Blogs

I’ve founds that I really enjoy learning another language. It’s been a fun mix of language learning and cultural exploration and all of it’s been very interesting. Even the difficult parts were still interesting and held my attention. I really enjoyed being able to explore a non-traditional language and I will continue this Sanskrit practice as I dive further into language acquisition and yoga practice which will solidify this cultural, language based  immersion.

The format of being able to post blogs and discuss in class about our learning experiences has been really beneficial. In the past I’ve found it really difficult to stay focused or stay on track but by having a language learning community it’s a lot easier to stay motivated. It’s been so impressive hearing all of the wonderful things others have been learning this semester. I’ve really enjoyed being able to learn about other cultures that are really diverse and different. It’s been cool to see the number of Korean learners and to hear the different ways that they’ve been tackling language learning. I enjoyed the cultural blog posts especially and it gave me excuses to explore parts of the language and culture that I knew very little about. Overall it’s been a really positive experience being able to take part in this community of language learners. I will continue my language acquisition through continuing my online and book learning and by eventually getting to read primary Sanskrit sources.

I found some parts difficult in language learning such as keeping on track with the speed of language acquisition or the completion of tasks. In some ways Sanskrit was much more difficult to learn than other languages I’ve learned, such as French, because the resources and ways of learning are much difficult. There aren’t TV shows, movies, or modern novels to practice language skills with. Most of the learning comes from ancient texts that are usually religious or poetry based, and then there are a lot of cultural focused resources and grammar guides. I learned a lot from studying the yoga books and vocabulary, and it was really interesting to see the words that I’ve been familiar with in the past but am studying them under a different linguistic lens now.

I liked some of the classes/activities that focused on morphemes and word building. There was one activity where we were piecing together meanings of morphemes and entire words in a very agglutinative language (I think it was a Native American one). I’ve done similar exercises in the past and it was cool to see how fast I could do it after learning it over a year beforehand originally. I really enjoyed some of the readings on language acquisition and the readings on bilingualism: the one from the New York Times and the other from ScienceLine. I remember studying about bilingualism in my intro to psychology course and it was cool to see the concepts all come together across departments. I’d like to know more about the disappearance of languages and efforts to preserve these dying languages, since I don’t think we talked about that too much.

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There are lots of amazing things to see and do in Turkey. But, this is the moment that I fell in love with Turkey. 

Turkish people drink coffee a lot. Gokhan once made Turkish Coffee for us. It tasted really bitter. We then had the sweet lokum to deal with the bitterness in our mouths. Turkish people have a tradition of fortune telling from the coffee leftovers at the bottom of the cup. And Gokhan showed us the mobile app that uses the photo of the coffee leftovers to talk about future. 

This is Turkish Latin Alphabet. It has 29 letters and it was created within three months during the letter reform. It had a huge impact on increasing the literacy rate of Turkey.

This is Turkish Latin Alphabet. It has 29 letters and it was created within three months during the letter reform. It had a huge impact on increasing the literacy rate of Turkey.

We went to a Turkish restaurant. Gokhan recommended several traditional Turkish food and desserts. They tasted so good!!!!

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     Wow, what a semester. Looking back, I really set high expectations for myself. I forgot how difficult it is to learn a different language. On top that, teaching yourself along with the help of a language partner is not as easy as I had imagined. My language partner helped a lot and gives us plenty of tips to remember certain words and phrases. She also provided us with activities that helped me practice my grammar and my speaking. 

     However, I really wish I had one more semester of being able to take Indonesian. There is definitely a learning curve in the first couple of weeks because you are still adjusting to your learning plan and learning what the best way to learn a language is. All in all, I greatly enjoyed meeting with my language partner and learning Indonesian. It is also helped that there was Bo along to work with. Having a second person in the course was great. 

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• Reflect on your experiences as a language teacher and learning in this latest speed-dating workshop. What difficulties did you encounter? How did you successfully relay concepts that were foreign to your classmates as your students? If you were eventually granted the opportunity to teach a full semester-long course on the target language, what strategies would you adopt?

As Turkish is an agglutinative language, I considered the use of affixes and suffixes as one of the key concepts of the language. I found it is difficult that as my classmates don’t understand the meaning of Turkish, it is hard for them to find the pattern of how affixes and suffixes can change the meaning of the words. However, as some of the English words also have this kind of formation, I believe them got the idea of how many words were created in Turkish.

