There are so many different kinds of Turkish dishes. 

Köfte : A Turkish staple, köfte is balls or patties of ground beef or lamb, and can be served stewed, in sandwiches, over salads, or plain with yogurt.

Mantı: Mantı might remind you of ravioli at first sight, but the traditional Turkish dish is completely unique in taste and texture. Small beef or lamb dumplings are boiled or fried and served with yogurt or butter, and often accompanied with a range of spices.

Kuzu Tandır: The meat for this popular lamb dish is traditionally hung and slow roasted whole, and it often served with rice or potatoes, and yogurt.

Lahmacun: This flat and crispy bread is traditionally topped with minced meat, salad, and lemon juice (thought the above is a beetroot vegan option!), and can be wrapped, folded in half, or pulled apart to eat. Cheap and available on any street corner, it's the perfect light lunch or snack while touring.

Börek: Turkish savoury pastry comes in many varieties, most popularly filled with minced meat or spinach and cheese. Börek can be rolled, served as puffs, or layered like lasagna, and served for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack. Anyway you have it, börek is always flaky and delicious.

Source: 27 Delicious Turkish Foods Everyone Must Try by Chelsey Pippin

I did my cultural presentation on Turkish sculpture. Turkish sculpture had transition under the rules of the religion. Ancient sculptures usually represented human bodies,  but modern sculptures are more of decorative arts such as reliefs, engraving and inlay. Gravestones and marker stones were the most finely carved and beautifully decorated forms in the Ottoman period. I presented on Ancient Statues Near the Royal Tomb on the Mount Nemrut, Turkey. They are located on high mountain called Mt. Nemrut (2,134 m or 7,001 ft), the ancient statues near the royal tomb are famous for the giant head statues scattered on the summit. They were constructed by King Antiochus First in 62 BC. Historians think the place is a sanctuary and a royal tomb. However, the king’s tomb has not been found yet. The style of these ancient sculptures is Greek and Persian tradition. Mount Nemrut is recognized as a World heritage site by UNESCO. It attracts lots of tourists to this historically and culturally significant site. Since the 1980s, Turkey has been establishing itself as a center of contemporary art with galleries, institutions and local biennials giving artists increased international visibility. What is unique about the contemporary Turkish sculpture is that it is the mixture of the globalized art world and local histories bridging Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic traditions. Contemporary Turkish art is decidedly diverse and often provocative.I researched on Yasam Sasmazer’s Wooden Sculptures Explore Mental Hardship. Yasam Sasmazer, a Turkish artist who works in Berlin, crafts wooden sculptures the deal with psychological hardship and narratives. Series like “Metanoia” take influence from the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung, exploring the journey between mental breakdowns and the evolution that follows. Her use of three-dimensional figures and shadows, both simulated and real, offer an absorbing take on the duality of living.

My cultural presentation: Turkish Sculpture

Learning plans with self-assessment: Learning plans with self-assessment.docx

During the Turkish class, I had Turkish coffee and desserts, which Ğökhan brought, with other Turkish learner, Manya. The Turkish desserts looked similar to those of traditional Korean. They were fruits or nuts based. I really enjoyed the taste of them because they were like jello, which is my favorite. Ğökhan told me these are good and common gifts when you visit people's houses in Turkey. They are a bit expensive, but Ğökhan brought the brand with highest quality, because he wanted us to experience the best Turkish desserts. While we are eating the desserts, we had coffee as well. It was really thick and heavy, although the coffee glass was really small. Turkish people drink the same kind of coffee everyday several times. People "must" drink coffee in the morning culturally. It is shown in the ward breakfast (kahvaltı) which means "before coffee (kahve)". It was interesting to see how the language implies the culture and people still follow the tradition of drinking coffee after breakfast. We also tried a fortune telling on our phones by using application called Kaave. I have tried this before with Sezqi, who was my previous Turkish language partner. It was interesting to do it again. I got a good luck for this time and the fortune teller was telling me hopeful messages that everything will go well (attached below). I heard if there are lumps of coffee left in the cup, it means that I have a lots of worries stuck in my mind. I thought it was interesting to study how interpret the coffee stained in the cup. I also remembered that I have to say "Neyse halım, çıksın falım", which means "whatever my destiny is, should it be revealed in my fortune." when you flip the cup. Here are some ways to interpret the coffee cup.

