The Importance of Reading There was a question raised on one of the two excellent on-line Welsh language teaching apps this week. “How often do people go back and re-do the previous lessons?” It was a fair question and possibly one that has occurred to many Welsh learners in their journey to mastering our beautiful language. I'm sure that sometimes it seems that no matter how many times you go back on the lessons you still don't feel that you are progressing. A child learns his or her native language by hearing it and imitating it and the more that is learnt the quicker progress is made. A parent doesn't do recaps, the child is moving forwards all the time. Ok, so the situation is slightly different but perhaps the idea of moving forwards is an important one. So am I saying that you should wade in to conversations with strangers in the early stages? – scary or what! No, there are many ways to do it and one of them is to read a book. No, I'm not talking about a 250 page detective novel, that would be an excellent way of shattering your dreams and crushing your confidence. Books are written for people of all ages and you would be reading them not for the excitement of the story but for the practice in the level of vocabulary that you have learnt. You wont be familiar with all the words you come across but don't let that worry you, what is important is to see the words you are familiar with in a context, seeing those words in use and their connections with other words in the sentence. What you have to remember is that whatever stage you have reached, reading will enable your brain to sort out the meanings of words you are unfamiliar with. This is what a child does and does it without constant reference to a dictionary. It works, I know it works because that is how I relearned my Welsh after having carelessly lost it. My family moved from totally Welsh Anglesey to totally English south Pembrokeshire when I was 10 years old. I was 35 and living in Worcestershire, no night school, certainly no web-based classes so I started reading books for teenagers. Initially I had a dictionary by my side and I was constantly flipping the pages. I quickly got fed up of that so I just went ahead and read on. And do you know what? I was getting the gist. I read another book straight after and really felt that I was making progress. Then I went back and read the first one again. Now this time I really got into it. The thing is, a book has three stages – the introduction to the characters, the basis of the plot and the conclusion. By the time I had finished the book on the first occasion I had a good idea of who was who, the characters, and I had a semi understanding of the plot. All this meant that the brain had more to work on, the more information you have the more precise the brain can work out meanings to the words that are new to you. It is very difficult for you to assess the extent of your vocabulary and the tendency is to vastly. underestimate it. Don't be cruel to yourself! Don't wait for someone to give you permission to read a book – you're free to do it whenever you like So find a good book and don't feel belittled that you are reading books for children. This will help you considerably with your course and you will be moving forward and as long as you're moving forward you deserve feeling pleased with yourselves. In a few months’ time I'll cover some other ways to build your vocabulary and confidence. Thank you very much for your enthusiasm and Pob Lwc!