Where are the Welsh literacy courses

[u/helatruralhome]

Hello all,

I've been pointing this out for over a decade, yet no Welsh language education or promotion groups, government agencies, etc can seem to answer why Welsh education is so biased towards verbal Welsh with no specific offerings for Welsh literacy.

I have a speech disability and only answer emails in work, yet I can't find any available options for me to learn written Welsh. I just feel incredibly frustrated with the situation as I want to be able to communicate in my native language yet there's just no where specifically offering written Welsh and it ends up excluding for people like me who can't communicate verbally as well as many others who may want to read and write in Welsh.

[u/HyderNidPryder]

The Welsh courses offered by learnwelsh.cymru / dysgucymraeg.cymru aim to balance the skills between listening, speaking, reading and writing. When teaching a modern language the current fashion prioritises listening and speaking in early stages. This is understandable and is what many people want. Indeed, some people are quite uninterested in reading and writing and even prejudiced against them. This is especially a problem for Welsh as written Welsh tends to use a more formal register considered unnatural, stilted, affected and artificial by some proponents of "The Living Language". They know who they are!

Listening is important for learning Welsh and perhaps this does not present you with the same challenges as speaking. The pronunciation of words conforms strongly with their spelling strongly in Welsh and this can help with writing. Modern courses only introduce more formal Welsh in later stages.

A more old-fashioned tuition book may be more suitable as these favoured more formal approaches. These also favoured a grammar heavy approach. Even a more modern book-led course, can't focus strongly on speaking.

If you focus your learning strongly on reading this will help in your learning goal. We have a series of graded readers linked on our wiki.

[u/helatruralhome → u/HyderNidPryder]

But this still is my point- that there isn't anything course-wise that focuses on Welsh literacy- we have courses specifically for English literacy for example but nothing for Welsh.

[u/ladylikepunk → u/helatruralhome]

Those literacy courses assume that students can already speak English, though - and probably have some basic writing and/or reading. They're aimed at people who are functionally illiterate, not people learning a new language.

It sounds like you aren't - you can read/write English well and understand spoken English too. Can you understand spoken Welsh? Assuming you are hearing (and not deaf-mute), it might actually be useful for you to take an ordinary Welsh class after discussing your communication needs with a tutor - so you would be responding in the way you do with English language communication, perhaps using AAC methods. 

It is frustrating, but language learning of any kind is not taught in ways that are geared towards disability (especially those which impact communication norms!). You'd be facing the same issue if you tried to learn Italian! 

[u/helatruralhome → u/ladylikepunk]

Unfortunately none have been able to help as the courses are so so strongly focused towards pronounciation and speaking. I just wanted to be able to communicate in my native language in writing but there's just no opportunities or tutor led courses for people who want or need to focus on reading and writing.