Shayna Webb's Posts (64)
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My goals at the beginning of the semester were to Improve response time and have more in depth conversations. Through learning the past and future tenses, I have tripled my vocabulary. My response time has improved in conversations. I am getting much better at context clues, which was one of my other goals. I wanted to sharpen my context clue skills through watching Turkish tv. I watched Muhteşem Yüzyıl. I wanted to be able to read short stories and answer comprehension questions about them. I feel confident in my reading capabilities this semester. Even if I don’t know the every word in the excerpt or story, I know enough to get the gist. I also know the structure and vocabulary in the comprehension questions. I wrote more this semester. I wrote for my learning artifacts in Turkish and have written my cultural project presentation in Turkish. I was also able to conduct research for my project in Turkish. I found so many more resources when I used Turkish to Google things rather than googling ‘Turkish funeral customs’ in English.
Another goal was to not translate in my head, but use my Turkish vocabulary to express what I want to say. I did not improve on this skill, as I was not speaking as much Turkish as I should have. It was difficult for me to find people to speak Turkish with outside of class. I wanted to be able to read Turkish news, but this may have been too lofty of a goal. I don’t think my vocabulary is there yet, to be able to read and watch the news.
I have not yet given my cultural presentation, but my goal is to deliver it in Turkish.
Overall, I have learned so much this semester and feel confident in my abilities to communicate and listen. I want to go to Turkey very much and I will continue with this language for a while. Regardless, I have developed language learning skills that I can apply to any language I choose to learn in the future. I have had a wonderful experience with the program and the Turkish language over the past three semesters and I wish I would have started sooner!
Fifth Cultural Post: Reflection
This semester I have learned so much about Turkish culture. I believe it is because I developed a friendship with Sezgi and cultural differences would naturally come up in our conversations. I got to meet some of her friends from Turkey when they came to visit at the beginning of the semester. They taught me a lot about superstitions and they were so nice. I want to go and visit Turkey, now, more than ever. I think I taught Sezgi some things about American culture as well, like Groundhog day. This semester I began watching Turkish television and I began to follow more Turkish YouTube. One day Sezgi presented on Turkey. She talked about the street food and the diversity of the landscape. I would bring questions about Turkish culture to our meetings. I have learned so much more about the culture, beyond Turkish coffee and lokum. I also feel I have a better understanding of Turkey’s position in the world. Here at UofR, we lump Turkey into our Middle Eastern courses, but many Turkish citizens do not believe they belong to that region. People often think I’m studying Turkish because it’s similar to Arabic, some people even think it’s the same language. I have always known the language is completely different, but now I know that the culture is entirely different from any country in the Middle East.
This week I learned body parts, mainly the face. I can now describe my features and the way I look. I can ask questions about others and describe the faces of others. This is a necessary skill in language because we often describe the people we are talking about, especially when we have forgotten their name.
Benim adım Shayna. Ben 21 yaşındayım. Saçım sarı ve gözlerim ela. Yüzüm yuvarlak ve boynum kısa ve omuzlarım geniş, ama burnum ve kulaklarım çok küçük! Ben kısa ve küçük ama güçlü. Ben kısa çünkü annem ve babam kısa.
English translation: My name is Shayna. I am 21 years old. I have blonde hair and hazel eyes. I have a round face and a short neck and wide shoulders, but my nose an dears are very small. I am short and tiny but I am strong. I am short because my mother and father are short.
Cultural Post 4:
Cenaze gelenekleri
I have now seriously begun my research on funeral traditions in Turkey (cenaze gelenekleri). There are customs that are religious (dini, İslam, kuran okuma) and customs that are pre-Islamic (İslam öncesi). There is specific food prepared (halva) during the time of mourning (yas ve ağlamak). The burial is very elaborate and made of marble (mermer taş ve mezar).
