What to expect from your online Turkish lessons

So, you are interested in learning the Turkish language online. Here's a little more information about the lessons.    My online Turkish lessons are delivered using  Skype,  Messenger, Facebook etc .  You will need a webcam so that we can see each other.    We will meet at an agreed time.   Each lesson will be an hour.   It is a real one-to-one lesson with me.   This is not recorded,  this is real Turkish teaching: the use of the web cameras mean that distances are no obstacle.  In other words it's pretty much like sitting across the table from your Turkish teacher.  My Turkish lessons are one to one which means you are getting one hundred percent of my attention.

For the first lessons we will use some course material that I have designed with the aim of helping students getting started.   This introduces some basic vocabulary, sounds, the rules of vowel harmony and some basic grammar structures.   The aim is for you to learn the Turkish words without "translating in your head" so you will see pictures and learn the Turkish word for the thing shown.   Think about it this is the way children learn a language: seeing something and learning its name.    Grammar is introduced gradually and meaningfully with the student being encouraged to "discover" the grammar rules for her or himself.   This is a teaching methodology which has been used very successfully for many years with people learning English as a second language.   It is a methodology which is less often used with Turkish where many of the teachers (if they are native speakers of the language) are used to an old fashioned "didactic" method centring on the teacher rather than the student.

After around 20 lessons or so we will move to using a Turkish course which is specifically designed for the foreign learner.   The course is called "Yeni Hitit".   The materials consist of a course book, work book and audio CD rom.   The course is designed for class-room learning and are highly suitable for the "internet class" or one to one lesson.

If students prefer a course centred on other material which they have already purchased I am happy to use other course books.

It is generally recognised that there are four skills that a proficient user of a language needs to develop :   listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students need to work on each of these areas to develop and lessons are structured to achieve this.

Listening is the first skill to develop.  It is important to learn the authentic sounds of spoken Turkish.   This will be done by learning the sounds of key Turkish words as well as learning the 29 letters of the Turkish alphabet.   As students progress we will do listening and comprehension tasks.   To begin with the only Turkish voice you will hear is mine later on I will use recordings of other native Turkish speakers.