Welsh course 25/26 starts

I'm in Welsh class again. Online, as it has been since lockdown started. And this time, the course is provided by the north east Wales provider. All the major regions have their own. When courses are run locally, this is obviously crucial, but with online courses it matters that the vocabulary differs quite a lot between the regions. The biggest difference is the north vs south Wales divide. So having a slightly eastern provider doesn't matter much. And I saw a few familiar faces!

Last year I really really liked the class. It really dived deep into grammar. All sorts of things I had been unsure of now became clear. I loved it! But if you register for a course you have to do that on the basis of very little information. You don't know who the tutor is, you don't know what their focus will be. It's a bit of a guess every time.

In this first session, the main feature was a quiz in three parts. We were all teamed up with one partner and were encouraged to discuss the questions. Clearly a way to have us get to know each other, and talk about quite a wide variety of topics. I was teamed up with a bloke I had already been in an online class with before, so the getting to know people aspect didn't quite work.

The first part of the quiz of questions about Wales. And I have lived here for a long time, but I didn't know many of the answers. Things such as: how many cities are there in Wales? Where is the national film archive? What is the name of the headquarters of Welsh language TV channel S4C? I learned a lot.

The second part was general knowledge questions, but some were pretty difficult. What is the nickname of all the first nations for the North American continent? No idea! 

The third one was Welsh place names in emojis. I did quite well with that, if I can say so myself. The only ones I didn't get were of places I didn't know existed, like Caersws. 

We then talked a bit more about some of the topics. Huw, the tutor, took us to the website of the National film archive, and warmly recommended it. He also said that place names would be the theme of the next session, so if we could think of something on that topic, we were encouraged to let him know.

Then we got to the end. It had been pleasant! Not anywhere as spectacular as last year, but I am aware that that must have been a bit of an anomaly, I still have the course material, so I can go back to it! And maybe I am going to be sneaky and in spring, contact last year's tutor to see if she does anything up my street next year… 

From the National Film Archive website