If I could teach Turkish, I would help them building up vocabulary by teaching them core vocabularies first. Lots of Turkish words were built by adding affixes and suffixes to the core vocabularies. In this way, I believe the students would be able to learn a large amount of vocabularies in the most effective and efficient way.

• Reflect on your experiences of (trying to) read and write in your target language. Are you bilingual? If so, would you agree with the arguments made in the two readings on bilingualism?

I would not consider myself as true bilingual. I went to an international kindergarten where all the teachers and students speak English. I might be bilingual at that time. As I spent more time in the kindergarten  than home, I must feel more comfortable in speaking English than Chinese. My parents told me that after several months going to the kindergarten, I would also speak English to them even if they speak Chinese to me. However, as I moved to another city, I transferred into a traditional Chinese school, where everything was taught in Chinese. So as I really start to learn knowledge, I have been in the Chinese environment, until I went to Canada. When I speak English, I don’t translate them into Chinese with normal conversations. However, when it comes to more complicated things such as writing essays, I would always organize my thoughts in Chinese.

There is an interesting thing. I learned French with English, thus when I write French essays, I would actually think in English. But those essays does not require much critical thinkings, and it is more like what your favorite thing etc.

• How many new words have you learned in your target language?  How did you learn them? Do you have realistic goals for your acquisition of vocabulary?

I have learnt several sets of basic vocabulary of several categories, such as school, time, greetings, and food topics. Gokhan has prepared textbook for us to study and each unit of the textbook focuses on a different topic. Gokhan would go over and explain each one to us first, and then we do some practices with the questions in the textbook. Gokhan has also made several lists on Quizlet for us to have more practice after classes. I believe that repetition is the most effective way to learn new words, so I go over them again and again for many times. I have realistic goals regarding the acquisition of vocabulary. As I first want to learn Turkish because I want to travel there, I would focus more on learning tourism, food and greeting vocabularies. By the end of the semester, I want myself to be able to order foods and tickets, and being able to have simple conversations with people.  

• How do languages go extinct? Respond to the reading, reflecting on what happens when a language dies. How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a language ever be brought back to life?

Languages go extinct when there is no people speak or use the language. Languages dies when the descendants of that group does not use, study or pass the language down to the future generations, and there is not enough documentations for others to study. Linguists can help preserving a language by keeping and organizing documentation. I personally believe that with the globalization trend, it is inevitable that the descendants of some of marginalized groups would choose to live or study other popular languages so that they have more opportunities and can be able to compete in the world. However, with enough documentations, they would be able to keep their own languages and study the language.

• Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words, or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?

According to research, Turkish belongs to the Altay branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic family, same as Finnish and Hungarian. It is the westernmost of the Turkic languages spoken across Central Asia and is generally classified as a member of the South-West group, also known as the Oguz group. Turkey is on two continents- Asia and Europe, surrounded by Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Aegean Sea. Considering its location, its language is also influenced by many other cultures. As I studied French before, I saw lots of similar spellings. Gokhan said that French people had a huge influence on Turkish. Many Turkish words and phrases are originated from French. Three languages were used during the Ottoman Empire, which are Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and they all based on Arabic script. Thus, Turkish also borrow heavily from Arabic and Persian. Before the letter reforms introducing the standardized Turkish, people from different parts of Turkey spoke different Turkish, and they might find difficulties understanding each other. At that time, with arabic Turkish, people need to understand Persian and Arabic to be able interpret others well and write well.

• Do some preliminary research on what most interests you about the target culture, and describe how this topic relates to language. Do you need any special vocabulary or linguistic knowledge to engage this topic? If so, have you included objectives in your learning plan to engage this topic?

• **This journal post may be used as foundational preparation for your final presentation.

I am most interested in the reforms in the earlier 20 centuries. Those were a series of political, legal, religious, cultural, social, and economic policy changes, which all pushed Turkey’s development. Among the reforms, there were abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate(1922), abolition of caliphate (1924), separation of the state and the religion, new capital Ankara (1923), multi-party system (1930), women’s right to vote (1930) and the weekend act (1924). Those reforms were mainly led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He was very well respected by Turkish people. His surname Ataturk was given by the Turkish people, which means the father of Turkey. Without the president and those reforms, Turkey won’t achieve its position today.

