Turkish

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dklinker
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Turkish

Postby dklinker » Sat Dec 19, 2020 1:57 am

Hello everyone. Over the next 12 months I hope to improve my Turkish reading and listening. At the moment my level is probably a solid A2. If I can keep with this project, working a bit most days, I hope to reach a high B1 level by the start of 2022. This project is also a bit of an experiment to see if it is possible to significantly improve writing and speaking skills, not by working on them directly, but by doing lots of intensive listening and modified scriptorium - read a sentence in the target language, look away and write it down, check for errors.

I look forward to any feedback and/or insights from other Turkish language learners or native speakers - or for that matter learners of any languages.

Görüşmek üzere!
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dklinker
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Re: Turkish

Postby dklinker » Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:32 pm

At the start of this project I expected to be doing lots of intensive listening but didn't expect to be doing it with math tutorials for first and second graders. Below are links to two playlists on the Khan Academy's youtube channel.

Because of the subject matter the videos provide lots of practice with grammar not seen as frequently in narratives. The videos are surprisingly chatty and entertaining, but maybe I just have a pretty low standard for what can be considered entertaining.

There is a lot of overlap on the two playlists. There are also playlists for grades 3 through 8 but by the end of these two I'll probably have had my fill of math lessons.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... NfZTyOJnNg

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... R1b5fDfBj-
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Re: Turkish

Postby Wernecker » Sun Dec 27, 2020 2:19 pm

Thanks for the YT links, these math lessons are nice an enjoyable. This is the kind of content I like for improving my listening and reading.

Enjoy your learning!
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dklinker
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Re: Turkish

Postby dklinker » Wed Jan 06, 2021 8:18 pm

https://yumurtaliekmek.com

The link above is to the site I've been using for reading practice. It's an online magazine for Turkish speaking children, probably aimed at about 10 to 12 year-olds. There are quite a few articles on a fairly wide range of topics, and the articles are short enough that even on a busy day I can manage at least one of them. There are enough articles that it shouldn't be necessary to look for new reading material for a while yet, but of course that doesn't mean I won't waste my time doing just that.

I was hesitant to recommend this site because some of the articles have a typo or two, but if you copy and paste any peculiar looking sentence into google translate, it's pretty good at identifying the typos and correcting them. Even with the typos the articles have been useful. And for my level (maybe A2/low B1) they are fairly interesting without being a struggle.
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Xenops
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Re: Turkish

Postby Xenops » Wed Jan 06, 2021 8:26 pm

Hello there! :D Question: what did you use to get to A2? There doesn't seem to be many beginning resources for Turkish, aside from Teach Yourself and FSI (with disappointing audio).
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dklinker
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Re: Turkish

Postby dklinker » Mon Jan 11, 2021 3:00 am

Xenops wrote:Hello there! :D Question: what did you use to get to A2? There doesn't seem to be many beginning resources for Turkish, aside from Teach Yourself and FSI (with disappointing audio).


Hi Xenops

My experience reaching an A2 level probably isn't going to be very helpful. Originally I had no intention of learning Turkish but went to Turkey looking for a relaxing and interesting vacation. By the end of the first week in the country I was hooked and decided to learn more than just a few phrases so I bought a pocket dictionary and a grammar book written for Turkish speakers learning English and used them to learn the basics. Most of my progress, though, was made during subsequent visits by having lots of repetitive interactions in shops. restaurants. hotels and public transportation, and by having lots of conversations with the people I met. It wasn't a very structured or efficient way to learn (although it probably could have been if I had known what I was doing) but at the time I didn't really think of it as language learning - it was just a way to get more out of my vacations and to spend more time with the people I met.

That probably wasn't very helpful so I've done a quick internet search and listed some resources below that you might like to have a look at. Except for the Assimil course I haven't used any of them, but they all look pretty reasonable.

BOOKS
- Turkish Grammar in Practice
- 2000 Most Common Turkish Words in Context
- The Delights of Learning Turkish
- Turkish Short Stories for Beginners
- Assimil Le Turc (with audio)

YOUTUBE CHANNELS
- Language Animated (not very good quality audio)
- Learn Turkish with Turkish Class
- Super Easy Turkish playlist

INTERNET SITES
- Lingq
- Babbel
- Turkish Language House

I hope this is helpful
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dklinker
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Re: Turkish

Postby dklinker » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:08 am

I am still using the "Yumurtali Ekmek" site for intensive reading but have changed my approach. Intensive reading wasn't helping much unless I reviewed each reading passage several times, but that started getting tedious. So, I've started a notebook where I can write down some of the more challenging sentences. Copying the sentences forces me to focus on the phrases and structures that are problematic, and with fewer sentences to review the review sessions are going much faster. And staying mentally focused is no longer an issue.

For a change of pace, I've also started doing some extensive reading. For this I try to read as quickly as possible, occasionally pausing to reread something or to puzzle something out, but trying to avoid the urge to look up vocabulary. Below are links to the two sites I've been using. The first site is offering free downloads of three short books written to help kids work through their feelings during the pandemic. The second is the site of a publisher of popular science magazines. During the pandemic they are offering free downloads from their archives - I'm using back issues of "Bilim Cocuk", which is targeted at preteens. These sites were lucky finds as I was having trouble finding materials that work for extensive reading at my level.

https://tr.kovanagency.com/oscar-zoe

https://services.tubitak.gov.tr/edergi/ ... 700WZvLdnH
Last edited by dklinker on Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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dklinker
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Re: Turkish

Postby dklinker » Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:07 am

I've been doing lots of reading and intensive listening. It would be nice to start doing some extensive listening, but at the moment my Turkish isn't good enough for films, TV series, documentaries or newscasts to be an efficient use of time - and I haven't found much of anything else that would work well for extensive listening at my level. Perhaps that will change in a few months, or perhaps I just need to loosen up and get comfortable with the idea of not understanding large chunks of what I'm listening to.

For the moment it's been lots of intensive listening and then more intensive listening. Below is a link to a youtube playlist of kids' stories that I've been using. There aren't subtitles, so it's been challenging and sometimes frustrating, but because the videos are short and most of the stories are familiar it's worked fairly well. And maybe being forced to decipher everything without having subtitles to fall back on has been a useful exercise. At any rate I'm looking forward to the day when it will be possible to just sit back and listen to more interesting materials without having to concentrate.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... OQEeH6GvxQ
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t123
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Re: Turkish

Postby t123 » Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:00 am

There are a set of books called Turkce Okuyorum which are pretty good. You can hear the audio on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR5YVof5L0I

I would guess they range from A1-B2. The books have the transcripts, a question and answer key and a dictionary/vocabulary section at the back. The hard part is finding the books at a reasonable price online. Eventually I bought them in Istanbul for NTL25 each.
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dklinker
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Re: Turkish

Postby dklinker » Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:24 pm

There are a set of books called Turkce Okuyorum which are pretty good. You can hear the audio on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR5YVof5L0I


Hi t123. Thanks for the tip. I'm trying to do this project without spending any money, so at least for now nothing like courses or Netflix - just what ever is available on youtube or elsewhere on the internet. But I'll check to see what the audio is like. Thanks again.
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