I am Welsh but left Wales to go to University (I won’t say how long ago) and then settled in England with no realistic chance of moving back. It has always bugged me that I can’t speak Welsh but I have always known that someday I would learn. Like everyone else in Wales at the time, I had compulsory Welsh lessons at school until age 14, but I still had no confidence to actually say something in Welsh. (I was good as copying it from the board though).

I always thought I didn’t have the time to learn Welsh until someone told me about SSiW. That was on St David’s Day this year. Now I am hapus iawn with my progress and have said more Welsh in the last 3 months than in the rest of my entire life. I am firing up my inner Welsh-ness with every lesson; thanks to Iestyn I think I’m developing a fantastic Valleys accent too (my grandmother would have been so proud).

I had always considered myself as one of those people who isn’t very good at learning languages and had always envied those who did. For this reason I put off learning Welsh as I assumed it would take ages and masses of effort. How wrong I was! Learning with SSiW has been easy and fun – no writing and any mistakes are forgotten as soon as the next phrase comes out of my headphones!

I’ve watched my children learning to speak English and this is exactly how they learn, they copy someone else as best they can and don’t get put off if it doesn’t come out quite right. They don’t expect to get it all right the first time, so neither do I now; having given myself permission to get it wrong has surprisingly made it so much easier to get it right!

Thanks to SSiW for this amazing course,

Sarah Hedley, Surrey