So last week I set a goal for myself to increase my vocabulary by 350 or so words in a month. It's going well just after one week. If I continue at the rate I am I should have closer to 500 words by the end of July, but I need to make sure that I'm retaining these new words and reinforcing their use.
I'm currently using three news outlets to find new vocabulary - Hürriyet, BBC Türkçe and CNNTurk. I have twitter following these three for news stories and can quickly scan for new things. I'm using an application on Linux called Hotot for twitter. I highly recommend it for Linux users. It has an extension that does translation, so if I run across any words I don't know, I can highlight them and translate them in-application.
Following news twitters is great, because I can get small chunks of relevant information, and if I'm interested in the article, I can click through to the full article in my browser. And I get the reinforcement and repetition I need by going through all three news sources. Another added benefit of going through three different sources to get the same news story is that the articles between each source will be slightly different and each will have a different perspective.
With these three news sources alone, I've picked up about 150-160 words this last week. I'm pretty happy with that number. It's a fair amount, but not so much as to overwhelm me.
I've also decided to to something else which may or may not increase my vocabulary, but it's certainly fun: I'm thoroughly learning one Turkish pop song per week. This week's pick is Mustafa Sandal's "Karizma". Yeah, it's trite pop music, but what can I say? It's got a good beat. And it's memorable.
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