Learning Turkish Online
Welcome to Learning Turkish Online! The language activities
on this website are designed to help you improve your listening and reading
comprehension in Turkish. There are three levels of proficiency: Beginner,
Intermediate, and Advanced. The first two levels have 2 listening and 2
reading lessons each. The advanced level has 3 listening and 2 reading lessons.
Each lesson has more than 3 activity types, a combination of true/false,
multiple-choice, sequencing, short answer, etc. Lessons start with a ‘welcome
page’ which introduces the topic, describes what you are going to
do in the lesson and provides some language learning tips that might help
you improve your listening and reading comprehension. For purposes of self-managing
the pace of your study, you are also given a time limit at the very bottom
of each welcome page. Similarly, lessons finish with an 'exit page' which
summarizes what is learnt and what should be done next.
Why This Project
Given the fact that learning environments are becoming
increasingly supportive of individualization of language instruction and
that learners need to assume responsibility for their own learning online
language materials are of prime concern to many language instructors and
language institutions. Considering that time constraints make it almost
impossible to have sufficient amount of learner-teacher contact hours in
a classroom setting and the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult
to afford language learning, especially in FL situations, language learners
around the world need to be provided with quality online language materials.
Needs Assessment
The key finding of the reserach study behind this web-based Turkish project was that self-study language learners want to have more access to multimedia-rich computer assisted listening and reading materials in Turkish. They expect online materials to provide them with interesting topics and a variety of activities with useful tools such as a built-in glossary, highlighting of keywords, hypertext links, sophisticated listening aids, etc. Students learning Turkish want to assume more responsibility for improving their Turkish. At this point pedagogically and methodologically sound interactive online activities for improving receptive language skills appear on the top of their priority list, because listening and reading skills are vital to any language improvement and, unlike speaking and writing, they can be created and evaluated relatively promptly.
