Guides, apps, websites and materials are more limited for Turkish than if you are learning a more popular language, but there are still a wide variety of options. Some of these are useful and others are false friends. I am currently studying for my B2 level (Upper Intermediate) and have tried many different techniques and made a number of mistakes which have slowed me down. I want to share what I’ve learned with you so that you can avoid the same pitfalls, learn quickly and enjoy yourself. In addition, I’ve identified some discount vouchers/trial packages which will offer you savings. These are shared below, enjoy!

The 4 factors which will lead to long term success in learning Turkish

Realistic goals and a plan to match

Many English speakers who attempt to learn Turkish are doing so for family and relationship reasons. I started learning Turkish for my fiancée, now wife, and to communicate with her family. This is a fairly strong motivator.

However despite this, of the 50 odd Turkish learners who started classes alongside me only half completed the course to the end of the year. By the start of the third year only 5 of us remained.

Turkish is tough. According to the Foreign Service Institute Turkish has significant linguistic and cultural differences from English. It is in its own language family.

You could expect to be able to learn Swedish and Spanish in the time it would take you to reach a comparable level in Turkish.

For those of us who have never seriously tried to learn a foreign language it can be overwhelming. You may also be burdened by unrealistic expectations of those around you. I have encountered many people who seem to think I should just be able to absorb Turkish from my wife. This coupled with people flogging “Fluency in 3 months!” and “Learn x in just 5 minutes a day” can lead to fantastical notions about the time and commitment it takes to learn a language.

Assuming your goal is primarily to keep up in conversation with your partner’s Turkish friends and relatives, given an hour a day of study, you are looking at 5-7 years. This will vary hugely by the individual. Plenty of people give up when they don’t see results fast enough or assume that they ‘just don’t get it’ when they don’t meet other people’s unrealistic expectations. It took me nearly 6 years to exceed the B1 CEFR level. This is the level at which you can:

understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.

deal with most situations likely to arise while travelling in an area where the language is spoken.

produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.

describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

I wasted a year and half self-studying initially with little to show for it. If you are going to succeed in learning Turkish you should make sure you are prepared to invest the time and effort needed and be prepared to wait for results.

2. A study schedule and habits

My original plan for learning Turkish was to buy Rosetta Stone, as I has heard that it was the most expensive and therefore best way to learn, and a Turkish grammar book “Teach yourself Turkish”. I thought between those and talking to my fiancée I’d progress quickly. I started out with a burst of enthusiasm but I wasn’t making the progress I expected.

I found the grammar book to be dull, I’d always disliked grammar, particularly as I associated it with my high school French which was my weakest subject. Rosetta Stone was easy enough to engage with, but I was sinking hour and hour into it with little to show for my work. My wife is not a natural teacher and she quickly got frustrated with nothing sticking in my mind and her having to repeat herself all the time. After a year and a half I had completed all of the Rosetta Stone available for Turkish (levels 1-3) and half the grammar book but my practical spoken Turkish was largely limited to the odd individual words. Gaps between study periods got longer as we prepared for our wedding.

Things turned a corner when I started taking classes instead. It started with a 10 week stint of 2 hours a week with Cactus. I signed up for the second part but the course was cancelled due to insufficient learners. The teacher privately tipped me off about classes being offered by Yunus Emre Institute. These were for 4 hours a week split over two evenings. These 4 hours, coupled with the associated homework, meant I was studying for about 7 hours per week at that stage. I now had two factors in my favour:

A peer group, who would encourage me along and was facing the same challenges. My self-study was worth so little that I was barely ahead of the brand new learners. I didn’t want to fall behind the class so I kept doing the work.

A schedule that I was committed to. I had time set aside 4 days a week to either attend class or do Turkish homework.

You may have heard of the immensely popular “Power of Habits” book. I wish I had grasped how valuable the lessons from this book would be with respect to language learning. Having a schedule and improved study method by following my teacher’s instructions meant I was now making tangible progress and no longer had week-long gaps where I would neglect my studies and forget what I had learned.

It is certainly possible to learn a language through self-study, indeed it is generally accepted that given the enormous amount of time it takes to learn a language only a fraction of it will ever take place in front of a teacher. Teachers are great for explaining concepts and encouraging commitment and can make the process more fun, however ultimately without considerable practice and mental effort you won’t progress. You need to support classes with self-study.

