Barry Hofstetter wrote:Stephen, to address one point, Ph.D.'s in biblical studies claim to be experts in a body of ancient literature. While everybody at that level specializes, specialization comes from the broadest possible general knowledge of the subject. People who can (sort of) read their Greek NT and nothing else,
who can't even compose in the language or read literature in the language outside their limited body of study just can't be experts by the standards of practically every other academic discipline that deals with literature in a second language.An expert on War and Peace who can exegete Tolstoy but can't read Pravda is no expert at all. "The original Russian says..."

Actually composition in "Greek" is not very difficult, but getting the Greek to have even the slightest hint of being idiomatic while expressing complex meanings is a task that I am still finding daunting. I've said before, that my working hypothesis for the next eight of these ten years is that I will appreciate the GNT better if I can myself write at the standard of the work I am reading. All the way through my education in childhood and adolescence I had been writing at a level not
too dissimilar to the level that I was reading - until meeting Chaucer and other early modern works. There are so many choices in composition, and that process of choice is tending to contextualise the language that I am reading within that lingusitic choice that the authour could be assumed to have gone through in writing. The difference between the spoken and written forms of expression in my own English seems to be that writing is more deliberative - involving more choice.
RandallButh wrote:The motivated students jump through all of the hoops that are presented to them by those controlling the programs and those who should know what is best. At the end of 2 years (a typical itnroductory language level for modern languages), or 4 years (a typical BA level with an intermediate functional fluency in place), or 6 years (typically with a more polished functional fluency in place), or 8-10 years (educated second language user+/-near-mother-tongue control), do these students of Greek or Hebrew measure up to the common sense expectations of other languages?
Sadly, I would say no.
This is a little idealistic. Not everybody teaching is good at the language they teach.
I understand the point being made that methodologically speaking there is a problem in the way Greek is being taught (as an (optional) adjunct to courses in exegesis), but I would like to add the dimension of comparative teacher competencies, that may somewhat blur the starkness of the disparity being presented.
The absolute minimum for a high school language teacher in NSW would be a 3 year sequence in a foreign language, followed by a 1 year teacher training diploma. To teach a second language would only require a 1 year study of the second or subsequent language. Ergo, there exists a broad spectrum of competencies among foreign language teachers.
What level of competency in the target language can a student who learns from slightly competent teacher using a book and AV material? Perhaps enough to pass whatever exams are required and a little more besides.
With a decline in teacher competencies the teacher's ability to express themself is probably the first thing to go from the classroom / learning experience. Without the ability to check student output, one or both of two things tends to happen. The first is that tasks become more closed - having a more formulaic structure - and have a single correct answer which is easy for the teacher to indentify. The other thing is that instruction must necessarily take place in the students first language (or perhaps in a bastardised / badly made up version of the target language).
There is nothing shocking about what we find in the way Greek is taught. If a teacher doesn't know the language, they teach grammar. If they can't create examples extemporaneously they need to stick rigidly to examples in textbooks and treat the written form of the language - especially in works of literature - as something unchangeable.
The grammar-translation method of teaching is decried often here, but I thing that if the teacher is competent in the language, then grammar and a degree of translation is a useful way to teach. Non-competent teachers are like non-competent drivers, who drive up other people's insurance premiums. Grammatical explanations, some translation exercises within the context of language instruction is a normal part of foreign and second language teaching.
Another point is dictionaries. Besides the fact that producing dictionaries in the rest of the language learning world that contain only the words in one literary work are virtually unheard of,
most foreign language learners do not pore over dictionaries like students of Greek do. Vocabulary is generally presented in word-webs, synonym/antonym pairs or groups, and with simple definitions in the target language. There isn't the sort of quest for the most perfect English word to be able to understand the target language, that one finds in Biblical Greek. Basically, if one does not know the efficacy of a word, one needs to rely on its dictionary meaning.
I have indeed encountered a few dictionary nerds in some of the language classes that I've attended, but it wouldn't have been more than 1 in every 6 or 7 languages on average.