I recently subscribed to a new blog that offers a daily dose of Turkish.  Chuck Wade of Izmir  puts together the daily posts at Turkce Cozelem, a site created to both share a bit of Turkish and a daily Bible reading.  Here is what Chuck says on the site:

I created this blog as a way to help myself (and possibly you) study Turkish.
Every morning post will be one verse from the New Testament, with new words explained, a basic translation and finally the English (ESV) translation at the bottom.

By subscribing to the RSS feed for email, each post will come to your inbox giving you a quick look at new words and grammar forms.  This can be a great two minute blast of Turkish and can help add a little Turkish to your regular work day.  A little bit everyday is an important remedy for success as a language learner.  I have used it this way and it's been a great Turkish interruption to my already busy days.  Check it out yourself.


http://turkcecozelim.wordpress.com/

I have been busy over at my other site, The Everyday Language Learnerlately with a few products that I am very excited about.  The first is the coming move from the blocked in Turkey Blogger platform to a Wordpress platform.  I am really excited about the look and the new features the site will have.  Now I just need to figure out how to actually make the switch!  When the relaunch happens though, I have two new projects that I am excited to be releasing. The first is The Everyday Language Learner Ten Week Journey email series which is designed to help beginners get started learning another language and to give them the tools, knowhow and habits to keep going.  The second project is my ebook, The Everyday Language Learner's Guide to Getting Started: Three Principles for an Effective and Efficient Language Learning Experience.  Both of these will be available when the site relaunches.  I'll give you a heads up!

Outside of that, I want to let you know about a new Turkish opportunity.  Not perfect, but if you need to be inspired, you might as well add a little Turkish to the mix.  TED is a conference that brings speakers from all over the world together to share their ideas.  And now, you can watch these videos with Turkish subtitles.  Pretty cool.  Check out John Wooden below or visit the TED website to choose between thousands of different speakers.  

Kolay Gelsin!

A few weeks back I came across Türkçe / On the Front Page, a site created by Canadian Felix who has the Turkish bug and wants to help you catch it too. The website is simple.  Turkish newspaper headlines are given in Turkish and then discussed.  New words are explained.  New vocabulary is gained.  It is a great site and each post is a fun, short lesson in Turkish.  If you click on the subscribe button at the top right corner, you can have each blog post emailed to you when it is posted.  Felix posts a couple of times a week so its not overwhelming, but can be a great way to keep the Turkish bug fresh.  Go over and visit today and make sure and subscribe.

You can see the site HERE.

I know that Cactus Language Training created this proficiency test to help them better place their prospective students, but it is a useful tool to find out where you are at.  As with all proficiency tests of this nature, it is not a complete picture of where you are at, but it can be helpful and will give you a basic idea of where you are at in general.  As a plug for Cactus Language Training, they seem to offer some great courses if you are in one of their locations.
link to turkish test

I was introduced to a great website tonight at a friends house.  They had been using this site a bit and found it very helpful.  When I got home, and after I got my son tucked into bed, I too had a look and think it is really a great site.  The site is called Turkish Tutor and seems to have been developed at UCLA, but the cool think about it is that it uses a long staniding Turkish television program, Bizimkiler, as its content.  I would suggest watching the short tutorial found on the home page of the site, but the basic gist is that you watch short scenes from the show (30 seconds or so) that allow you to explore different aspects of Turkish language and culture.   There are twelve different lessons each with three - four scenes to watch.  Topics include things like: welcoming, greetings, food, ordering food, food, asking for the time, health, leave taking, etc.  Each lesson has a glossary of terms, an exercise and one very cool feature - the ability to listen to the scene slowed down.  It actually has three choices of speeds to listen: normal, slow and really slow, so you can catch every aspect of the verbal exchanges taking place.  I think it could be a great set of lessons to go through for the beginner and a great site to visit to pick and choses a few lessons for more advanced learners.  Check it out today.  I have also added a link to the site on the Listen Now! page.

I recently came across an interview on the Livemoha Blog about the shift that is happening, effectively moving the journey of language learning away from the classroom and onto the internet.  I guess I would qualify this by saying that you can build a pretty great foundation in a language with many of the excellent opportunities that can be found online.  In fact, the highly motivated learner could really get pretty fluent with the language in the confines of their own home.  But that is not why we learn languages, so we can hang out at home.  We learn them to communicate, to enter into the heart language of another culture and by doing so open up a whole new world to our own lives.  We learn language so that we can go out and enter into the culture and life of our neighbors in the world.  And to really move beyond just the foundation, we have to get out their into the community, into the lives of the those who speak the language we are learning.Anyway, it was an interesting interview even if it was a bit promotional.