• If a big chunk of grounds falls on the saucer it’s the first positive sign of your reading. “Trouble and worries are leaving you”.
  
• If the fallen ground forms a pile means “Money will come to you”.
  
• If cup-saucer are tight and the reader can lift them up as one unit, it’s a“Prophet’s cup”. (Meaning: You don’t need to proceed with reading. “All your wishes will come true!” Most of the readers though will proceed with the reading regardless of that…).

I learned cases and read some story books today. I read Çağlar’ın Süt Dişi, which was about taking out youth teeth, and another storybook about a proud lion. Reading storybooks made me to increase my ability to understand and break down the words in Turkish. I liked how the books have pictures so that I was able to understand the stories easier. My language partner corrected my pronunciation while I am reading the books. I took turns reading the books with my classmate Manya and the language partner. After reading books, I went over the dative, ablative, locative, and  accusative case. Dative case, which is "e" indicates a direction (to), and ablative case (an) means "from". Locative (de) means "at". Accusative case "i" indicates "the" in English. I also learned how to differentiate if the object belongs to someone or not by using "ne/ye". If I use "ye" at the end of the word, it means that the object does not belong to specific person. But it was a bit confusing because the language partner used an example of a museum, and explained it does not belong to a specific person, when it can always belong to somebody.    

Fourth Artifact: Storybook Reading

The cultural post is about Hungarian-Turkish Friendship Park (Magyar-Török Barátság Park in Hungarian, Macar-Türk Dostluk Parkı in Turkish). It is a public park located in Csertő, southwestern Hungary. It was built to memorialize the Battle of Szigetvár fought in 1566 between the Ottoman Empire and the Hungarian and Croatiandefenders of the Szigetvár Castle. The park was established in 1994 and opened jointly by Hungarian and Turkish officials. The picture below is the head sculptures of Miklós Zrínyi (left) and Sultan Suleiman (right) with the symbolic tomb seen in the background at the park. The head sculptures were created in 2006 by User:Csanády. I appreciate this park that shows the history of the two countries and mourn for the deaths that caused by the battle from 16th century. I believe that this kind of memorial parks gives a vivid education of history and reminds the decedents how present is valuable and not be the same without the scarification of our ancestors.

What are your cultural learning goals for this semester?

I want to learn about Turkish arts this semester. I will spend my time exploring Turkish arts in three categories: architecture, painting, and sculpture. I will use the google search tool and other websites including artists' blogs to explore Turkish arts. I think it will enrich my knowledge of arts, which I am minoring in. I think Gokhan, my language partner can also help me out with the background stories behind the art works. I will learn about the history and legends behind the architectures, paintings, and sculptures. I will insert pictures of them on the cultural posts. I am planning to do a cultural presentation on Turkish architecture or sculpture. I will look for vocabularies that are related to the arts and the art pieces so that I can increase my Turkish language skill, while I am exploring more about the Turkish art.

Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language; outline this activity in your learning journal. 

• Learning Objectives: Learn how to talk about family in Turkish.
• Step 1: Write and read vocabularies about family including father, mother, sister, brother, and uncle. 
• Step 2: Learn how to say "older" and "younger".
• Step 3: Learn how to say "female" and "male".
• Step 4: Create individual's family tree.
• Step 5: Learn how to introduce family (learning how to structure sentences using phrases). Examples: This is my older brother. I have four people in family.
• Step 6: Practice introducing family each other.
• Step 7: Record and monitor.

This week, I worked on Turkish history and architectures. My language partner, Gokhan gave me a presentation and taught me the geography or Turkey, and the architectural history of Turkey. It was really interesting for me, because I am minoring in Visual and Media Arts Practice, and took art history class. I had few chance to learn about Turkish architecture, so that the presentation was really helpful and informative. I think I want to do a cultural presentation on the Turkish architecture. There are lots of historical buildings in Turkey that they are tied to the culture. I learned that it is also connected to economy in Turkey. I wrote down several names of buildings including an old library in Ankara. I will keep researching online, and rent books on architecture from UR library. Although I did some research and gave a presentation on Turkish tourism history, it was still interesting and new for me to listen more about Gokhan's presentation on the Turkish legends and politics. It was amazing how people still admire Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was the founder of the Republic of Turkey. Attached below is the simple version of presentation about Turkish Architecture that I made after I was inspired by Gokhan's presentation. 