I’d recommend you to google and see if any of your local universities or language schools offer Turkish. Also check if you have a branch of Yunus Emre Institute nearby. They may offer high quality courses at subsidised rates (about 40% of comparable language schools).

If you don’t have a classroom option available to you at a convenient location I would recommend finding a teacher through italki.com. This website allows for teaching lessons one to one via skype. Most of the teachers are based in Turkey and charge less than you would pay for a classroom based course ($10-$20 per hour).

Follow this link for a free $10 credit

Some of the teachers offer a 30 minute taster course for $2 so you can see if they are the right fit for you.

To aid your course you’ll need a Turkish-English dictionary. I’d recommend Sesli Sozluk which is free and generally reliable. Forvo is also a useful study aid to help you learn how to pronounce words while doing your homework.

3. Spaced repetition

I found with regular classroom sessions and practice I was retaining much more information and did not need to re-learn as much. It wasn’t until I was years into my training that I learned about the concept of spaced repetition. Essentially our brains do not retain information which we don’t make use of. If you learn that the word Kedi in Turkish means Cat and then don’t encounter the need for that information again or remind yourself of it, your brain will forget it. To maximise efficiency in retaining this knowledge, you would ideally remind yourself of the knowledge just before you were about to forget it.

Prof. C. A. Mace in 1932 was the first to propose in “Psychology of Study” 1932: “Perhaps the most important discoveries are those which relate to the appropriate distribution of the periods of study…Acts of revision should be spaced in gradually increasing intervals, roughly intervals of one day, two days, four days, eight days, and so on.”

By gradually elongating the gaps you can hijack the memory process and make it consider ‘Kedi’ a piece of information worth retaining. With time you would only need to be reminded once every few years. This was initially applied using paper flashcards and a series of envelopes allowing users to control when they needed to review the cards. Modern language learners can take advantage of software that does the same but also incorporating pictures, video clips and sound files.

Most language learning smartphone apps work on a simplification of this principle. Serious language learners tend to prefer Anki to integrate spaced-repetition into their study schedules. In my opinion this has been the single most useful tool I’ve encountered. Essentially, when I came across a new word or concept in class I would create a new flashcard within Anki which would remind me of that concept in subsequent revision session on my phone. If I could recall it then it would show it to me again later and later into the future, if I had forgotten it then it would remind me again in a minute, then 10 and then the next day. Suddenly I found myself retaining a huge number of new words from class.

Anki has a desktop version available for free via www.Anki.com. There is a paid version available in the Apple store (Ankimobile flashcards). It costs $25 but it is well worth it. When you think of the amount of time you’ll spend on it and the costs of classes you should not hesitate to buy this. It is free on Android as well.

I spent a few years using Anki but I was making some fundamental mistakes which reduced my efficiency and held back the quality of my Turkish learning. Essentially:

My flashcards had English on them, which meant I was constantly translating between English and Turkish rather than just absorbing the concept that the word explained. When someone spoke to me in Turkish I couldn’t keep up as I was still translating what they said two sentences ago into English.

My cards were all in one direction (i.e. Turkish to English) meaning I was learning to recognise the Turkish word but not recall them from nothing. This meant that my reading ability progressed well ahead of my writing and speaking.

I was learning individual words rather than in context. It is harder for the brain to learn words in isolation than when you put them into a memorable context. A flashcard with the word ‘cat’ on it is less memorable than when it is part of a sentence “the cat is on Michael Jackson’s shoulder” and is accompanied by a picture of Michael with the cat.

I learned this only when I read “Fluent forever” a book which primarily explains how to learn languages with flashcards and then I really noticed an improvement. I wish I had known about this when I started out. There is much more detail in the book so if you are serious I would recommend purchasing it.

4. Enjoyable, comprehensible input

The classic mistake school language learners make is restricting themselves to the homework and classes. In doing so they deprive themselves or a key tool: Comprehensible Input. In the context of language learning this refers to text or audio which can be understood even if you don’t fully understand every word or structure. This could be songs, books, TV shows, dialogs, podcasts, newspaper articles or blogs for example. I try to aim for input where I understand 80-90% of the words. If it is too easy you won’t be challenging yourself and learning new things, too hard and you won’t be able to understand the passage easily enough. This will make reading a chore and can lead to frustration and confusion.

