Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

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Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Does anyone know of freely available lesson plans or teacher's notes including ideas for games, activites, projects and strategies for teaching from Wenham's Elements of New Testament Greek (1965)?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

One specific question about this book (and maybe others). Wenham doesn't mark the accents. How is a beginner to be expected to speak Greek aloud when accents are not given to them? I don't know about others here, but even after 35 years now in the language, I would probably make an accentuation mistake with between 1 in 20 words and 1 in 50 words depending on the complexity of the grammar in the passages (especially -θη verb forms and genitives plural) if the accents are not marked.

Is the pedagogical model premised on the assumption that the language would only be spoken out at post-beginner level. Do books without accents rely on the accompanying audio recordings to teach students how to pronounce correctly (in 1965 that must have been reel to reel technology)?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Shirley Rollinson
Posts: 415
Joined: June 4th, 2011, 6:19 pm
Location: New Mexico
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Re: Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:One specific question about this book (and maybe others). Wenham doesn't mark the accents. How is a beginner to be expected to speak Greek aloud when accents are not given to them? I don't know about others here, but even after 35 years now in the language, I would probably make an accentuation mistake with between 1 in 20 words and 1 in 50 words depending on the complexity of the grammar in the passages (especially -θη verb forms and genitives plural) if the accents are not marked.

Is the pedagogical model premised on the assumption that the language would only be spoken out at post-beginner level. Do books without accents rely on the accompanying audio recordings to teach students how to pronounce correctly (in 1965 that must have been reel to reel technology)?
The unaccented Wenham was used when I was first learning Greek - the rationale for omitting accents was that the poor confused beginning students had enough to do to recognize breathings (Wenham said he would have liked to omit the smooth breathing too), and also that the early manuscripts did not use accents.
In his Intro, Wenham stressed that the book was to teach the "elements - and only the elements" of NT Greek, and "The student should be protected from all avoidable toil . . ."
It was probably assumed that students would be learning from a teacher, who would give the pronunciation and accentuation, and it was aimed at seminary students who were less concerned with reading aloud and pronunciation that with doing "seminary-type-stuff" with the GNT.. As Wenham's preface states, the book was intended as an introduction to the "elements" of NT Greek, to prepare the student to begin serious work on the GNT text - which was described as "translation"
In the preface to the 1991 edition (still without accents), Wenham made it clear that he expected students to learn accentuation from a teacher, and suggested that students learn accentuation by writing the accents in by hand - but that was for the "high-fliers who hope to go on to doctoral studies"

Nevertheless, fifty years ago Wenham was one of the best introductory books, and helped to get me started with Greek :-)
And, yes, I still have occasional trouble with accents, but it doesn't stop me reading the GNT.

PS - as to lesson plans, games, etc. - I can tell you as a student who was taught with this book - the "lesson plan" was to read a chapter, translate the sentences, and memorize the paradigm and the vocabulary for a test the next day. No games, no projects, no activities - "nose in the book, learn it, test tomorrow"
Shirley Rollinson
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Shirley Rollinson wrote:... Wenham ... suggested that students learn accentuation by writing the accents in by hand - but that was for the "high-fliers who hope to go on to doctoral studies"

... I still have occasional trouble with accents, but it doesn't stop me reading the GNT.
Those occasional problems didn't stop you going on to doctoral studies either, thankfully.
Shirley Rollinson wrote:PS - as to lesson plans, games, etc. - I can tell you as a student who was taught with this book - the "lesson plan" was to read a chapter, translate the sentences, and memorize the paradigm and the vocabulary for a test the next day. No games, no projects, no activities - "nose in the book, learn it, test tomorrow"
The Greek declensional patterns seem to use the same language processing matrix - having a similar degree of variability and the same triggering parameters (from the requirements of the associated verbs) as the countable and uncountable noun distinctions in English.