Third Artifact: Turkish Architecture

I have learned the names of the books in the Bible. I worked on the names of the twelve disciples of Jesus. Their names were pretty similar to that of English and Korean as they were in the books of the Bible. Names of the disciples of Jesus are attached under the second artifact (including the books of the Bible in Turkish). I think it was really interesting to see some cultural aspects from learning the names of the disciples. I learned that there were lots of Turkish names among the names of the disciples. Some were common/modern and the others were relatively old names. I like how this semester's classes with my language partner is more focused on my learning goals. I think it really helps to have my tutor to guide me how to work on my learning goals like the religious names. Although he is not religious, he reached out to his friend who is a Christian, and asked if he or she knows the best way to learn the religious names. 

Disciples of Jesus

Old Testament

New Testament 

• Bi-weekly Journal #2: I learned how to write and read the New and Old Testaments of the Bible in Turkish. My language partner, Gokhan helped me to read and write them. We used two different applications on our phones, which were called Bible, and the Bible (in Turkish). For the first application, I changed the setting in Turkish on it. For the second one, it was already in Turkish so that I did not have to change it, which I found more helpful. We compared and contrasted the names of the books in the Bible in English, Turkish, and Korean, which is my mother tongue. I found the Turkish version of the name is really similar to that of Korean. I think that it is because Korean language has a larger range of words pronunciation. That similarity allowed me to remember the words better. While I was reading the words out loud, I worked on the accent of the words (which vowel I need to put a stress on). I figured out that counting is really unique in the Turkish writing. For example, "The first" Corinthians is "1. Korintliler" in Turkish, which the period differentiate "the first" from "number 1". I found this learning activity really fun because it was tied into my interest. 
• In your learning journal, post an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation.  Evaluate your artifact for accent, cultural appropriateness, and linguistic accuracy.
  • What did you do well? I did well making the conversation sound like a dialogue. I did a good job on reading a long conversation of the phone call. 
  • What do you need to improve? I need to improve with the accents and need to cut the time short. I took more than 3 minutes to read the whole passage. I think it wasn't too bad, but I could have improved if I tried to practice few more times before I recorded. 
  • How do you plan to make the necessary improvements? I will check the words that I circled on the transcript (I circled them after listening to my recording) with my language partner so that he can give me some feedbacks. I will keep reading the passage aloud. I will keep working on reading aloud with other texts. 

I worked on tenses in the past 2 weeks. I mainly focused on learning a future tense from my language partner. I also touched briefly on a past tense. It was efficient for me to learn the tenses in sentences. My language partner made me read two different paragraphs (attached under) and I answered the following questions. The first passage was about a phone conversation between two friends that are going on a trip. The second passage was about 65-year-old man who retired and going on a holiday trip. I learned about family relationship vocabularies through it. I circled on future tenses to distinguish them from the other tenses. I worked on making some sentences in future tense. Me and my classmate worked on different verbs and we conjugated the verbs into different tenses. It was really helpful because I was able to review what I learned, and was able to learn new verbs at the same time. 

First Artifact (Reading Passages)

First Artifact (Recording)

Here are my Turkish learning goals and the learning calendar. I want to accomplish working on a future tense and a past tense this semester. My language partner will help me to achieve my goal. My level of Turkish has been improved that my Interpretive Reading skill is now in the level of Developing 1 that I can understand main points in readings. In addition, my presentational writing is also in the level of Developing 1 that I can write personal letters to my Turkish friends. However, I need to work more on interpersonal communication, because I am in the level of Beginning 2 according to the Levels of Competence document. I can talk about things that I have learned and can understand basic conversation. I also need to improve my interpretive listening skill, which is in the level of Beginning 2 that I can understand phrases that are commonly-used. My presentational speaking is in the level of Developing 1 that I can talk about my hobbies and family. I will work on more of speaking rather than working on readings this semester by doing role-plays with my friends and my language partner. 

