Day 12 - Friday, March 16, 2007

At the same time as Lindsay's workshop yesterday, another of our partners on this project, the Welsh learners' society CYD (Cymdeithas y Dysgwyr) ran a coffee morning in a local cafe where they could have a chat with Caryl Lewis about her Stori Sydyn/Quick Reads book, Y Rhwyd.

Caryl is a very popular author in Wales having sccoped Book of the Year for her novel Martha, Jac a Sianco in 2005. She's also from Ceredigion. She's about to publish her third, Y Gemydd (The Jeweller), and I'm really looking forward to reading it. I enjoyed Y Rhwyd, it was one of those stories where you were always trying to second-guess what was coming next, and the story was very modern in it's use of email and chatrooms as part of the plot.

As I said at the start of the project, the Stori Sydyn books are really popular with the more advanced learners. Because the books stick as much as possible to everyday language, they don't have to keep going to the dictionary all the time and can just really start enjoying a book in Welsh.

Jaci Taylor from CYD also organised a Stori Sydyn quiz in the evening, where five teams were tested on their knowledge of the books - as well as getting a chance to practice speaking Welsh of course!