I decided to combine the 7 bi-weekly progress journals into one so my improvement is mappable and in one location. Although I’ve talked a lot about my progress in the regular journals, there are some weeks where I don’t mention my learning. I may not include everything we learned because there was so much, but I made sure to include the most important of influential concepts.
Weeks 1&2: Most of the first two weeks was going over the new concepts we would encounter when learning Turkish, like new letters and their pronunciation, vowel harmony, asking/answering basic questions about ourselves. I think during this week I was trying to just take everything in so I would write down everything Hocam Merve had to say, even though not all of it was pertinent to my learning. Looking back at my notes, I don’t even understand why I wrote some of the stuff down, but I guess that indicates some excitement for the class!
Weeks 3&4: I believe these weeks we began learning basic nouns and locative questions using “bu, şu and o.” Most of the nouns were school related, but also nouns that are most prominently used in Turkey (or, this is how I interpreted it because I’m not sure American English speakers would first bring up gardens. Or maybe they were just the easiest words to teach to beginners. I’m not sure, but I know I found a lot of similarities between Turkish and Arabic during this time. I knew there was a connection, but it was cool to actually see it.
Weeks 5&6: These weeks we learned adjectives and how to describe nouns. I think it’s kind of funny that random adjectives stick with me, but some just really do not. Either way, we learned a pretty hefty and all-encompassing amount of adjectives.
Weeks 7&8: Much of these weeks focused on learning verbs and how to say we or others were doing (or not doing) things. Surprisingly, suffixes weren’t that hard to use but remembering the verbs was difficult. I thought it was interesting that a lot of verbs come from nouns, so it would seem like it would be easier to learn, but alas, I was not very good at it.
Weeks 9&10: These weeks were pretty tricky because we learned new verbs cases and the possessive, which I still don’t understand that much. :( Verb cases still confuse me a little bit so I’ll have to brush up on them for next semester but as always, Hocam made them fun to learn.
Weeks 11&12: These weeks, as we were winding down, we focused on learning both family words and putting everything together in the form of a quiz and other exercises where we talked about us and our family members doing things. This might’ve been the most rewarding period of time because I just saw all of my learning coming together and I was able to start putting concepts together to make complete and more complex sentences, e.g. more than saying “My name is Emmie. I am from Atlanta and I am 19.”
Weeks 13&14: In the last weeks of the class, we did a lot of review and reflection about the course. After taking the final, I feel a lot more confident in my Turkish ability (although my speaking could use work). Comparing my skill from the beginning to now, there is a very obvious difference. I can now understand basic words, as well as introduce myself, my family, and tell people what I am doing. I am obviously not at a fluent level, but I have come a long way since September. Over break I hope to keep up with my language learning by watching more Turkish movies and reading the news on CNN Turk. This class has made me so much more appreciative of both the Turkish language and culture, which I am so happy about. We also had Turkish coffee on the last day of class!!!
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