Joora's Learning Plans Spring 2018

Joora's Learning Calendar Spring 2018

• the task(s) you are working on; I had a conversation with Turkish student named Arda. My language partner brought him to the class and we asked him questions. I prepared several questions ahead like "How old are you?", "What's your job?", and "How many family members do you have?".
• a statement of what you hoped to accomplish; I was aiming to review what I have learned in the class and by myself. Because most of the learnings are based on conversation, I had lots of topics to talk about with him.
• the strategies (activities and resources) you used to work on your task(s); We began conversation with asking our identities, how we were feeling, and our hobbies. My language partner helped me when I had some questions that I haven't learned yet. 
• an evaluation of the effectiveness of your strategies; I think it was really effective that I was able to practice speaking and listening face to face with a person other than my language partner. Because every individuals have different tones and way of speaking, it is necessary to experience conversations with many people. This practice expanded my boundary of speaking and listening in Turkish. It was different from simply listening to records, because I was talking while I am watching his facial emotions and gestures. 
• how you will build on what you have learned about the language; I wrote down some new topics that we talked about, so that I can review them in my personal time. I will spend my own time to answer questions that he asked in different ways.
• how you will build on what you have learned about your strategies. I will try to have more meetings with Turkish native speakers and have conversations with them.

Self-assessment of My Learning Plan

I accomplished most of my learning plan. I learned how to order food and read menu in a restaurant, and listened Turkish pop-songs to improve my listening. I could not do prayer in Turkish, but I will learn how to in next semester. I enjoyed lots of different activities I had by myself and other people like my classmates and my language partner. I think group works are the most effective because I can be generous on myself evaluating sometimes. But with other people, I can compare and contrast the pronunciation and the speed of speaking.   

SDLAP111_learningplan.docx

• the task(s) you are working on; I worked on frequency adverbs like often, never, seldom, and once a week. They are essential to build sentences and talk about daily routines.  
• a statement of what you hoped to accomplish; I planed to apply those adverbs to my daily routine.
• the strategies (activities and resources) you used to work on your task(s); I learned frequency adverbs from my language partner, and I reviewed those on Quizlet. I made some sentences by choosing frequency adverbs, verbs, and subjects on word cards. My classmates and I took turns and spoke the sentences aloud.  
• an evaluation of the effectiveness of your strategies; I think it was really effective that we had to be quick making sentences and it allowed us to be more prepared for the casual conversation with Turkish natives. I improved conjugating words according to subjects and the purpose of the sentences (questions).  
• how you will build on what you have learned about the language;
• how you will build on what you have learned about your strategies. I will keep practicing to make sentences by using the frequency adverbs. I will review them on Quizlet.

What did you do well? This is the transcript and a record about family. I practice with my language partner's family tree and the sentences that he made at first. I filled out the blankets pretty well. I reviewed vocabularies on family on Quizlet and it helped me to remember the words when I was listening to my language partner talking about his family. I applied what I learned to build sentences about my own family. I built several sentences and they were almost perfect in grammar so I was proud of myself.

What do you need to improve? I think I need to be able to make more variations. I want to talk about deeper things like what is my sister's dream and how much time she studies a day. I will study more vocabularies for that. I also need to speak more fluently by repeating what I recorded. It will help me to increase my speed of speaking.

How do you plan to make the necessary improvements? I will repeat the transcripts and do exercise with my classmates to introduce my family. I will be practicing listening as well by listening about their family.

Family Tree

Family

My Family

Family(recording).m4a

• the task(s) you are working on; I focused learning about Aİle (family). I learned vocabularies of family members, how to talk about their relationships, ages and their jobs. 
• a statement of what you hoped to accomplish; I aimed to be able to talk fluently about my family and relatives.
• the strategies (activities and resources) you used to work on your task(s); I used a family tree to study vocabularies like aunt, uncle, and nephew, and adapted my own family to make sentences. I practiced speaking with my classmates and my language partner.
• an evaluation of the effectiveness of your strategies; I think listening to other students' families and talking about my own family helped me a lot to improve my speaking and listening. I feel confident to talk about my family after the practice.
• how you will build on what you have learned about the language; I will review the vocabularies through Quizlet so that I can remember them. I will listen to the pronunciation on the application and correct mine.
• how you will build on what you have learned about your strategies. I will build on what I have learned by writing down new sentences and speaking them aloud. I will record my artifact on this topic. 

