Language Instruction

So as I might have mentioned before, not many people in Istanbul speak any English. In fact, the only people that I've encountered that do are students and professors at Boğaziçi, and a very few people around the city. Even the administration at Boğaziçi doesn't speak English. For instance, the people in charge of setting up email addresses only spoke Turkish, as well as the people in charge of distributing student IDs. Communication isn't as hard as you think, because you can usually get your meaning across. But there is still a lot of reason for someone to learn Turkish while they are here.

Before, I had planned to take a course here called "Elementary Turkish for Foreigners," but then I found out that the class meets at the same time as some of the courses that I absolutely need to take while I'm here. So I've decided to take my learning of Turkish into my own hands.

Enter the "Lykes Language Instruction Program (LLIP) ®," a "program" I'm developing that I think could in theory be applied to the learning of any language. LLIP consists of four parts:

1. The Textbook. Before I left the United States, I ordered a book on the Internet called "Elementary Turkish" by Kurtuluş Öztopçu (KUR-too-loosh uz-TOAP-chu). This book is about two inches thick and contains lots of information about the Turkish language. There are CDs you can listen to, chapters describing the grammar, and exercises that you can go through for practice. I will be using this as one of my main references as far as grammar rules goes.
   
2. Conversation Club. Every Tuesday evening, there is this group of Turkish students that hosts a conversation club for the exchange students. I've only been to one meeting so far, but it was extremely helpful. They give you worksheets to go through, and then try to get students to have conversations with each other. One of my American friends who is actually taking "Elementary Turkish for Foreigners" says that one session of the conversation club was much more useful than the entire first two weeks of his class.
3. Questions. Anyone from my immediate family will remember that as a young child, I used to ask LOTS of questions. Well, I will be taking that strategy here too. Right now, I am surrounded by Turkish students, so I will be using them as a resource. I have three Turkish roommates, as well as other Turkish friends that I have made. So I will ask questions about grammar, and what kinds of things you can and can't say. By the end of the semester, I hope to be able to hold real conversations in Turkish with them!
4. Movies. Finally, I think that this is the part of the program that will help me the most. In Istanbul, they have a lot of American-made movies with Turkish subtitles. And after I watched one of these for the first time, I found that I was already picking up on certain things. For instance, I saw "Charlie Wilson's War" in a theater here, and even knowing no Turkish except for words like "yes," "no," and a few numbers, I was able to start at least telling which words were verbs, and which were nouns, which is harder than you might think. Since then, I have bought several DVDs and have been watching them for a few hours each week. I think that watching the movies will serve two main purposes: (1) to learn new vocabulary and grammar, and (2) to reinforce things that I will have already learned. If you think about it, this is one of the most efficient ways to practice understanding a language. It's two hours straight of pure language instruction, but in the end, you're just watching a movie, so it doesn't even feel like you're doing any work. Also, you're picking up on the language that is most commonly used, which is therefore the language that it will be of the most use.

So I'm treating this as a huge experiment to see how fast I can possibly learn a language. I have already pretty much learned to speak Spanish, so I feel that I'm prepared to teach myself a new language.

And so far, I think it's working. I've been on this "program" for about two weeks, and while before, I could understand 1% of the subtitles in the movies that I've watched, it is now around 15-20%. My goal is to spend about an hour or so each day on this, so we'll see how fluent I am at the end of the semester!


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