Our good friends at Turk Telecom have a great website called TT Çocuk where they have a nice collection of animated childrens stories and fairy tales that you can listen to.  Ten stories are in both English and Turkish and there are nine other stories that are only in Turkish.  Listen first in English to get the gist of the story and then go back and listen again in Turkish.  They are well done and the audio is high quality.  I will try and find a place to put a link to the page on the website if there is a positive response to the stories.  Be sure and point your Turkish friends to the site as well as a good source of English for their kids.  And if you have kids, pull one up on your lap and watch together. I had both of mine on my lap this evening.  It's like reading a picture book on the computer.

Stephen Kaufman of The Linguist Method details what he sees as some of the primary benefits and advantages that the internet has to offer language learners. You can read or listen to his helpful article here.  In the article he discusses a number of different things, but what I found most valuable are his thoughts on the primacy of input and the idea of the importance of learning new vocabulary.  It is an interesting article and useful in thinking about how we go about learning languages.  As a note, Kaufman's free language learning program is called Lingq.  It is a great program with something like 12 available languages to learn.  Unfortunately, Turkish is not yet one of them. 

So I thought I might try something new and offer the "Tip of the Bi-Week."  Bi-Week because I am assuming now that I wont get around to doing it weekly.  Mostly it is for my own motivation to continue to think like a language learner, to explore new ideas and practice proven ones.  But I will try to post one every other week or so. Here is this weeks. 

Always carry a stack of 10-15 note cards with the expressions, grammar forms, proverbs, example sentences, etc. that you are currently learning written on them.  For example, in an earlier post about carrying a PAN with you at all times, I mentioned wanting to learn to ask the question, "How do you stay warm in this weather?"  I worked on it with my language helper, writing it in my big spiral notebook that I use for lessons.  Then I forgot about it.  Well, I looked it back up today, wrote it on a note card and put it with the other things I have been working on.  You can pull the cards out on the bus, while you are standing in line or while your wife is talking to you about something she thinks is very important (just kidding) and quickly review them.  It will help you to solidify what you are learning and lock key phrases in your mind.

A new feature has been added to the contribute page allowing you to upload your files from this site.  Just head over to the page and scroll down to the contact form.   Fill in the form, upload your file and send it over.  Easy as 1, 2, 3.  Except that you need to record something first.  Get started.  Together we can make this a better site. 

Also, a pole has been placed on the side bar.  Please let us know what you think.  Handcrafted Journals have had the Turkish text removed. Handcrafted Stories still has them.  Compare the two and vote today! (the pol

Finally, a new story has been added to Handcrafted Stories called "The Parable of the Tenant."  It is a basic retelling of an old parable.

Well, we have done a bit of work on the site in order to make it more user friendly.  Mostly it is a change in how the audio files are organized.  Most of the changes can be seen in the Handcrafted Audio page.  I have also stopped putting the Turkish under each English summary, but will shortly have all the Turkish transcripts together in one word document.  It was getting too busy with all the text.  Hopefully this will help.  Let me know what you think.

PAN? Project Activities Notebook.  You should carry it with you everywhere.  It is an idea from the PILAT training program and it is an important part of your Turkish learning journey.  It is important in two regards, though I am not sure which is more important.  The first is the obvious - whenever you encounter a situation you don't quite have the Turkish for or see something that you wish you could learn more about - you write it down (right away) in your notebook.  Then you can come back to it later with a language helper or a Turkish friend.  As an example:  last week I was talking with a young man who sells simit in our area and was thinking he was not quite dressed warm enough for the cold day.  I wanted to ask him how he stayed warm on cold days, but while I was able to cobble something together to get the idea across, I knew there was a better way. A few minutes later on the bus, I pulled out my PAN and wrote the incident down and later went over it with my language helper coming up with several ways to ask my simple question.  The second reason to carry a PAN with you at all times is that it serves as a constant reminder that you are a language learner and it will bring an added awareness to your language learning experience. It also serves as a regular reminder to your Turkish friends that you are serious about learning their language. BUT, you have to create the habit of pulling it out and writing stuff down.  To do this, the notebook must be small enough to carry with you.  I would encourage everyone, no matter how long you have been working at learning Turkish to carry a Project Activities Notebook and write down anything and everything that you would like to learn or need to work on.  Good luck on the journey!  

Live Mocha is a great site for learning languages -  36 different languages to be exact, including Turkish.  It is a great site for all levels.  Though I have only just begun to play around with the site it has a structured set of lessons to progressively help you improve your Turkish.  You can upgrade for more help, time with a tutor, more lessons and video downloads.  One great feature is that instruction can happen in your native language - not just English.  This provides better access for our Turkish friends trying to learn English.  Check it out.  It may be just the extra piece of the puzzle you need.  It may be just a good review.  Or it may be just the site your Turkish friends are looking for to learn English.  Let me know what you think. 

PS- click on the Live Mocha icon to go to their site.