I am aiming to deliver my presentation in Turkish and then translate into English.
http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/kader/article/download/1076000129/1076000146
http://www.jasstudies.com/Makaleler/1497155747_24Onay%20%C4%B0brahim_S-479-490.pdf
Cultural Post 4:
Cenaze gelenekleri
I have now seriously begun my research on funeral traditions in Turkey (cenaze gelenekleri). There are customs that are religious (dini, İslam, kuran okuma) and customs that are pre-Islamic (İslam öncesi). There is specific food prepared (halva) during the time of mourning (yas ve ağlamak). The burial is very elaborate and made of marble (mermer taş ve mezar).
I am aiming to deliver my presentation in Turkish and then translate into English.
http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/kader/article/download/1076000129/1076000146
http://www.jasstudies.com/Makaleler/1497155747_24Onay%20%C4%B0brahim_S-479-490.pdf
I watched the first season of Muhteşem Yüzyıl. It is a Turkish, dramatic tv show about the height of the Ottoman Empire. Muhteşem Yüzyıl means the greatest century. I watch it with English subtitles. I learned a few new words by listening to the Turkish and reading the English translation. What I really enjoy about the show is that there are characters that switch back and forth between Russian and Turkish and I know when they are speaking either with ease. The show also uses some Ottoman Turkish, and I can pick up on this because of my Arabic background. They will use the word with the Arabic origin rather than the latin origin. For example, rakis (arabic influenced word for dance) and dans (the English influenced word for dance). I think being able to pick up on this is a good indicator that I have trained my ears for Turkish. Even though I may not know all the words they are saying in Turkish, I know that they are Turkish words or if they are not. Fun fact: Turkey is the second largest export of TV and movies in the world. I noticed the Turkish tv shows were very popular in the Jordan and Morocco.
Cultural Post
Superstitions and ceremonies are a big part of Turkish culture. In my last few posts about Turkish culture, I talked about a few of the superstitions and rituals in daily cultural life. I will explore these in my cultural project, with attention and focus on traditions and superstitions around death. What are the beliefs surrounding death and the afterlife? Do those come from religion, or are they from pre-existing beliefs common throughout the Mediterranean? Like weddings, funerals are big events. There are two weeks of mourning are various communal events that occur when someone dies. In America, we have a few traditions around funerals, but beliefs about death and the afterlife differ from person to person. A death in Turkey is a bigger event and the rituals surrounding death are longstanding traditions. There is a specific agenda of activities and food eaten when someone dies in Turkey. I look forward to exploring this topic more, specifically the origins of the tradition. I will also begin to research using resources in Turkish, as my goal is to deliver my presentation mainly in Turkish.
Learning Activity Reflection
I had a couple of people try my activity. One of my roommates studies Arabic with me. She got all of them correct. One of my other roommates, who does not study another language, also got them all right. I know they were all easy sentences and words, but they thought it was fun. The emphasis on this activity was not whether or not the sentences were complex, but it was an activity on using context clues to decipher the meaning of an unknown word.
I am now focusing on reading comprehension and working on my accent when I read. Surprisingly, I understand 90% of what I read, which is cool. I have gotten a lot better at figuring out words I don’t know. I think I know what to look for within the context of the sentence. I am able to answer comprehension questions, such as fill in the blanks, and True (Doğru) or False (Yanlış). I am getting faster at reading. I don’t sound out each letter in the word, because there are more words I recognize immediately. I really enjoy reading in Turkish, but for the next weeks I want to improve my conversational skills and look for context clues in conversation.
Activity: I will give someone sentences in English, with one word in Turkish. Given the words you know and context clues, what does this Turkish word mean?
1) Memet went to the grocery Mağaza to buy vegetables.
A: store
2) Yesterday was doğum günüm. I turned 21.
A: my birthday
3) Ahmet: Nasılsın Nur? Nur: I am good! Nasılsın Ahmet?
A: How are you?
This semester, with the help of Sezgi, I have focused more on solidifying the grammar and verb tenses rather than focus on learning vocabulary by topic. I am really creating a strong base off which to keep building and applying new vocab. I want to learn the majority of grammatical suffixes and how this affects sentence structure. I originally wanted to learn vocabulary pertaining to travel, etc. But I think focusing on the grammar is more important. The vocab will come with time and I will learn from experience and out of necessity. I can learn vocab from context clues in text and in conversation, but grammar is much harder to just pick up on.
