cover until Series 2 (the future tense, the genitive etc). But here in lies my problem. I'm struggling now with Can Seo.

I have already whipped through the whole of Series one just to give myself a quick overview of SOL. Also, I am running Can Seo in conjunction with sets of Anki cards for Beginner's Course and Little By Little (I'm a glutton for punishment!). I find these courses very easy and don't get stressed like I am now getting with Can Seo.

So, in people's experience, is it better for me to bite the bullet and battle on with Can Seo or shelve it (possibly temporarily) and switch to Learning Our Language (keeping the Anki cards going in the other two courses)?

[GunChleoc]

I have not done any of those two courses, but in general, it's OK to mix and match whatever works best for you personally. A certain amount of effort is to be expected, but not to the point where it will burn you out.

[AlexAkimov]

Is there any particular thing you're struggling with, or is Can Seo simply going too fast?

[AlexAkimov]

As an aside my learning path has been:

- An Cùrsa Inntrigidh at Sabhal Mòr (18 months)
- Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks (took me a couple of months)
- Pestering Gaelic Guru's on Twitter

I haven't mixed things too much. Now I'm working through the An Litir Beag section on LearnGaelic.

[Ionatan]

Is there any particular thing you're struggling with, or is Can Seo simply going too fast?

I think that is it. The other courses seem to give you more vocabulary and simple sentences that work the knowledge you have acquired. Can Seo seems to lean more towards grammer. I was going great guns until about lesson 10 and then things started unravelling. I've decided to swap to Speaking Our Language, which has a slower pace on presenting new material (covering in 36 lessons a little less than what Can Seo covers in 20 as far as I can see). If I was a natural linguist, Can Seo might have been just the job! I can always use it as revision after completing Seasons 1 & 2 in SOL (language grades A1 and A2 respectively according to LearnGaelic).

A certain amount of effort is to be expected, but not to the point where it will burn you out.

I don't mind the effort - I'm doing about an hour + each day, mostly 7 days a week (a lot of that now on Anki cards, which I wish I'd started using from the word 'go'), but I also have competing demands of friends family and work. So, the excess effort is manefesting as frustration with Can Seo as opposed to time input.

As an aside my learning path has been:

- An Cùrsa Inntrigidh at Sabhal Mòr (18 months)
- Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks (took me a couple of months)
- Pestering Gaelic Guru's on Twitter

I thought about doing An Cùrsa Inntrigidh, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could stick at it, rather than shell out a load of money only to give up. The Guru's I pester are all right here in this forum (and so far are proving very helpful and patient with me).

[AlexAkimov]

The good thing about ACI is that you have a structure as well as obligations, deadlines and exams. I didn't find it difficult, but it did take up a lot of my time i.e. 8-10 hours a week.

[GunChleoc]

There's also https://gaeliccollege.edu/learn/online- ... -learning/ which is supposed to be slower in pace than An Cùrsa Inntrigidh

[Ionatan]

The good thing about ACI is that you have a structure as well as obligations, deadlines and exams. I didn't find it difficult, but it did take up a lot of my time i.e. 8-10 hours a week.

Yes - structure and deadlines appeal as well as the Skype/telephone tutorials. I'm doing over 8 hours a week already so that's not a problem.

There's also https://gaeliccollege.edu/learn/online- ... -learning/ which is supposed to be slower in pace than An Cùrsa Inntrigidh

Looks professional. My only worry here would be the time difference. I'd have to work out whether I could log into one of their virtual classrooms when it is evening for me (they might time most of them when it is evening over there - which could be when I'm at work or asleep ).

I might just plough on with the various material on LearnGaelic until the next ACI in-take at SMO and treat it as a head start on the other students

[AlexAkimov]

What you've shown on here means you'll be well ahead of most starting ACI. However, it will bring it all together and give you solid explanations. It will also give you questions like "Why didn't they use inversion?"...but you just need to accept that's (and other things) not part of the course so you'll see a lot of a bhith where in time you'll probably invert.

[Níall Beag]

Pacing has always been an issue in self-study materials. Traditionally, that's down to the cost of paper -- cramming everything into one book means that language isn't recycled and practised enough.

Can Seo is probably worse than most, because as I understand it, it wasn't really self-study: as with Speaking Our Language later, the idea was to take evening classes in parallel with the broadcast, so you're missing a major chunk of the course if you do it at home.

