Product Description

For those who find learning a new language daunting, the Teach Yourself Beginner's Language Series is just what the language teacher ordered. Each friendly and practical course introduces the new language without overwhelming the learner and includes:

• Lively dialogues and exercises
• A helpful pronunciation section
• Manageable lists of practical vocabulary
• A glossary of grammar terms
• Hints on how to make learning easy
• Fascinating language and cultural information
• Accompanying dialogue recordings on CD

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #356613 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author

Asuman Celen-Pollard

taught Turkish at the university level for 12 years.

---

Customer Reviews

A Solid Teach Yourself Offering...
I have quite a number of Teach Yourself language courses, both the beginner's series and full courses. I've worked through a few of them for different languages (I'm pretty serious about several languages and "dabble" in some others). Some are good, some are not. It's interesting that the "Beginner's Series" seems to be much more logically presented (in general) than the full courses. At least they have been for the French and Italian beginner's courses that I have--and this Turkish course is no exception. Maybe it's just because they are newer, and TY seems to have developed a better teaching philosophy lately.

I'll start with the one thing I feel could have been improved upon:

* The grammar could have been a bit more rigorously treated. But I can't fault this particular book; it is, after all, a beginner's course (not to mention, most courses are "grammarphobic" anyway). So I won't take stars off for this.

Okay, why do I like this course? First, I'm just getting started. But as I said, I have a bunch of Teach Yourself courses with which to compare, and I can see this is a good offering. It avoids almost all of my pet peeves.

* When I'm working through language courses I expect a logically sequenced, step-by-step presentation, and this Beginner's Turkish course does this quite well.

* The vocabulary is presented at the word level, rather than having phrases to "parrot." I prefer to learn words and grammar, and then form my own sentences. That's primarily the way this course goes about things. Of course there are stock phrases that everyone should just memorize--this book has those, but it quickly moves beyond that.

* The vocabulary is presented in nice lists with the columns lined up well for drilling yourself. The book does not force you to extract vocabulary from dialog and write it all out on you own. It's there. Thank you!

* There is no vocabulary overload! The word load seems about right. Some TY books just dump way too much vocabulary on the reader.

* Most courses do not have enough practice exercises. This one actually has quite a number of them!

* Here's a shocking one for you: the dialogs are fully transcribed in the back of the book. Most courses are too cheap to do this, and it's a very welcome addition to this book. It will save hours of time looking up words--time that can be better used drilling with flashcards or some other productive activity. Looking up words is a total waste of time.

All in all, I think this is a very good offering from TY. It seems they have been getting their act together the past few years. Maybe they have realized that the tried and true "old school" language learning approach still has value, because they do a pretty good job of blending traditional presentation with newer techniques and technology. For several years, they were putting out glorified phrase books that taught nothing of the language, just a bunch of canned phrases with a bit of watered down grammar thrown in (which is worthless if it's not put into the context of the language). I'd say this is a well-rounded offering that should please anyone who is curious enough about a language to go beyond simple phrases.

Meh.
I am personally not a fan of the Teach Yourself language books in general. Turkish is about as different from English as it could possibly be, and I found this book to be rather scattered and disjointed.

If you're serious about learning Turkish, get a grammar book like the famous Lewis text, and then peruse the web for reading materials and internet radio. If you can, find a native speaker to converse with, since, unlike Spanish or French, it's extremely difficult for an English-speaker to imitate the natural pulse of the spoken language without a lot of direct interaction.

Excellent resource!
After dabbling in several TY language sets, Beginner's Turkish is the most organized and easy to use set I've seen to date.

I've only had the set a couple of days but am starting to get the dialogues down for Lesson 1.

Not only are the dialogues clear and manageable, but the test at the end of the chapter helps you identify areas that need work before progressing to the next lesson.