I am now learning the future tense and how to express wishes and wants. Like English, expressing wants requires two verbs. I also learned how to say I must/should. This is expressed with an affix -meli/mali-. Once again, I feel that I can now say so much more, now that I know another verb tense.
In the following recording I am talking about what I did last weekend using the past perfect tense.
Turkish: Hava güzel oldu geçen hafta sonu. Cumartesi günü çalıştım ama pazar günü çalışmadım ve tüm gün güneşlendim, Çünkü hava oldu sıcaktı ve güneşli geçen hafta sonu. Kahvaltı pişirdim ve kendim odamı ve mutfağı temizledim. Sonra akşamları ev arkadaşlarımla bir restorana gittim. Geçen hafta sonu çok güzel bir haftasonu. Bu hafta sonu ne yaptın?
English: The weather was beautiful last weekend. I worked on Saturday but Sunday I didn't work. I sunbathed the whole day because the weather was warm and sunny. I cooked breakfast and cleaned my room and the kitchen by myself. Then, I went to a restaurant with the housemates. Last weekend was a very beautiful weekend. What did you do last weekend?
These past 2 weeks I learned the past perfect tense and used a lot in conversation. I can now say what I did in the past and ask questions in the past tense. I am also learning more vocabulary to incorporate into my conversations, such as places I have been and things I have done. I learned more word about temporality, such as “last week” and “yesterday.” I find past tense to be quite easy and it is nice to be able to communicate things that happened in the past. Learning a new tense is kind of liberating. I feel I do not have as many limits on my conversational skills. Next, I will learn the future tense, and express wants and desires.
First Artifact
I talk about my trip back home using the present continuous tense and connectors. I feel my pronunciationArtifact%201.mp3 has really improved and I am able to speak longer on one topic.
Bi-weekly reflection
This week I reviewed present continuous tense. This semester I am really focusing on using the verb tenses to expand my conversational skills. I did a lot of exercises in my Istanbul Turkish book and practiced them in conversation with my language partner. In our conversation, I had questions about how to say certain words. I love how organic and natural my questions were. I was asking how to say words relevant to our conversation rather than memorizing a vocabulary list and only using those words. I have learned how to say "my boyfriend and I went to a winery and drank wine" and I asked questions about her boyfriend. I love that I'm learning how to say things that friends actually talk about, which is such a different experience than a textbook based, traditional classroom setting. I will review past tense next week.
Turkish 112 Cultural Post 2
One thing I was introduced to by Sezgi’s friends was the eye and bad energy in Turkish culture. The eye (nazar) is supposed to block bad energy or spirits. When you feel that someone may be jealous of you, you secretly scratch your bum to block the jealousy. Also, when someone is nice to you or you like other people you pull your ear, kiss twice and knock on wood. I learned these things no because we were having a cultural lesson, but simply because they were used so commonly in their interactions. If I go Turkey I will know if I have said something nice to someone or offended them based upon what they do next. If someone scratches their bum I will know I have said something wrong or offended them. If someone pulls their ear, kisses, and knock on wood, I know that they like me and have good energy.
Turkish 112 Cultural Post 1
Today I met three of Sezgi’s Turkish friends and I learned so much about the culture. I don’t think I would have came across these things on the internet. First of all, two of her friends were both named Marve. And whenever you have two people with the same name it is good luck, so you stand in between them and make a wish. The second thing I learned was that women, typically older, will spit on you if they like you. It is considered good luck, wards off the evil eye, and is considered flattering. Also, when meeting an older person, or addressing your grandparents. It is considered respectful to kiss their hand and then place their hand on your forehead. I think all of these little things about the culture are so important to know.
I have recorded myself talking about my daily routine. I talk about my morning routine, going to school and work, where I live and who I live with, and my nightime routine.
I have recorded myself conjugating the verb 'to go' in the present continuous tense.
