Job Discussion Forums

[heathergray]

I am in Istanbul. I am a total beginner. I don't want private lessons. Any experiences with schools offering Turkish language courses would be helpful. Anyone know anything about Taksim Dilmer? Thanks!

[mavazah]

I did Level 1 Turkish with Taksim Dilmer in Sept 2003 and it was great. Very professionally run, small classes (14 adults) and delivered primarily in Turkish, with a little English thrown in. My fault probably as a native speaker of English I kept using it occasionally and the other students followed suit (even though English was L2 or L3 for them). I learnt a lot and had fun at the same time. regards M

[dmb]

There is a school(can't remember the name) on the street that runs along the side of the British Consulate. I have never been but have heard favourable reports and the fees are reasonable.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

[heathergray]

Well, in keeping with the glacial pace of the program, I would not be working or even in Japan until August. So. might as well improve my Turkish while I'm here. Thanks everyone for your recommendations, I so appreciate it.

[jamessmart50]

The place alongside the British Consulate is the Eastern Languages Centre. For 40 hours it costs 200 ytl, and even less if you work for English Time, I think 160. I've heard that the manager there is a pretty good teacher, but I got someone else and the standard of teaching really sucked. I've heard great things about Dilmer, in Gumussuyu, and a place called Tomer, somewhere down Istiklal, if you just want to throw some money at the problem. I guess you get what you pay for...

Oh, and you'll always get waiters and taxi drivers offering "I teach you Turkish - you teach me English!" ...

[thrifty]

Do you get 3 for the price of 2?

Is the teacher working illegally?

Does the teacher have no degree and no experience?

Is the teacher hourly paid?

Is the book crap?

Does the teacher get no sick pay or holidays?

Does the teacher have to do 40 plus hours a week to survive?

[heathergray]

So it's English that the taxi drivers and waiters want from me? Wow! I was so underestimating them.

[Baba Alex]

[dagi]

I am doing the Level 1 course at Dilmer Taksim at the moment. It's total language immersion, we are a small group of 8 willing foreigners and so far it is the most boring course I have ever done.

We basically sit there and just do grammar exercises: every student reads out a sentence, fills in the gap and the teacher corrects it. There is no emphasis on speaking at all.
The book is quite well structured and set up in a way that someone who is a bit experienced with learning languages could us it as a self-study book. The sentences used in the book are not exactly usefull for daily life.

Our teacher usually comes into the class-room,asks which page we were on and then happily continues to do another 10 pages so we can finish the book by the end of the course. The main emphasis is to do every single exercise in the book, taking turns in reading out the sentences.

We are now halfway through the course and more and more students happily skip an afternoon here and then and study a bit at home.

But I have to say it does get you started on the language if you don't know anything and are able to practice in daily life. My fellow course students are quite nice and we take the whole thing with a big dose of humour and just try to get over it.

One of my work colleagues is at the Eastern Language Institute and is also not exactly blown away with that course.

[heathergray]

So does anyone have any recommendations on the best way to self-study? Where would I find books in Istanbul for an English-speaking person wanting to learn Turkish?

Thanks everyone so far for your input. It's quite helpful

[yaramaz]

I don't know if she is actually teaching anymore, but the woman who co-owns EF and who runs the Suadiye branch also (used to???) teach Turkish classes there and she was excellent. Unfortunately for me, she was only doing beginner levels and I had already been in Turkey a few years and needed something a bit higher. Her name is Zeynep...Gunduz...something. Also, at the Levent branch, the foreign teachers shared the teaches room with the Turkish teachers and from the looks of their lesson planning and our conversations about ideas, I think their classes might actually be fun and interactive. I can't speak from experience because I have no time to actually take classes these days.

[ghost]

The T�mer courses are better, because they incorporate more conversation into their courses.

Grammar is done, of course, but at T�mer the teachers make sure that at least 25% or the course contains conversation, and you will notice that T�mer trained foreigners have an edge over the other students who studied with other programs.

Ghost studied at T�mer Ankara, and T�mer Antalya, and they used the same uniform system and texts, and you can move around the country using the different T�mer schools and you will always find where you left off - a very systematic comprehensive system. Students who have studied eight courses (eight months minimum) are all fluent if they last the course ....those who don`t pass the end of the month tests cannot register for the next level.

Ghost

[Golightly]

No!...NOOOOOOOO...! Don't start Ghost going on about his bloddy Turkish lessons at Tomer! We had a bellyful of it a couple of years ago, and it started a load of thread flaming!
I learnt Turkish using the Hugo 'Learn Turkish in 3 months' book. I started quite well, then got to page 3, which had the word 'Avrupalilastiramadiklarimizdan misiniz?' (please ignore lack of vowel harmony here: UK keyboard), and promptly threw the fecker away. after that, I taught myself Turkish perfectly well.

[dmb]

I started with a book called Turkce ogreniyoruz, but like Golighty I never got past the first book. Once I had the basics I went down the pub and practiced/bored people. As I was a barman in the pub- people had to talk to me.