He is also the most important people in pushing the letter reform, changing the Arabic alphabet into Latin alphabet. There were so many obstacles, but he still did it. And time proved he was right, helping Turkey’s modernization. The literacy rate rose from 14% to 99%, which is a tremendous improvement. Although the future generations may not be able to read, or lose connection to the rich inheritage of the literatures from the Ottoman Empire, still the advancement of Turkey thanks to the letter reform cannot be measured.

• Describe the phonetic inventory of your target language. Are there sounds in your language that don't exist in English? Provide several phonetic transcriptions of important words.

• What do you need to know about the structure of your target language? How will you acquire the knowledge you need?  Have you identified resources and textbooks to promote your task-based objectives? Why or why not?

There are sounds in Turkish that don’t exist in English. Regarding the structure of Turkish, the word order of Turkish is different from English. It follows Subject-Object-Verb structure. For example, Ahmet yumurta-yi(egg) yedi(ate) (Ahmet eggs ate).

I learn Turkish with the textbook Gokhan has provided us. Each class we focus on one topic. Gokhan sometimes assign homework, but not much. Those homeworks are helpful for us to practice what we learned. I also watch Youtube videos, which people explain the grammar and verb forms of Turkish.

Turkish is an Agglutinative Language with lots of affixes and suffixes. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary. Affixes and suffixes can create long words and new words. They also serve grammatical functions.

• How would you qualify or describe different aspects of your target culture? Reflect and your own experiences and expectations of the culture in question. How does your culture reflect various qualitative Hofstede dimensions of culture explored in class, e.g., body language, how people talk about time, etc. Also, have you ever experienced culture shock? If so, describe.

Turkey is located where Europe meets Asia. To my belief and observations, the culture of Turkey is more incline to Asian cultures. I saw lots of similarities between Turkish culture and Chinese culture. My language partner Gokhan has shared some cultural facts with me. And there was one thing I was totally shocked- Turkish greeting style. Gokhan told us that in Turkey he had to leave half an hour early to go to the bus station when he lived in the place where he knew lots of neighbours, because he had to stop and talk with them. Each conversation would be long. In Turkey, even if two person both has work to do or is one the way to some place, they would stop and talk to each other for a while before going, once they meet on the road. And this is what they do every time, even if they are late for the next thing.  This is quite opposite from the greeting style in America and China. For example, when I see my friends on my way to class, I would talk to them one sentence or two if time permitted. However, I would never to go depth in talking, if we all have classes to go.

• How have you organized your self-directed learning plan, and what have you learned so far? How will your studies allow you investigate your target language and culture more deeply? What first prompted your interest, and motivated you to start learning?

• After receiving feedback from your classmates and Dr. Marsh-Soloway, what changes do you anticipate making?

• **This journal post will become the foundational basis of your first five-minute presentation.

During my first week of study, our language partner Gokhan taught us the Turkish alphabet. Turkish alphabet has 29 letters. I found an interesting phenomenon that some of the letters have the same pronunciation as Chinese Pinyin and French alphabet. In the second week, we learned number and time. The way Turkish people express number and time is very long and complicated. We also learned some greeting sentences this week. I practiced them by doing mock conversation with Gokhan and Adam.

I like traveling a lot and on my flight home from America to China before the winter break, I saw a traveling promotion video of Turkey. I was fascinated by the history, culture and the beautiful landscapes there. As I want to do in-depth traveling there, I chose to learn the language to have a connection with Turkey. I believe that language removes barriers.

After meeting with Dr. Marsh-Soloway, I have decided to fill my learning plan with more detailed schedules. In this way, I can be more organized and learn the language more efficiently. Also, I would be more clear of what to do each week. 

• Reflect on the readings. What parts of the brain are most important for the production and comprehension of speech? How do you conceptualize or process meaning? Do these readings bring to mind any questions or motivations that could help promote your foreign-language abilities, retention, and recollection?

In D. Crystal’s article, she introduces the functions of each area of our brains and how brain works. According to her, “the left brain hemisphere is the dominant in most right-handed people”. As I use right hand to write and do complex works much more than using my left hand, I would consider my left brain hemisphere as the dominant area for language learning. Before reading the article, I have never thought about how do I interpret things and understand meaning. Now I know that the Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are responsible for conceptualization and speech production. Reading the investigate language structure part, I also better understand how we interpret and organize our speakings, writings and signings.

Knowing how the brain works regarding understanding meanings and producing speeches, I would design better learning activities to better stimulate my brain and learn the language in a more effective and efficient way.