2000 day streak achieved in Duolingo

My screenshot

My earlier over 1000 day streak got destroyed by accident but I decided to start a new one and reached today 2000 day streak. I had already finished all the Spanish lessons at one point but developers of Duolingo added a lot more Spanish lessons which I have been going through. Duolingo has gamified language learning very well as I try to keep my position in the diamond league and take advantage of double or triple points by completing lessons. As I have spoken a lot Spanish in real life for me listening and story lessons are the easiest. The lessons where I have to write full sentences can cause me frustration as I might make spelling mistakes or use different expressions. Though those are good lessons to correct my mistakes and improve my grammar. I'm planning to keep on going with Duolingo and hopefully I will write my next update when I have completed the Spanish lessons.

Language learning

Duolingo app

While staying abroad I have tried to learn the local language. I used to attend language exchange meetings where I could practice/speak various languages during the meeting. When I moved to Barcelona I started to learn Catalan with Duolingo application and since then I have kept my learning streak and reached over 1000 days. I have been learning/keeping up with the other languages aswell in order to retain at least my current level. Keeping up with the streak definitely pushes me to make a little daily effort to study a language.

Learning Polish

I have been trying to learn Polish but I have not dedicated as much time for language learning as in Spain or Turkey. For example I do not know numbers above 10 so it is hard to understand many situations where numbers are involved. So far I have been mostly learning Polish by watching Youtube videos. At least language exchange event gives me a chance to speak Polish every week.

Studies in Turkey recognized

Few weeks ago I visited offices of University of Eastern Finland and handed out academic transcripts from Gazi university. Now I have been granted 19 ECTS from Turkish language studies and 20 ECTS from business studies. I completed 4 courses in business studies: Management Science 1, Production and Operations management 1, Production and Operations management 2 and Management Information Systems. Still I have to show that I have advanced worth 8 ECTS in my master thesis during my stay in Turkey and after that I can get CE-degree

Paper work

Yesterday I handed out academic transcripts from my exchange year to my university so now I am waiting how many credits will be accredited. I reached B1 level in Turkish language so I have possibility to get CE-degree. I was glad to see that especially one guy in the language center was really excited about my exchange year experience.

Do exchange students cheat on their partners?

1. Introduction

Last year I made a research about weight gain of exchange students during the exchange period so this year I decided to make different kind of research. Exchange students have the reputation that they cheat on their boyfriends/girlfriends who are in their home countries. Also one friend suggested that this kind of research and I thought that it would be interesting to find out if Erasmus student cheat or not.

Final exams of second semester

Examination

First final exam week has passed but still the second final exam weeks is left. I had my exams during the first week so I do not have any exams left. When I entered to the class room for the examination I noticed that before the exam many students were preparing themselves little pieces of paper to help them in the exam. Also some students were writing notes to the wall next to them or to the seat in front of them. The fact that they were preparing notes to cheat in the exam did not seem to bother anyone. In the exams there were two supervisors and other one was checking around all the time so there was some difficulty to cheat.

Courses in Gazi University

Business faculty of Gazi University

Gazi University offers mainly courses in Turkish but number of courses offered in English depends on the faculty. Some exchange students had all of their lessons in Turkish but they could do their exams in English. In the first semester there were about 20 exchange students which is very few as there are almost 60 000 students in Gazi University. I have been attending to 4 lessons and 3 of them have been held in Turkish but the studying material has been in English. These lesson were supposed to be in English but the professors have been giving the lesson in Turkish because in their opinion the level of English of the students is not high enough to give them lesson in English. The same courses which are offered in English are actually available also in Turkish.

Grading

The grading system of Gazi university differs from the Finnish one. All universities in Turkey do not follow the same grading system. From the best grade to the worst grade the grades are AA, BA, BC, CC, DC, DD FD, FF and H. The lowest grade to pass is CC but if you have good grades from the other exams you can also pass with DC. When giving grades professors follow the distribution of Guass. You get CC if you get slightly less than the average. If you fail to pass the exam your option is to take the whole course again in the summer or in the next academic year. I think that the system of examination in Finland is less stressful than in Spain or in Turkey.

