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. 

I just put a new article at the top of the articles page entitled, Life Long Language Learning: Its Way too Soon to Quit by Peter Pikkert a linguist, Turkish speaker and the author of another excellent resource the Field Manual for the LACE Method of Language Learning.  The article though is really written for those of you who have put in your initial focused time for language learning and are now on to bigger and better things, except for one thing - you still have a long way to go with your Turkish .  The article is part pep talk, part reality check and a whole lot of practical ideas of what to do now.  Go on over to the articles page and check it out.

Here is the first paragraph:

THERE ARE A COUPLE of common dangers students studying language on location overseas for
professional reasons face after their initial study period:

   1) they experience such relief at having passed the necessary exams that they would like to
      celebrate by immediately getting rid of all language-learning materials;
   2) because they can now officially be involved in work or ministry they believe their language
      will develop further without any effort, OR
   3) they are discouraged their level of language is not as high as they’d like and conclude
       they’ll not improve it further. they aim to work within the limits of their language ability.

Language learning is a lifelong marathon from which the vast majority of cross-cultural servants of the
church drop out way too soon—in fact, it’s always too soon to quit! As the church develops the need
to master the host language becomes more even important, for it takes higher levels of language to
train others than to do the teaching yourself.

Language learning can become one of the most satisfying things you will ever accomplish—if you
persevere long enough. So what can you do to stay engaged in the language and culture learning
process?