Along the Silk Road

*This post may contain affiliate links that will earn me some credit to use in the apps or extra income but at no extra cost to you.

Back in 2021 we decided as a family to move to Istanbul Turkey as digital nomads. I had always wanted to learn a language but I never had enough of a reason or motivation to really take a shot at it. With this plan underway, I had a new motivation to start learning a language in earnest. I started where everyone starts. Duolingo.

Duolingo German in Germany

Years prior Kelly and I made a trip to Germany and France. I was so intrigued by the language and culture that I opened Duolingo and started the German course. It was a lot of fun, and sitting next to my German friend, I shared what I was learning and asked questions. She was really encouraging and helpful, which spurred me on further. We were only visiting for about a week, but I kept my streak going after we returned home for around 200 days. I was enjoying the process, but I had no vision for it. I had no direction for how to get long term value out of it. I didn’t know any Germans or have any opportunity to be around the German language. I wasn’t planning a return trip. It sort of felt like an academic and cultural experience that had long since come to a close. I dropped my streak and left German behind. It was worth the little bit of effort I had put into it and nothing was wasted. But if I picked it back up today, I would be starting at near-zero. Despite this, I was “50% fluent in German.”

Notifications like these (“You are now 50% fluent in German!”) to be a gimmick to keep prodding me on. I honestly don’t see how this kind of messaging actually helps. At best it seemed like a gimmick and at worst it came across as disingenuous. Encouragement is a good thing, but it has to be based in reality to mean something.

Duolingo Turkish in America

The day we decided “we’re moving to Turkey,” I opened Duolingo again and started the Turkish course. I don’t remember so much about my streak this time around. Instead, what I remember most was the amount of progress I made in the app. I finished it. As in, I completed every lesson fully to gold.

I have one screenshot showing that I was close to finishing out by June 2021 which was 6 months before we moved. Rest assured that this was where I was in June 2021, but I finished the maxing out the course before we moved. I didn’t think to take a screenshot then, though.

Duolingo was helpful to the degree that it helped connect me with the Turkish language. It wasn’t a deep connection, but I was seeing Turkish words and I was learning to decode them. The gamification in the app helps someone with a little bit of internal motivation keep showing up. It got the ball rolling for me. I knew it wasn’t enough on its own. From my experience with German I knew I would need more. I just couldn’t imagine someone getting to a basic functional level in a reasonable amount of time only using Duolingo. So I started looking around to find out what else was out there. It was a practical need so I was looking for some practical resources to help me.

Other Language Tools Before Moving to Turkey

In the months leading up to the move I tried quite a few other apps and services. I used Busuu, Babbel, Pimsleur, Anki, and LingQ. I also had a few tutoring sessions through iTalki with a couple of teachers I had heard about. My plan was never to use all of these apps at the same time in the same depth. I wanted to compare and contrast them to see what they each offered and find out what gaps I may have in my language learning process.

Arriving in Turkey

When we arrived in Turkey and started to get our new home set up, I had a good friend who had already been here about 6 months helping me at various utility offices. One of the first ones we went to was an internet provider to get home internet set up. Interacting with the staff there was one of the first real encounters I had with Turkish in Turkey. They didn’t speak any English and I was useless and I couldn’t understand much of anything or say much of anything. But I finished Duolingo, so what gives!? If I was “50% fluent in German” way back then, how am I not at least 50-75% fluent in Turkish by this point? In case the font doesn’t render, that was sarcasm.

To be fair, I think Duolingo played an important role in that season of language learning. It was the lowest hanging fruit for getting started. It offered a clear on-ramp and it got me interacting with Turkish. That’s a big win for any new language learner. I learned some things but I was always required to plod through uninteresting lessons just to pass on to the next level. After a certain point, that didn’t work so well for me.

Language School

We took a month as a family to start adjusting to our new home. It isn’t easy to get a new life set up anywhere, and with the challenges of Turkish systems and the language barrier, it was extra difficult. After a month, I started at a local language school. It is well-known around the country and is linked directly with Ankara University. They operate in one month units. I was in class Monday-Friday, 9am-1pm with about 8-10 other foreigners learning beginner Turkish. Based on my experience with finishing the Duolingo course and being unable to do much of anything, I thought it might be best to start from the beginning in case I had missed anything important. Whether or not that was the best choice, I didn’t know I could take a placement test, let alone how to ask for one.

