I’ve
had a fairly easy couple of weeks as some of my students have been away for
Christmas. This week almost all are
back, plus I have a couple of extra lessons so I am ‘full’ again!
The
material I use in lessons is mostly things I have prepared myself. I have many books for learning and teaching
Turkish but I rarely use any of them.
Some are much too grammar-based – one has sections with headings like
‘verbal voice, compound tenses, substantive verb verbalia and auxiliary
verb’–yes really! Some are too repetitive, drilling a piece like ‘I have got…’
with twenty different things in the gap, including nonsense like ‘I have got
two bridges’–again, yes really! One set
of books and CDs uses dialogues and paragraphs about UFOs, an extra-terrestrial
and an invisible men‒hard for anyone to take seriously.
So
I started writing my own worksheets and now I have a collection that do
everything from explaining structures, to giving practice of reading and
translating. I also have a preferred order I teach them in, though I am
flexible and quite often go back to revise things again. Several years ago, I
even got as far as putting some of these together to form a book, with lots of practice
exercises, vocabulary and reading sections.
I planned it as 6 books, each with 12 units or lessons, so that students
could easily take a break between books and practise what they had learned.
I
prepared the first two books but have never done any more. I always meant to see if I could get it
published, or sell it on the internet, but I have never quite got that far. Recently,
though, one of my students told me about Smashwords which is a system to
simplify self-publishing and distributing an e-book. It means I could publish my set of books and
have them listed on all the major e-book retailers (except Amazon which
currently doesn’t have a deal with Smashwords) so people can buy and download
them. As the Smashwords publishing system costs nothing (though they do
recommend paying for things like a well-designed cover), I have nothing to
lose. I just need to find the time….!
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| Kaan at about 2 months - and 2 kilos! |
It was Kaan's birthday on Saturday. 16 years old - hardly seems possible. He is a bit snappy sometimes but isn't committed enough for the full teenager attitude! He had THREE cakes - one I made, one his girlfriend made and one that our friends got for him - all chocolate! We went to dinner at Karnaval Restaurant - on the sea-front in Fethiye. It was, surprisingly, very quiet, but the food was still good and the bill very reasonable. What more can you ask for?!
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| Kaan at 16 |