I wouldn't countenance teaching a table like;
  • ice cream
  • ice cream
  • some of the ice cream
  • some ice cream
  • any ice cream
    -
  • an ice cream
  • ice creams
  • ice creams
  • some ice creams
  • any ice creams
Then the next day have students tested on how well they could recite it back to me. Neither would I, once them had memorised it, only then point out to them the syntactical role that each one plays, viz.
  • ice cream - an undefined imaginary idea of ice cream
  • ice cream - a portion that could be put on a plate
  • some of the ice cream - a quanitifiable division of some sort of whole
  • some ice cream - a quantifiable portion of ice cream not conceived of as being from a whole
  • any ice cream - referring to the absence of ice cream
    -
  • an ice cream - a small quantifiable portion of ice creamm a serve
  • ice creams - an undefined, infinite number of discrete portions of ice cream
  • ice creams - accompanied by a numeral referring to specific concrete ice creams
  • some ice creams - an undefined, but quantifiable number
  • any ice creams - referring to the absence of quantifiable portions of ice cream
Then, I could not imagine myself rewarding students for memorising syntactic by letting them see those different forms of "ice cream" used in example sentences, either in a reference grammar alligned to the tabulation, or as they came up in real written text situations, which were then referenced to the above table.
  • ice cream - an undefined imaginary idea of ice cream - "I like ice cream."
  • ice cream - a portion that could be put on a plate - "Would you like ice cream?"
  • some of the ice cream - a quanitifiable division of some sort of whole - "Give him some of the ice cream."
  • some ice cream - a quantifiable portion of ice cream not conceived of as being from a whole - "I had some ice cream for dinner."
  • any ice cream - referring to the absence of ice cream - "The IGA didn't have any ice cream left."
    -
  • an ice cream - a small quantifiable portion of ice cream, a serve - "He ate an ice cream before dinner."
  • ice creams - an undefined, infinite number of discrete portions of ice cream - "Selling ice creams is a good way to make a living."
  • ice creams - accompanied by a numeral referring to specific concrete ice creams - "There were only two ice creams in the freezer."
  • some ice creams - an undefined, but quantifiable/knowable number - "Fix up some ice creams for desert."
  • any ice creams - referring to the absence of quantifiable portions of ice cream - "The children didn't have any ice creams at all last summer."
If they mannaged to correctly identify and explain those, then I wouldn't see the point of introducing prepositions related to either or all of those, "they were out of ice cream (undefined, imaginary idea).", they served chocolate cake with ice cream (a portion that could be put on a plate).", "She rewarded him with some of the ice cream (a quantifiable division of some sort of whole).", "The unfortunate fly drowned in some ice cream. (a quantifiable portion, not thought of as part of a whole).", etc.

I would not then, stress and make a to do of the fact that "with" is used of two classes of noun, and that learners need to cofrectly differentiate them, and test them on this often.

That is more or less analogous to the sequence of introduction of noun declensions in Wenham. It is about a teacher holding the essential key to understanding what is happening - the needs of particular verbs or (syntactically defined classes of verbs), while introducing things that would quite simply follow on from a discussion of the usage of certain verbs, if instruction began at the top of the hill and worked down.

What I would do, is to start with the verbs that trigger or set the input parameters to determine which form of the countability and definiteness declension to use / is used / should be used.

The term "elements" is used in the sense of smallest indentifiable discrete portions of the language, rather than as in "elementary" = "meeting the needs of beginners", though at that time there might have been the thinking that that was what was needed in the context of teacher-centred Greek education.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Shirley Rollinson
Posts: 415
Joined: June 4th, 2011, 6:19 pm
Location: New Mexico
Contact:

Re: Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Shirley Rollinson wrote:... Wenham ... suggested that students learn accentuation by writing the accents in by hand - but that was for the "high-fliers who hope to go on to doctoral studies"

... I still have occasional trouble with accents, but it doesn't stop me reading the GNT.
Those occasional problems didn't stop you going on to doctoral studies either, thankfully.
The doctorate was in chemistry :-)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Lesson plans for Wenham (1965)?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Here are a series of videos that I've created for educational and non-comercial purposes, under section VB the fair dealing provisions of the Australian Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968. These videos may contain copyright material. Any further reproduction or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act.

Videos to aid memorisation and retention of the items in vocabulary lists 3 - 10. They are designed to facilitate the students rote learning of the lesson vocabularies, not to be a substitute for rote learning.

Wenham vocabulary 3



Wenham vocabulary 4



Wenham vocabulary 5



Wenham vocabulary 6



Wenham vocabulary 7



Wenham vocabulary 8



Wenham vocabulary 9



Wenham vocabulary 10
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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