I am very happy with my progress. I believe I move very fast. To my mind, Turkish is a really interesting and fun language to learn. Since the beginning of this semester, I have been watching Turkish soap opera "Dudaktan kalbe" with subtitles in my language. It was extremely hard in the beginning and I would hardly understand a word the actors spoke. However, in week 5, I can proudly say that I do not only understand random words that the actors in the soap opera say, but also some short sentences. I think this is a great improvement for me and a great motivational factor to keep up my work.
Apart from watching soap operas, I have also been pronouncing and reading in Turkish. I did not have any trouble pronouncing Turkish and my language partner said that I do not have an accent which really motivated me to work even harder. Of course, some letters took me more time to learn how to pronounce them as we do not have them in our alphabet, but with constant repetition I finally learned the right pronunciation.
I found a very interesting website with Turkish short stories.On this website, the stories are also recorded, so sometimes I would just play them in my room. Link to this website is provided at the end of the journal. These short Turkish stories are about Nasrettin Hoca, who is a very popular character in Turkey known for his wise, witty and funny stories. In the beginning, as I started reading in Turkish, I would just pronounce the words but would barely understand their meanings. However, over time as my vocabulary expanded, I would recognize certain words that I had either memorized before or they just seemed familiar to me so I was able to understand their meaning from the context.
For example, when I was reading one of the Nasrettin Hoca stories, I understood that the story was about Nasrettin Hoca's friend who was moving to another city and asked Nasrettin to give him his ring so that he can remember him every time he looks at his finger and sees the ring. However, Nasrettin Hoca said that his friend might lose the ring and therefore forget about him. Thus, Nasrettin Hoca said that he is not going to give him the ring so that every time his friend looks at his finger he will not see the ring and therefore he will remember Nasrettin. I understood this story by using dictionary and translating the unknown words, as well as looking at the pictures that are provided with the story.
I would also keep track of words that are unfamiliar to me. For example, while reading I would keep an open word document and write down the unknown words. At the same time I would use Turkish-English dictionary to translate the words that I do not understand. Sometimes, I would use examples to describe the meanings of the words. This way, I created my own dictionary and anytime I could go back to the words and revise them.
I cannot say how many words I have learned exactly but I believe I learned about 50-60 so far (excluding numbers). I think this pace is good for me because I also study grammar and explore Turkish culture at the same time. I do not want to focus only on vocabulary, because I believe that other aspects such as exploring and learning culture, learning grammar, reading and writing are as important as learning vocabulary and therefore I like to keep balance between them.
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