Why Turkish?
Turkey is located at the intersection of Europe and Asia, so it has both European and Asian influences, which I think is really interesting. This semester I want to learn about Turkish culture so that in the future I can travel there and find my way around. If I go to Turkey, I want to be able to communicate with the people there when ordering food, asking for directions, etc. I also enjoy the process of learning a language, so to further this, I want to learn about the resources that I have at my disposal so that I can learn Turkish independently in the future. This semester, my goal is to cover basic topics (introducing and describing myself, asking questions, ordering food, etc.) and expose myself to Turkish culture.
What I've Learned:
The past couple of weeks, I’ve learned how to say basic greetings, the alphabet, some common vocabulary words, and some words about family members. I’ve also learned how to ask some questions like “Where are you from?”, “What’s your name?”, etc. Grammar-wise, my language partner and I have touched a little bit about vowel harmony and agglutination.
In my learning plan, I want to go over the following:
- Greetings/introduction
- Describing myself and other people/talking about family
- Activities/school
- Telling time, saying the date, learning numbers
- Buying things
- Ordering food, learning about Turkish food
- Asking for directions/places
So each week I will go through this list and cover one of these topics. As I go through these, I want to refer to my tasks that I stated in my learning plan (the doc attached) and try to assess my progress in these tasks each week.
Resources:
Workbooks (provided by Merve), Turkish grammar book (bought from Amazon), YouTube, Netflix (for Turkish dramas), Spotify (for Turkish music), Tureng (Turkish/English dictionary), and website with audio, reading, units on everything I want to cover, etc. (https://utos.yasar.edu.tr/). Merve also created a Box folder filled with other resources.
I really liked Matthew's idea of learning new words in a topic every week to expand my vocabulary, so I want to make sure to dedicate some time to that (and make quilt flashcards to document the words I've learned).
Comments
Hi Claire- Your enthusiasm for learning Turkish is contagious! I completely agree with the points you outlined above. The learning plan is shaping up excellently, but I think it would benefit from additional specificity concerning the learning materials and outcomes associated with your identified tasks. Please find my commentary at the link below. Good luck!
My%20Learning%20Plan-%20Claire%20Fuller-%20MMS%20commentary.docx