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Tackling Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 25 of 91 02 November 2010 at 6:51am | IP Logged |
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It felt like I barely studied Turkish at all yesterday, because I was in a bad mood and
the language didn't seem like it was making nearly as much sense to me as it usually does (which one caused the other, I couldn't say for sure). It occurred to me, also, that I can read a Portuguese newspaper- never having studied Portuguese- with slightly more ease than I can read a Turkish one after so many long hours of struggle. That's a little disheartening. Still, I got through thirteen pages of HP rather than ten (page 134 now) and did my Mnemosyne practice, even if I totally neglected to work through a news article. (Edit: almost forgot... I also put up a little message on lang-8, although nobody's corrected it yet!). Then I found some Turkish blogs and started streaming The Meerkats in Turkish. Nature docs in foreign languages... oh my god. How awesome. I've decided to start giving some raw numbers from my SRS, so here goes: All cards: Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 31 (9.0 %) Grade 3 : 50 (14.6 %) Grade 4 : 74 (21.6 %) Grade 5 : 188 (54.8 %) My highest-ranking set (also, by no coincidence, the oldest): Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 3 : 1 (1.3 %) Grade 4 : 9 (11.8 %) Grade 5 : 66 (86.8 %) My lowest-ranking set (the ones from the Tea Party article the other day): Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 11 (22.9 %) Grade 3 : 12 (25.0 %) Grade 4 : 18 (37.5 %) Grade 5 : 7 (14.6 %) Hmm, I guess I'll shoot for page 150 today, along with my scheduled Mnemosyne cards, and if I happen to do anything else Turkish-related I'll get to feel all productive and stuff. Edited by Sierra on 02 November 2010 at 7:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 26 of 91 03 November 2010 at 6:48am | IP Logged |
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Sixteen pages of Harry Potter? HAH! Blew that goal out of the water, and read twenty-
eight, taking me up to p. 162. Maybe I should start recording how many words I look up per page, seeing as there aren't so terribly hugely many of them anymore? I would guesstimate around ten or fifteen per page, which is less awful than it sounds when you consider that I'm reading from a PDF- I own the book, don't worry, but I find it easier to just do everything on the computer- and what I'm counting as a page is really more like two. Anyway, I am exceedingly fond of numbers and statistics as indicators of progress, however imperfect they may be. Which makes a neat segue into...Mnemosyne stats! Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 15 (4.4 %) Grade 3 : 41 (12.0 %) Grade 4 : 88 (25.7 %) Grade 5 : 199 (58.0 %) There you have yesterday's numbers, which show a small but noticeable improvement from the previous day. One more word on grade five and I will throw myself an imaginary party. Still no editing on my lang-8 journal. It's almost as if these people have better things to do than sit around in their underwear commenting on my heartbreaking Turkish. I have to admit that my first entry was pretty much just "what's up guys, I'm learning Turkish, I live in the West Bank, well, cool, see ya!" because I had to rush off and teach my class. I will learn from my mistakes so people might actually comment and I can, um, learn from my other mistakes. Goals for today: Another Lang-8 entry, keep watching Meerkat Manor, read up to page 180 of Harry, and do my Mnemosyne grunt work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 27 of 91 04 November 2010 at 6:28am | IP Logged |
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I read 20 pages of Harry Potter, taking me up to 182, but didn't do much else since I
had a surprisingly sociable day for somebody in the throes of a major language obsession. Not much of any particular interest to report today, then, except I'll throw my new Mnemosyne stats at you: Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 55 (12.7 %) Grade 3 : 32 (7.4 %) Grade 4 : 106 (24.5 %) Grade 5 : 239 (55.3 %) As you see, the percentages have gone down but the numbers have gone up- that's because I added 89 new words yesterday, my largest chunk to date. Total fours and fives now: 345. I would desperately love to be able to evaluate my vocab. I'm pretty sure I know at least 1,500 words and less than 10,000, but I have no clue where I sit inside that range. Off to read some Harry Potter. Aiming for page 200 today! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 28 of 91 05 November 2010 at 10:12am | IP Logged |
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Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %)
Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 14 (3.2 %) Grade 3 : 45 (10.4 %) Grade 4 : 112 (25.9 %) Grade 5 : 261 (60.4 %) There's my Mnemosyne progress for you- feels like I'm actually going backwards nowadays since I find myself clicking 2 or 3 for so many words, but looking at the numbers, I guess I have to put that down to the nature of an SRS; of course it's going to be giving me more of the ones I don't know than the ones I do, even though there are fewer of them. I read up to page 204 in Harry Potter. Not going to set a goal for today, since I have so much else to do and don't want to end up disappointing myself. What else do I have to do, you ask? Well, yesterday I sent out messages to a whole list of potential language partners on SharedTalk, thinking that maybe one out of ten would actually respond. Nearly all of them have, though, so now I have what probably amounts to hours of writing ahead of me- writing in Turkish! I did a few last night and found it utterly punishing. Which means that I still have a loooong road ahead of me before I can actually produce intelligible Turkish with confidence. That's okay, though. Time to get to work! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 29 of 91 05 November 2010 at 5:54pm | IP Logged |
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I've decided to post one of my laboriously-written and still offensively bad (?)