What did you do well? These are the lyrics of the Turkish pop-song, Parçalandım, that I listened to increase my listening skill. I found this activity really interesting that I can study not only listening, but also reading and writing. I did pretty well filling the blanks at the first round, and I could fill most of the blanks after I listened to the song for the second time. It is such an improvement from last semester that I had to listen more than three times to do the similar practice.

What do you need to improve? I think I still need to work more on the vocabulary part. I did not know the most of the meanings of the vocabularies in the lyrics. And I need to practice differentiating ü and u sound, which are the most confusing to me. I also need to practice pronouncing them. 

How do you plan to make the necessary improvements? I will improve my listening skill by listening to more Turkish pop music and study the lyrics. This activity is fun for me and less stressful, so I will enjoy continuing to study in this way. I will watch some pop music videos as well to see how they move their mouth when they sing, and study the other cultural sides including their clothes and gesture.

Parçalandım

• the task(s) you are working on; I listened to a Turkish pop-song named "Parçalandım" by Candan Erçetin to practice listening. I listened to the song several times and filled some words in the blanks on the lyric sheet.
• a statement of what you hoped to accomplish; I wanted to be able to differentiate the pronunciation and figure out which words fit in the sentences. I also wanted to study more vocabularies in the lyrics.
• the strategies (activities and resources) you used to work on your task(s); I used Youtube, and the lyrics of the song online.
• an evaluation of the effectiveness of your strategies; I've studied English listening by listening to pop-songs in English, and found it is effective, because pop-songs represent the recent language culture and use a lots of essential vocabularies and slangs that helped me to speak more like native speakers. I think I did a good job filling the blanks. It helped me to test my listening skill. Because the songs are in pretty fast beats, it was closer to the casual Turkish speaking speed. Thanks to that, I was able to practice listening fast speakers. 
• how you will build on what you have learned about the language; I will review the vocabularies that I learned to day and find more songs online and their lyrics to study listening and the vocabularies.
• how you will build on what you have learned about your strategies. I will keep listening different Turkish songs so that I can be used to the speed.

Letter_To_Sezqi

The second artifact of mine is a letter to Sezgi, who was my language partner from last semester. I wanted to talk to her, because I miss her so much, and I wanted to update how my Turkish language learning is improving. To write the letter, I studied how to write the opening and closing of the letter. I also learned writing "how are you doing?", "I hope you are having fun in Turkey", "I want to visit you someday in Turkey", "I want to stay in America for an year for work", "Your Istagram pictures look gorgeous", "I wish you good luck in terms of working", "please wish me good luck", and etc. I am planning to write her again someday so that I can practice my writing, while I am keeping in touch with her. Penpal was my strategy to improve English since my middle school, which helped me a lot. I was not be able to write details in the letter, so I am planning to work on more vocabularies and grammars related to what I want to write about for the next time.

First_Artifact_Recording

Transcript1

Transcript2.jpeg

Based on the learning from SDLC 110 Turkish, I recorded introductions of myself, and two different individuals. I added where we live currently (differentiated from where we are from), what kinds of languages we speak, and what my hobbies are, which are something new from SDLC 111.

• What did you do well? I think I improved the speed of speaking. I used to speak slower in Turkish, but after practicing more and more, I was able to speak faster. Because introduction is the most basic part of learning language, I worked on speaking, listening, and writing introductions of different identities and became more confident in listening, writing and speaking introductions. 
• What do you need to improve? I need to improve sh-, ch-, u(with dots), and im/lm sounds. It is hard for me to pronounce them correctly if they appear in the middle of sentences and if I increase the speed of speaking.
• How do you plan to make the necessary improvements? I will keep listening the recordings of my language partner's friends who sent us their own introductions. I will practice the sounds that I have troubles with, by speaking them aloud before the classes (twice a week) and after the classes. I will ask Gokhan to make corrections on my pronunciation.