I am planning to study turkish for 6 months there this year in october...

Can anyone tell me if its worth going? Has anyone been there, is it any good? Any advice etc?

Thanks

At least the location is nice! A friend of mine has been there and I haven´t heard her complaining . I went to a different language school because Dilmer doesn´t provide accommodation. If they had provided for that too, I would probably have gone to their courses. Good luck!

 I haven´t heard about Dilmer, but I can advise you TÖMER. It was great.

 http://www.tomer.ankara.edu.tr/english/index.html

I would definitely not recommend Dilmer. From the moment I walked in the door I had a bad feeling because I felt they treated me as simply a payment that needed to be processed as quickly as possible and did not make small talk with me or ask me about my needs at all. However, as I found it difficult to find an evening class that would work well alongside my daytime job, I reluctantly paid for the course. After that, the people at the reception did not greet me ever when I entered the school (in fact, they didn’t respond when I said hello in Turkish) but instead seemed to treat students as if they were invisible.

The course itself was actually worse though. It consisted of 3 evening classes of 3 hours a week. The course went as follows. We began with 9 people (by the end there were just 3). Each lesson generally consisted of a lengthy grammatical explanation in English of several Turkish grammar concepts, followed by a list of seemingly unrelated vocabulary words that were translated in English and we were instructed to write them down in a vocabulary notebook and memorize them. After the complicated grammatical explanation, we would then spend several hours doing gap-fill grammar exercises. We were usually not given any time to think and write down our answers first, rather our teacher made us do the questions verbally on the spot one after another going around the room in exactly the same order every time.  I found this quite stressful and it gave me no opportunity to understand what I was supposed to be doing. The grammar and vocabulary were taught without context, in other words, without being organized into the usual language course topics/units - food, introductions, shopping, travel, etc. We never did any pair work or group work and it seemed classroom discussions were discouraged. We didn’t learn anything about Turkish culture or Turkey either.  At one point I asked what something meant and the teacher told me the meaning wasn’t important, but only the grammar! The only thing that seemed to matter to her was meaningless grammar drilling for hour after hour.

As for the Dilmer course book, it was dull, black and white and contained endless gap-fill grammar exercises. There were a few dialogues and reading texts, but unfortunately our teacher always made us skip them. The book also appeared to lack organization into topics.

Despite having studied and learned other languages, I felt like I really gained nothing in regards to learning Turkish from the Dilmer course. It was by far the worst language class I have ever taken and I would never recommend that anyone waste their money there. I only continued because I paid a lot for it and hoped that I would absorb something. Sadly I have even forgotten or never really understood any of the context-less grammar.

It´s best to keep learning Turkish through prestigious websites such as

www.turkishclass.com

www.livemocha.com

www.merhabaturkish.com

www.facebook.com/MerhabaTurkish

I agree these are all good sites, but as a learner you also need to listen to spoken Turkish, and practise speaking Turkish. The livemocha site allows added oral submissions, but it relies on native Turks to help correct and advise you. I have been lucky enough to have some excellent Turkish helpers. Unfortunately, when I look at the misinformation and errors made by English language ´native´ speakers trying to correct my Turkish friends, I realise that free help is often worthless if it is wrong.

In my opinion, these sites are invaluable for gaining a good basic understanding of Turkish grammar and vocabulary, but eventually the intermediate and advanced learner generally needs more to improve further.

I also think language schools are useful for structured learning. I attended the Dilmer School in Istanbul for 1 week this May. Unless you are an absolute beginner, you initially do a lengthy (80+ questions) multiple choice test. This checks your grammar and vocabulary knowledge, it is all in Turkish and it starts with basic stuff and gets progressively harder. After this your results are discussed with you, and during this informal ´interview´ in Turkish, the reviewer will recommend one of 6 levels available to Dilmer students.

I was placed in level 4, and found the lessons stimulating and very useful, especially the listening and speaking practise that is a key part of the group lesson. We had a class of 8, and Esra, (our teacher) was very helpful, clearly spoken, and constantly checked that the group understood what was being said. I will go back again this year and do a 4 week (80 hour) course, after ´testing´ the school. Eventually I will post my experiences, so others can get an informed opinion from a Turkish learner´s perspective. 

I agree with Henry. I am very grateful to people like you Jaydee and the translators on this site who give their free time to help learners like us but never having attended a Turkish language class, my spoken Turkish and my ability to understand Turkish spoken at normal pace by natural speakers is far inferior to my ability to read and write Turkish. This only changes slightly when I’m on holiday in Turkey and have some opportunity to speak with and listen to native Turkish speakers. Unfortunately, where I live in England there are no worthwhile Turkish language classes available so I rely on computer programs such as WorldTalk Turkish to help improve my listening comprehension.

Hi, I visited the lessons by Dilmer this year too (march - june 2012), unfortunately... i didn ´t learn something new. I live in Turkey and I need Turkish asap. But in the class I was only like translator between the teacher and the students (I visited the class A1) and when some people didn´t understand the grammar (the teacher didn´t know HOW to explain) I did. So Dilmer is for my only wasting money and wasting time. But i thought, when I learn grammar and a lot of words alone at home, I could start to talk. I am very sorry, but Dilmer is not the right school for conversation