Sadly, as can be readily seen from almost all the online materials, the form of self-study materials has become pretty fixed: despite the potential of computers to overcome the old space limitations of books, we still generally get the same limited opportunities for practice online as in books. The exception (coming soon) would be Duolingo, which goes too far the other way -- lots of practice, but little instruction and input.

That's a long way of reassuring you that what you're experiencing is pretty normal. Frustration is not going to help you -- learning shouldn't have to be painful. If you feel you're learning stuff from Speaking Our Language, run with it. Better that than beating your head against a wall.

[Ionatan]

Pacing has always been an issue in self-study materials. Traditionally, that's down to the cost of paper -- cramming everything into one book means that language isn't recycled and practised enough...
....
That's a long way of reassuring you that what you're experiencing is pretty normal. ....

You are right. Can Seo is very fast paced. Even with a couple of evening classes a week you it would be a struggle I think because you are diving into stuff that, as far as I can make out, would class as A2/B1 material only a few weeks in. I have the book and I'd say it would be impossible to do it justice without it, but even so, it is too quick and not enough practice as you say.

I have settled into a rhythm now of doing 1 lesson a week from the LearnGaelic Beginner's Course and then make my own Anki cards to ensure spaced repetition. I also do 1 lesson from Beag air Bheag a week and use Anki with that too (I do the Anki cards every day). And on top of this I watch Speaking Our Language, regularly repeating shows, daily as I get ready for work in the morning. I put all the little garmmer hints in the Anki cards to try to keep on top of that as well. I've now dropped Can Seo.

I'm going to have a look at DuoLingo when it comes out. My theory is that by using a few different on-line materials I should cover the ground with plenty of repetition, but from slightly different angles and with different voices and have sufficient grammer instruction.

I am begining to believe that these people who claim to be fluent in 3 month in some language, don't have jobs, friends or family or just perhaps are ever so slightly over stating their abilities (though surely nobody boasts on the Internet)! I aim to get to the A1/A2 cross-over point by Christmas and the A2 into B1 transition by Easter. I don't think that's an unreasonable target given the learning I've done to date. I'm not currently looking any further ahead than that.

[AlexAkimov]

Do you actually have Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks? Silly title aside, it's a great book - covers everything. The inversion bit is a slightly ropy (Cothrom Ionnsachaidh by Ronald Black has a much better overview of verbal noun forms and inversion) , but that apart it's a cracking read. Extremely grammar dense and plenty of conversations and examples.

[GunChleoc]

Would you guys like to contribute some book/course reviews to our homepage?

https://www.foramnagaidhlig.net/index.php?page=9

I did a few for the books that I owned when I first started out, but I have long since lost the beginner's perspective, so I can't add any myself.

[Ionatan]

Would you guys like to contribute some book/course reviews to our homepage?

I don't mind doing a couple of reviews and can guarantee they will be from a beginner's perspective! I can comment on:

• Can Seo

• Speaking Our Language, Series 1

• LearnGaelic Beginner's Course

• Beag Air Bheag

• The LearnGaelic website in general (more of a portal than a course admittedly)

How do I go about submitting a review? Do I PM the text to you direct?

Do you actually have Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks? Silly title aside, it's a great book - covers everything. The inversion bit is a slightly ropy (Cothrom Ionnsachaidh by Ronald Black has a much better overview of verbal noun forms and inversion) , but that apart it's a cracking read. Extremely grammar dense and plenty of conversations and examples.

I don't have this book. I think I need to get something as a one-stop reference to accompany the online stuff - they do explain grammer but it is not as easy to refind an explaination as in an indexed book. I've been putting of buying books and course because I have a tendency to be a bit of a butterfly (look at my course list above) and I don't want to splash loads of money about too widely.

[Níall Beag]

Do you actually have Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks? Silly title aside, it's a great book - covers everything. The inversion bit is a slightly ropy (Cothrom Ionnsachaidh by Ronald Black has a much better overview of verbal noun forms and inversion) , but that apart it's a cracking read. Extremely grammar dense and plenty of conversations and examples.

I don't have this book. I think I need to get something as a one-stop reference to accompany the online stuff - they do explain grammer but it is not as easy to refind an explaination as in an indexed book. I've been putting of buying books and course because I have a tendency to be a bit of a butterfly (look at my course list above) and I don't want to splash loads of money about too widely.

12 weeks is actually pretty good as a reference as everything is organised by grammatical points.