5 Life Lessons from my Intensive Turkish Class
On talking pretty and learning more than just vocabulary and grammar.
The first day I walked into my Beginner Intensive Turkish class, a young man chatted with my professor.
In Turkish.
He joked and debated in full sentences, questions, answers. Probably tenses, too. With a quiet “excuse me” I interrupted their conversation to ask the professor if this was the beginner Turkish class. To my utter horror, she said yes, and welcomed me to the class.
I sat down and prayed that the rest of my classmates would be on a similar level as me — no knowledge of the language at all. But it turned out that most of my classmates also knew “a little” (actually, a lot of) Turkish. While I struggled with basic sentence structure and memorizing adjectives, my classmates seemed to pick things up with ease. One girl, who was very kind and patient with my slowness, later told me her father owned a Turkish restaurant, and she heard the language each day at home.
I communicated these concerns to my professor. She told me that Turkish was a very logical language — it ordered itself like a math equation.
That worked just fine for me — the only other subject to date to make me cry was math. I did best with irregular sentence ordering and nuanced forms of ordering sentences, and the Turkish language seemed to have none of that. For some reason
My professor (to this day, one of the best teachers I’ve ever had) urged me to stay, confident that I would eventually pick up on the language. And I did stay — mostly because I was too stubborn to quit, but also because language learning had always been difficult for me and I was determined to change that.
But Why Turkish?
If I had a quarter for every time someone asked me why I was taking Turkish, I would have enough to pay for my laundry for a year. If I had a quarter for every time I changed my answer, I’d have enough to pay for private Turkish lessons.
But the real answer is because I wanted to do something outside my comfort zone, and force my brain into accepting the learning language process. It was easily the hardest and most rewarding class I ever took. And that actually leads right into my first point:
1) Learn Things Just for Fun
During my sophomore year of college, I felt an immense pressure to change my major in order to increase my chances of getting a high-paying or influential job that would benefit my community. I occasionally thought about law school, or running for office, even though none of these options appealed to me. Essentially, my entire curriculum was based around the needs of others.
Although my advisors and mentors frequently commended me on my focused schedule, I felt miserable, and wanted to enjoy the thrill of a completely random course that had nothing to do with my intensely competitive Government major. Turkish fulfilled that desire, and helped me loosen up about my coursework. Not everything I do had to be related to a career move. And to my surprise, many of my future supervisors and bosses hired me because of my willingness to take risks. No one wants to work with someone boring!
2) Learn Selfishly
When I first enrolled in Turkish, I was enthusiastic about learning a completely new language, but I quickly suffered from burnout because I wasn’t using the best study methods for myself. Combined with an on-campus job that did not allow me time to complete homework , I found myself studying past 11 pm on any given weekday for that one class. I was much more of a morning person, but would waste that valuable time rushing through my other assignments or sleeping in.
Not great. Or sustainable.
While my enthusiasm for the language was good thing, my ineffective study habits eventually caught up with me, and really harmed my ability to acquire the language. That is, until I worked with my professor to find a method that worked for me. As a visual learner, I learned to advocate for myself by asking for words to be written on the chalkboard, even if most of my classmates seemed to be auditory learners. The class was still difficult, but nowhere near as hard after I learned to ask for what I needed.
3) Some people are really great at what they do. Focus on yourself.
Back to my opening anecdote — some people are naturally gifted language learners. They’ll always seem to be one step ahead of you. The moment I stopped comparing myself, my grades improved, as did my enthusiasm for class.
You have no idea what kind of resources people have access to, nor do you know how much time they really put into their work in and outside the classroom. Set up goals for yourself.
4) Ask more questions and don’t apologize about it.
I used to preface each of my questions with a “sorry”, as if I were bothering each supervisor and professor I had with a question. Good teachers, both in and out of school, want you to improve — don’t make yourself out to be someone’s waste of time, because they’ll eventually believe you.
I learned this lesson from older language learners in my class. I’m thankful that they do, because they often are the most confident in class, and most willing to make mistakes and ask questions.
As Harold Schiffman writes in his 1996 article: “…older learners usually are clear about why they want to learn and may have very practical uses to which they intend to put the language. (And they usually are better time managers.)”
This has helped me tremendously in my professional life as well. I’ve picked up on skill sets far quicker by seeking guidance rather than suffering in silence.
5) Successful Learning is not Linear
I’m comfortable saying this now because I’ve graduated with degree in hand, but I once got an 8% on a Turkish test.
Yes, an 8%. The very next week I received a B+ on a similarly difficult assignment. The point is, you can fall behind before you even know it. Or even more confusingly, you can fall behind even if you’re spending all your time studying.
This does not mean that you’ve forgotten everything. Take time off to listen to a language podcast. Or some music. It’s a way to relax guilt-free while also giving your brain a bit of a rest. As a graduate student now, whenever I get stuck on an essay paragraph, or have been on the same page of reading for work, I go on a quick walk, or take a dance break to clear my head.
I am increasingly thankful that I learned Turkish — not because I expect to use it each day, but because it opened my eyes to a whole new set of cultures, experiences, and parts of the world I would have never learned about should I have stayed in my comfort zone.
