Teaching Welsh in Gwent

I've been wanting to teach Welsh for Adults for some years, but have always been put off by the fear that my knowledge of grammar (Welsh or English) is virtually nil. In recent years, Coleg Gwent, who are the main providers of of 'Welsh for Adults' in the south east have been very short of tutors, so I've been attending training sessions to become a tutor, with the hope of being given a class in September, ideally in the county of Caerphilly.

As normal classes have now finished for the summer, there's no opportunity for me to sit in a class observing, but fortunately there was a summer school at The Hill. I had the chance to sit in two classes, one for complete beginners and one for students who'd already completed one ear of study

There were classes for 7 different levels, and the Summer Schools and Saturday schools run by Coleg Gwent are extremely popular, so much so that some people are regularly turned away. this year the summer school was full up with 164 people attending - I later found out that a further 140 had been turned away, which is a big shame. Next year they hope to offer two weeks of Summer School to accommodate everyone. You often hear people say that the people of Gwent have no interest in the Welsh language, but apart from a young woman from Holland on her second year and a lady from France in the beginners class, the rest were local people.

During our training sessions, the organisers of the various courses:

• normal weekly classes in community centresl
• Welsh for Parents
  
• Welsh in the Workplace
  
• WLPAN

have been trying to persuade us to teach in their classes when we'll be trained. At the moment I'd like to teach the Wlpan, but there's not as many of these classes being held. The reasons I'd prefer Wlpan are:

• I feel that it's the most determined students who'll take this course as they've commited themselves to attend classes many times in a week (between 2 and 5)
  
• Students are more likely to pick up more vocab in a short period of time and less likely to feel that they're not progressing as I've seen with a few students in the past
  
• more emphasis on speaking, less on grammar
  

We'll see what happens in September