Friday, June 17, 2011

Setting a specific goal for Turkish for the month of July

I've been thinking a lot about my progress in Turkish the last few days.

I have reached a point that the grammar is no longer a problem for me, at least in everyday conversations and situations. It's an incredibly good feeling, and I remember reaching it when I was living in Mexico with Spanish, then later when I was studying Italian. I can't really say it feels like a weight has been lifted. But things seem much easier. I no longer wonder why something is expressed the way it is. I just learn it, then move on.

I've got the foundation now to concentrate on other things, namely increasing my vocabulary. To be sure, I'll continue to review and solidify even more my grammar points, particularly lesser known tenses and other things found mostly in literature, but that won't be my primary focus, at least for the next month.

I currently estimate my vocabulary in Turkish to be a little bit over 2000 words, but I can't be completely sure. I've never actually measured it. But during the month of July, I have a plan to increase my vocabulary by 60-75 words a week. So that would give me an extra 250-300 words in four weeks. It doesn't seem like much, but these will be new words. On top of what I already have. These could also be idioms or everyday proverbs or sayings. If the plan goes as well as I hope, I'll continue on with it the rest of the year.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for your recommendation on Twitter to subcribe to tweets of CNN and BBC Türkçe. I am now also a reader of these Turkish news tweets. They are short, so these are easy bits of Turkish which are not too difficult for me to understand. Fasulye

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  2. Yeah, I've been using BBC Türkçe for a while, but just recently added CNNTurk. Between the two of them I'm getting plenty of new vocabulary!

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