Snow in Ankara

View from my balcony

It has snowed few times in Ankara but snow did not stay on the ground longer than one day. Last days snowed a lot and snow has stayed already few days. In Gazi university exams are now finished and holidays started that means one month holiday. Lessons will start again in the 20th  6th of February. Many Turkish students come to Ankara to study and for the holidays they have returned to their home cities.
(Edit: starting time of lessons)

New year

Happy new year 2012. We went outside in the midnight but we did not see any fireworks and even before the moment we could not hear fireworks. As in Finland you can hear fireworks from six in the evening the whole night. When I was 11 years old I was shooting fireworks like most of the children in Finland. Maybe people are shooting their own fireworks out of the city center in Turkey as shooting can be prohibited in the city center.

Today, right after the new year starts the final exam period what takes two weeks. That means that many Turkish students did not celebrate the new year because they were studying for the final exams.

Mid-term exams

In Turkey during the semester you have mid-term and final exam in each subject in some cases you might have even two mid-term exams before the final exam. Now is time of the first mid-term exams and I had my first one today. During two weeks when mid-terms are held we do not have classes but in some faculties of Gazi university you have also classes even you have exams so there is not guideline what Gazi university is following. In the end of the semester we will have final exams.

Turkish studies

Tömer

At the moment my studies are mainly focused on studying Turkish. My exchange program Campus Europae offered me an opportunity to attend 30 hours of Turkish lessons every week. These lessons are mainly meant for students who are going to study an entire career next year in Turkey. There are several same kind of language classes and students are mainly from Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Arabic countries. These Turkish lessons take a whole year and before the summer everyone should have reached C1 level in Turkish. So here I do not have separate language course for Campus Europae students like I had in Spain. In Gazi university we are only four Campus Europae students as in Spain we were about 20. I am able attend about 25 hours each week and hopefully this will help me to reach fluency in Turkish.

Does going to exchange make students fat?

Figures

1. Introduction
Hearing stories about the weight change triggered the curiosity to find out some exact numbers about the weight change. The purpose of this research is to find out does an exchange period make students gain or lose weight. Also some reasons for the weight change are discussed.

Learning Turkish

I have started to learn Turkish. We are a group of six persons who are getting classes from a Turkish guy. He has been a very good teacher teacher even he is not going to be a teacher. I know now some grammar and how the language works. Now I have to start learning more vocabulary to be able to use the language more. Turkish language does not seem too hard to learn. One notable difference to the languages which I speak already is that the verb in Turkish comes to the end of the phrase. Words are also quite different compared to other languages what I know.

Language learning

It has been a long time since I have started to study a new language. Spanish is the latest one which I started seven years ago. Now I am beginning to learn a new language after a long time and I have found some interesting approaches for learning a new language. I read a book of Oddbjørn by and he introduced in the book so good memorizing technique for language in his opinion that he would like to learn all the languages. Tim Ferris introduces a method to deconstruct a language and that way you can reach conversational level of a language in few months. Adam Bader suggests to use Pareto's 80/20 rule for language learning. It means that by learning the most frequent words of the language you can understand 80& of the language. For example 80% of English can be understood with 300 words because these most frequent words constitute 80% of the written or spoken English.

Internship

I have been granted a Erasmus scholarship to do an internship. I will go to work in a consulting company from the beginning of July until end of September. The company is located in Madrid. Spain is very hot in the summer but I am looking forward to go to Spain again.

Bachelor

I have now completed all the courses to get the bachelor degree of accounting. Now I have to wait three weeks to get the certificate. I hope that this degree already helps me to find some interesting work in my field.

Dirty old man

In Spain I had one professor who was known as a dirty old man. He was already close to retiring age and walked limping. I had him as a professor in two subjects. I think that he was a nice man and he was telling jokes in the lessons but his behavior towards girls could be considered as a sexual harassment. Sometimes he held hand with the girls, asked them to come up to show some example and he kindle touched them to shoulder or arm. You could see that he liked good looking girls. When I asked from any Spanish student that do you know the dirty old man everyone knew immediately about who I was talking about.

Award

This week I received a nice surprise from Campus Europae. They awarded me some money for successfully learning a new language. It was a very nice surprise because I was not expecting anything. I have passed B1 exam in Spanish but I think that my level of Spanish is higher than that. All of Campus Europae students in Alcalá should have taken this language exam but just a few actually did it. There was some problems with organizing it. The professor did not arrive on time because she had problems with her car therefore people who wanted to do the exam missed it. Many students were not even interested in doing the test and did not show up at all.