Recently, i don't know why, i felt bit dissapointed
of myself, because i have been living in Turkey for almost 4 months! and i still
couldn't speak Turkish well.Even some of my Turkish friend said that my Turkish
is quite good as a beginner but I still not feel satisfied with it :x .my
Afganistan friend said that she could speak Turkish well after 2 months she
stayed in Turkey.im feeling challenged :P but thats right, i don’t know
how 'well 'it is. Of course for now its impossible for me to speak like a native
speaker, I’m not hoping for that, but at least i could speak better than now.
but I will never lose hope! its a baby steps! inshallah i still can do more and
more efforts to improve my third language! Allah is giving me a lot of chances
, and i must use every single chances He is giving me, and for all my friends
out there, who are struggling for their Turkish too, let us look at those 20
steps, so that all of us could get benefits from it and will able to speak
Turkish fluently soon insallah :D amin. I wrote it based on my
experiences but some of the points I got from the articles that I’ve read
from some blogs :")
1) Identify your real
intentions in learning the language. If you have big targets, for example, you
want to be a doctor, and you are going to study medicine in Turkish, so
that’s why you have to learn the language seriously. Or maybe at the same time
, you really interest to be a freelance translator. You wish to translate
Turkish books in your mother tongue. Or you want to be part time tour guider,
you will need the language, or you wanna be a writer or so on. So this targets
will push you to learn it for the sake of God
2) Read the Turkish
book for children
-When
we start learning a new language, we must start from the lowest level right?
Just like in a kindergarten. So when we are learning Turkish, we must do the
same. If we are a Turkish beginner, but will we be able to read a Turkish novel
or the literature books? Surely not right. Because they use high level of
language. So its good for us the beginner to read the story book for children,
because the words they are using must be easier so that small children could
understand well. So now, we are that ‘small children’, and let us try to read
those books. At first we will feel very lazy to translate every single words
but remember whats your real aim, you want to learn that language. If even a children
book you feel lazy to read, what if other books that you must read to get your
degree in university ? think wisely
3) Listen to
the Turkish cartoon, radio,TV any audio
I
have some website links if you want to watch the Turkish cartoon,even some of
the cartoons are not the real product of Turkey, but at least they had
transferred the language into Turkish.
At
first, you will find them speaking maybe too fast, but at least you will be
able to catch some words that you have heard and learnt .
You
can also listen to Turkish pilmisuer mp3 audio.its really help
Pay
a lot of attention to learning the correct pronunciation. You wouldn’t like to
sound like a foreigner or to grate on my interlocutors’ ears
4) Setting
long-term and short-term goals
try
to have mini-goals that you can achieve in a very short time.
ex:
short term goal- to be able to speak well (lancar) even slowly within 4
months
5) Having a good and
passionate tutor or an equally passionate study partner can sometimes
make all the difference.With self-study alone I could not achieve a
thinking level of Turkish.
6) Search for the
websites in internet that could help you in Turkish .for ex to do the
exercises, and you could also have online Turkish teacher to help you with your
personal homeworks. For ex try to make your own homework by making new
sentences of the verbs that u just got and ask the teacher to check them. I do
have my own online Turkish teacher that I knew from internet. But make yourself
more often ya’ni constantly, istiqamah with your own homework because sometimes
I do forgot them and do other things.
7) Talk to the
Turkish native speaker even in internet. I have a lot of Turkish penpals and I tried
to speak with them in Turkish even I know how bad my Turkish is :P before this
I speak only English with them but once I speak Turkish, I don’t wanna speak
English, because they always help me by correcting me when I got false in my
Turkish communications.and sometimes they even teach me the street language :P
because I wanna know it. But better to learn the normal Turkish first :D
8) Try to translate
the advertisements or any signboards that you’ve seen by the roadsides
9) Try to get
as much frustrating study work out of the way as you can in your home
country; especially phrases and vocabulary; this will allow you to take
advantage of the country and locals themselves for practise
10) Get yourself an inexpensive phrasebook to
keep in your pocket/purse to take out and study in little 2-minute windows
during the day whenever you have to wait.Jot down every single new words that
just cross on your mind and try to memorize them.
Make
sure you have your own dictionary!! Its very hard if you don’t have your own
and need to borrow from others in class
11) Use funmemory
techniques to not forget all of those new words you are
learning.for ex ones you get the new words, try to make new sentences by using
that word,and soon in your communication with your friends, you can use that
words and inshaallah you will get used to it.
12) Try to think back the words that you had
memorised when you have nothing to do. For ex before you go to bed for sleep
13) Listen to Turkish songs might help you
especially when you try to understand the lyrics. And make sure jot down the
new vocabularies that you might get from the song lyrics. I have been listening
to songs by Emre Aydin and Baris Manco :P
14) Not to focus too much on grammar in the early
stages. Just like when you are learning English. Its ok if you have mistakes on
grammar, the most important is your confidents to use the knowledges that you
have about the languages and speak
Focussing on grammar
too much in the early stages is a huge mistake in the academic approach. speak
as much as possible and you need words and phrases for this,Study grammar after
you can communicate a little and it will be much more interesting and help you
“tidy up” what you’ve got
15)- DO NOT speak English or any other languages that you had
always speak. Not speaking English is a decision you have to make as
soon as possible if you want to learn as quickly as possible.try to speak fully
in turkish, just when you dont know or dont remember the word, you are allowed
to speak other language but make sure after that you search back in your
dictionary to know what the word means in turkish
17) But if you find that
some natives prefer to speak to you in English, there are lots of ways to convince
them to help
you. But when you are socialising with them, keep in mind that you don’t need to drink to be able to speak the
language.
For ex you wanna learn the
fruits’, vegetables’ , foods’ names in Turkish, then you can use the google
images.this technique used by my teachers in my Turkish class in TOMER
19) Try to communicate with the locals. for example
when you go to the market,make sure use the knowledges that already had on your
mind. for example if you wanna buy the onions, do not just point your finger on
the onions to the seller to show that you want that. 'at least you could say
something like ' bir kilo soğan alabilir misiniz? ". just speaak! your
mouth wanna say out that in turkish but your mind sometimes refused to :P
20) Try not to take it too seriously and have fun
with your language!
That’s all that I could share for now, if you have
any other ideas, kindly to drop a comment that I could get the new knowledges
:D
