Essay

[Mark Kligman]

I believe that overall, the learning of Turkish individually, was a beneficial experience, however there were definitely some adjustments that could be made. In my learning experience I believe that I should have focused more on vocabulary and its practice. At the end of the semester I did not know as many words as I would have liked to and the reason behind it wasn't me looking up words, but because practicing them and applying them in sentences was something I never did with my language assistant, they would simply be forgotten. My language assistant and I worked more on understanding grammar instead, which is also great but it did not help me reach my goal of being able to conduct a simple but rather broad conversation, instead I only learned a single type of typical dialogue and a lot of grammar that I couldn't even apply with many words since I did not remember them. I believe going over the basic structure of the language and a little bit of history  behind it is important because it gives you a better understanding when you look at and use words. That is what my language assistant and I did in our first couple of weeks of studying and it helped me greatly, especially in being able to read and pronounce the language correctly. Overall I felt that by the end of the semester I had a great foundation fro learning but not much skill in speaking. Conducting dialogues with my language assistant is what I think would have benefited me a lot since I would have to use as much Turkish as possible to keep the conversation going and that would enhance my memory of certain words and sayings, as well as the recognition of the language and my quickness of response to typical questions. In this course I believe it necessary to learn and use the language instead of learning why something is said a certain way and the grammar behind it. I thought that the presentations on the culture of our languages was a great idea since it really made me research a topic I had never looked into before and learn a lot about the culture and language through that process. It was great that we had to use many foreign words in the presentation since it made me learn more vocabulary independently. I also believed that it would have been a good idea for me and my partner to have the opportunity to speak in our language in class for ten minutes at least in every of our meetings, it would have challenged us both to learn from each other since we both most likely know something about a specific word or saying that the other one doesn't, and that way we would learn from each others mistakes and knowledge. I also thought that watching cartoons in our language could be very helpful since the language there is simpler and it would have helped me understand pronunciation and the pace of the language. I thought that it was great that everyone could learn about so many cultures in one short semester, it truly brought a lot of previously unknown knowledge to the table for all the students of the class. I also believe that visualization  vocabulary learning would have been greatly beneficial for me in learning words, I had tried that method with other languages and it gives a better association with the word than simply seeing the straight up definition of it on a piece of paper. Overall I am happy with my learning of grammar and culture of the language and the foundation I have made for myself for further learning, I am also content with my pronunciation and reading skills, however I am not so pleased with my vocabulary level and speaking skills, as well as response time and recognition of typical questions. I have learned a lot about learning languages this semester and I believe that it will help me in the future if I choose to take on a language by myself, especially since I now know what to avoid and what to execute in order to be a successful individual language learner.