The majority of the time you spend learning should be used engaging with native speaker input which is comprehensible and ideally interesting. In doing so you expose yourself to new words and reinforce previous words and grammar lessons by seeing those same words and structures in a new context. The more links your brain makes to different experiences and scenarios the more it values that information and the easier it will be to recall.

For learners up until upper intermediate it can be hard find to locate suitable comprehensible input in Turkish. Ideally, you want a variety of different sources that you personally find interesting. The more you enjoy the process the more time you will spend on it and the faster you will learn. I’ve listed out some sources I recommend.

Turkce Okuyorum book series

These are a series of dialogues designed to gradually increase in complexity and vocabulary level. They are well designed and compared to some of the dialogs in certain textbooks are relatively interesting.

Free download Book 1:

https://archive.org/details/TurkceOkuyorum1/page/n1

Accompanying audio 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR5YVof5L0I

Free download Book 2:

https://archive.org/details/TurkceOkuyorum2/page/n1

Accompanying audio 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL_fOjBcXDM

I couldn’t find free links for 3 or 4. Feel free to google yourself or you can buy them from amazon using this link:

https://www.amazon.com/Turkish-Reading-Exercises-Answer-Glossary/dp/9756479264

Accompanying audio 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TRbrWCTrNs

Accompanying audio 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_uFWTMcDUo Turkish Class 101

This website has a large variety of dialogs and grammar explanations at various levels. Most of the site is only accessible on subscription but it isn’t overly expensive. If you can afford it you might find it worthwhile.

Turkish Tea Time

A podcast series with accompanying explanations and exercises. They have a handful of trial lessons available for free but most of the website is on subscription. The presenters are entertaining and explain things clearly. I’d definitely recommend.

Netflix

Create a new profile and change the language to Turkish. What is available depends on your region but some of the children’s shows are very accessible. My daughter and I particularly enjoy Peppa Pig.

Duolingo

In my opinion this is the best of the language learning apps aimed at beginners. There are some downsides to it, but it is worth downloading and having a play with. It is free.

Clozemaster

This app / website takes Turkish sentences and removes a word from them, you then need to choose the missing word from four options given. Marketed as ‘what to do after you complete Duolingo’ it is a great resources for providing a lot of language input quickly. I recommend that you go into the options and turn off the automatic English translations so that your learning is within the context of the Turkish sentences rather than in reference to English.

Harry Potter

Or any other children’s/young adult’s book you find enjoyable. You should be able to start tackling this from lower intermediate level. Availability from Amazon is patchy. Here are a few links I could find:

Harry Potter 1

You may be better off ordering directly from a Turkish bookstore such as D&R but they tend not to deliver abroad. There are mail forwarding services from Turkey but none I have had experience with. I tend to buy books when I visit my wife’s family in Turkey. I’d recommend not to download a pirate copy of this book as the quality of many versions are unofficial and bad with English letters substituted for the Turkish characters, misspelling and bad translations.

Language exchange via italki or gospeaky

There are no shortage of Turks eager to improve their English skills who will pair with you on italki or gospeaky to do a language swap online via Skype. If you are a new learner I’d recommend finding a paid online tutor instead as you’ll struggle to talk for any length of time.

Easy Turkish

These YouTube videos are the work of a non-profit project which uses light-hearted street interviews as a method to teach languages. Each video has a topic and the host asks questions to native Turkish speakers on the street based on the theme. Each video contains subtitles in both Turkish and English. In addition to street interviews, this channel offers lessons for beginners.

Talking to strangers

Obviously this will depend on where you live, but in London where I live you can easily find Turkish hairdressers, uber drivers and kebab shop owners. I’ve had a number of good conversations just from starting with “Türk müsünüz?” Your partner’s friends and family are also a useful source of practice. I’ve found that speaking any level of Turkish is very well received by the Turks I’ve encountered. The average Turk thinks their language is very challenging and seems to treat your willingness to learn as a personal compliment.

Visit Turkey

There is no substitute to going there and engaging with locals. It’ll also likely help your motivation as you can put your hard study to use and enjoy the compliments from the local shopkeepers as they try to flatter you and gain some extra custom. If you avoid peak periods (school holidays, Eid, ANZAC day) you can find very reasonable prices for hotels and flights. You could also consider signing up for a local course to get an immersive learning experience.

I hope you have found this guide useful and your language learning journey is smoother as a result.

Iyi şanslar!