10 Week Beginners Irish Course beginning Tuesday Sept 12th 6:45 PM . Classes can be taken in person at the Gaelic-American Club in Fairfield and/or via Zoom.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
The class will start with three themes:
1) 20 Minutes – Speaking Irish: Taught using the communicative method and based on the European Framework for teaching languages, with a goal of teaching some spoken Irish that can be used on a daily basis.
Book Resource: ”Gaeilge Gan Stró! Beginners Level”, by Éamonn Ó Dónaill. A multimedia Irish language course for adults that costs approximately $60. Be cautious when buying the book, that the correct currency is being shown before you commit the order, or that you have done a currency conversion. Same for any other books. However, the first chapter I can send you for free and it will cover you for the first few weeks, especially, as I will be emphasizing how to pronounce Irish initially and moving at a slower pace through materials.
https://www.amazon.com/Gaeilge
https://www.siopa.ie/en/i-67-g
2) 20 Minutes – Additional Fun Stuff: Various traditional and pop songs, Irish National Anthem, rhymes, tongue twisters, proverbs, idioms, poems, short stories, etc. in Irish, with the goal of providing material that you can use the rest of your life, even if you don’t seek out the
opportunity to regular speak Irish. In this section, I will point out available (mostly free) Irish learning resources.
3) 10 to 15 mins – Formal Grammar: For those who want it, will be taught at the end of each class. This is something that should be considered ”optional”, as I always point out to new students, there isn’t a child who learnt to speak a language at a young age that did so by learning
“formal grammar.” Still, a small portion of adults swear they can’t learn a language without learning the grammar, this is for you. However, I have found that many who start-out enthusiastic for “formal grammar” often steer away from it within a short time, so this portion of the class could be dropped over time. The book we will use here is ”Irish Grammar You Really Need to Know”, by Éamonn Ó Dónaill. Approx $20 for book or 99 cents for Kindle edition. Again, you don’t need to run out and buy this initially, I will give out some handouts to start you off.
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-G
https://www.siopaleabhar.com/e
As I said the class will start with these three themes but may be modified by majority decision overtime, to give one or the other themes more emphasis.
Contact Information – Deasúin Ó Nualáin, DesNolan@Optimum.Net.
If people desire it, I can do an intro/review of the class a couple of weeks ahead of its start. Just reach out and let me know. In fact, reach out ahead of time and tell me why you are interested in learning the language and anything you might know already.
A word of caution, in the past, new classes have started out big and rapidly shrunk, because people don’t realize there is work and time involved in learning a language and making progress with it. But for those with some time and commitment to learn, I’ve rarely failed to bring them along.
This time around, I am trying to blend in some ”additional” fun stuff (section 2) to keep people engaged. Things people will have the opportunity to go back to, the rest of the lives and enjoy.
However, I do encourage you to give serious thought to whether you have the interest and time (10 to 20 mins per day – 1.5 to 2 hours per week) to learn Irish, as personally I find it a little sad to start off with a large class of individuals and end up with a very small one, because
people didn’t factor in the time and effort commitment.