Better Uses of Time (Becoming an Independent Language Learner)

I actually enjoyed my time in the language school classroom. Most of the time, anyway. Some exercises felt laborious or unnecessary. There was wasted time. I had to listen to bad Turkish accents from other new learners from a variety of different countries. I did however enjoy getting to connect with my classmates. My teacher was kind and helpful. It isn’t always bad to hear other foreigner accents – especially when I could contrast them with my teacher’s native accent. Each day I spent 4 hours in the classroom but 2 hours of commute time. I would get back home and still have other work to do but I would be exhausted.

“There has to be a better way.”

This thought crossed my mind more and more frequently. Surely I could find more effective things to do with my time and something that wasn’t so rigidly structured.

I had been learning Turkish long enough that I was starting to get a sense that I could actually take more ownership of my language learning and not just plug into a system on rails that would direct me the whole way. I could decide what I needed and what was most helpful for me. I wasn’t looking to pass some proficiency test or an exam. I was living life in Istanbul, among Turkish people, trying to communicate more easily.

Online Tutors

Of all the tools and resources I have used, nothing made me more nervous than getting on a live 1:1 video call on iTalki with someone for a Turkish lesson. This was especially the case before I had my first lesson. I realized after a few lessons that it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it might be. In fact, once I got used to the flow, I came to really love my lessons and my tutors. We could have so much fun discussing all sorts of things and it was all in the name of learning Turkish.

It is of course important to find the right tutor(s). Given the choice, I want to enjoy the personality and teaching style of the tutors I work with. I needed different things at different times, so I have had to adjust as I went along.

iTalki Speaking Sprints

After some time, I noticed that reading and listening came easier to me but I was struggling more with speaking. I was speaking slowly and it always felt like a struggle to get the words out. I know a lot of people feel this way when learning a language. If I was just learning as a hobby and wasn’t surrounded by the language everyday and everywhere, I might not have been all that concerned about this. Either way, it’s just a part of the process. But for me, I noticed this resistance to speaking and I wanted to break through it and keep growing. I decided to challenge myself to speak a lot more over the course of a week or two. If I was feeling internal resistance to getting on an iTalki lesson, I just needed to do it a lot and get more used to it.

By this point I was working with 2 tutors online each week. Usually I would meet with each one 1:1 twice a week for an hour at a time. So I would have around 4 hours of lessons. (If you want to learn Turkish or Farsi, you should definitely book a lesson with Hale on iTalki). This was a good rhythm for my week as I did more self-directed work. I was reading a lot of material and watching shows and movies in Turkish. I would import it all to LingQ and study there.

In order to break through this internal resistance to speaking, I decided to do an iTalki speaking sprint week. If I was usually doing 3-5 tutor lessons a week, I decided I would aim to schedule at least 20 lessons in a week. This meant that rather than taking 1 lesson every other day or so, I would be taking 2-5 lessons in a day for the whole week.

It was a breakthrough in a few different ways. First, it helped me become way more comfortable speaking. It gave me a chance to have a similar conversation 20 times over in a week, cementing my ability to do that well. It gave me exposure to a variety of accents and experiences. It also proved to me that I could actually do way more than I thought was reasonable. It helped me set my sights higher.

Becoming an Effective Language Learner

I used every app and service I could find that taught Turkish to see what they offered. I wanted to make the most of my learning. I moved from simply getting started to becoming a more independent language learner. At this point, I realized not only could I learn a language more independently, but I could become more effective at it as well.

I used even more apps and services than all the ones I listed above. Here are some others I could mention in much more detail too:

• Glossika
• Memrise
• Story Learning
• Local Tutor
• Language Reactor
• Elon.io

I’ll share more about making the best use of a number of these apps and services. I love passing along tips and tricks to help language learners learn more effectively and have more fun doing it.

Language learning is a beautiful adventure. It is personally enriching and can help you connect with the world and the people in it like nothing else. Just starting with what you have is excellent. With a little investigation, you can really make the most of your time and energy.

I started by wondering if I could ever learn a foreign language. Now I am a language learner and I’m planning my next language already. Can’t wait to tell you more about that one too!