Turkish messages to a new buddy on SharedTalk. Note all the smiley faces, which I imagine become the crutch of many a language learner making her first tentative forays into the wilds of actual communication with actual people; intent on not giving offense through poor word choice or whatever, I sprinkled them liberally throughout my mail. Feel free to correct the mistakes in this, by the way! Selam, Senin düzeltmen (ve iltifat) için çok teşekkürler! Ama sözlüğü kullandığımı itiraf etmeliyim... aslında bir tek kısa mesaj yazmam bin saat falan alır :) Bilmece gibi oluyor. Ben öğretmenim. Şimdilik Nablus'ta bir kuruluş için çalışıyorum, ingilizcele spor dersleri veriyorum. Burası çok az spor oynayan kızlar var, ama nasıl oynamayı öğrenmeden sonra futbol çok seviyorlar. Bence İstanbul kesinlikle güzel bir şehir. :) Kadıköy'de iki buçuk aydır oturuyordum, ostelde bir işim vardı. Ama Türkiye'de olduğum zamanda hiçbir yere gittim, İstanbul ve Kabak hariç. Türkiye'ye geri gitmemden sonra diğer şehirlere gitmem mümkün olacaği umarım. 'Mar Adentro'... İspanyolca okuyor musun? Ben onu altı yıldır okudum, Amerika'da çok önemli tabii :) Hahah, oda arkadaşım tam şimdi bancosunu çıktı... konsantrasyon imkânsız olur! Gitmem lazım :) Benim için seninle yazmak çok yararlı, sağol arkadaşım!! Sierra 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 30 of 91 07 November 2010 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %)
Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 7 (1.6 %) Grade 3 : 16 (3.7 %) Grade 4 : 128 (29.6 %) Grade 5 : 281 (65.0 %) Pretty significant improvement there on vocab! I've been slowing down on Harry Potter in favor of doing some writing in Turkish, both with SharedTalk partners and on Lang-8. Writing even the shortest paragraph takes me about a billion years, but I've been getting good feedback and hopefully my writing skill (and speed) with see some noticeable improvement soon. Still, though, I'm cracking open HP now and again. I'm on page 219 now, which leaves me with 54 more pages to go until I can start book four! Thus concludes this tragically short update. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 31 of 91 08 November 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged |
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Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %)
Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 3 (0.7 %) Grade 3 : 27 (6.3 %) Grade 4 : 108 (25.0 %) Grade 5 : 294 (68.1 %) Holding pretty steady on Mnemosyne. I'm about to add a whole ton of new words, though, which will muddy things up again. Up to page 248 of Harry Potter- 25 more to go until I get to start on book four! I wrote another Lang-8 entry yesterday. I have a hard time thinking of good topics; so far, aside from my general introductory message, I've done one about ghosts and one about what I used to do when I was a kid. I think it's helping me a lot to actually produce Turkish, even though I do it agonizingly slowly. I feel that after each entry, I have a slightly better sense of which form the verbs should be in, which is by far my biggest issue in getting anything out in Turkish. My reading speed in Harry Potter is still picking up. I think it's at least tripled since I started with the series about a month ago. Does anyone know of a good site explaining wordbuilding rules in Turkish? I'm making more of an effort these days to flashcard words I passively understand but could never actively produce, most of which are closely related to words I do already know- like "miraculous" from "miracle," for example. I can almost always tell pretty much exactly what the words mean from looking at them, so I must have some passive knowledge of word construction, but it's nowhere near conscious enough for me to create the words myself or even list endings which make verbs into nouns or nouns into adjectives or whatever. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 32 of 91 09 November 2010 at 8:51am | IP Logged |
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Grade 0 : 0 (0.0 %)
Grade 1 : 0 (0.0 %) Grade 2 : 54 (10.3 %) Grade 3 : 48 (9.1 %) Grade 4 : 105 (20.0 %) Grade 5 : 319 (60.6 %) Don't panic! The percentages are down, but this is because I have dun dun duuuun added a whole bunch of new words, 94 to be exact, and I am now up to 526. I also finished Harry Potter book three and have just begun reading Harry Potter ve Ateş Kadehi. It seems a whole lot harder than the last one- maybe it's because the books do get increasingly more adult throughout the series, or maybe it's because the first chapter of this one is really backstory-heavy and thus does not have much dialogue, favoring enormous paragraphs of description. Anyway, book four is going to be a bit of a challenge, if only because it's 489 pages long. Can't wait to get to Turkey can't wait to get to Turkey can't wait to get to Turkey. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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