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Hi, I'm Friedrich de Wet

Posted: April 11th, 2019, 10:06 am
by Friedrich de Wet
χαίρετε παντές

I'm from South Africa and currently busy with an Ma in Koine Greek. I want to study the New Testament better in order to understand God's revelation better. However, I just love reading Greek for the sake of reading Greek as well. I hope to one day be able to read Greek almost as fluently as I read English or my mother tongue.

One of my interests is pedagogical techniques. I lament the poor quality of teaching we get here in South Africa. We are still stuck with the grammar and translation method - and we don't even translate into Greek. Zero productive skills are utilized and the only receptive skill used is reading (if you can call it reading). The result, after even three years of training: pastors can parse and analyze, but if you put the NT text in front of them, they read like children starting school with even less comprehension. I hope that this can oneday be overturned.

My other interest is the debate on verbal aspect and time. At the moment I'm reading up on cognitive linguistics and its contributions to the study of Koine Greek.

I hope to learn a lot from you guys!

Kind regards
Friedrich de Wet

Re: Hi, I'm Friedrich de Wet

Posted: April 11th, 2019, 1:37 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Friedrich de Wet wrote: April 11th, 2019, 10:06 am
One of my interests is pedagogical techniques ...


My other interest is the debate on verbal aspect and time.
The first thing you should do is find out how to search the archives, both the current forum and then email forum back to the early 1990s. Your topics of interest have been discussed extensively. Pedagogy is the current obsession. Verb aspect was an obsession in the 1990s. So you will find almost any conceivable question in regard to these issues has already been discussed extensively. The moderators can point you to the tools for searching old posts.

Re: Hi, I'm Friedrich de Wet

Posted: April 11th, 2019, 4:38 pm
by Jason Hare
Stirling Bartholomew wrote: April 11th, 2019, 1:37 pm The moderators can point you to the tools for searching old posts.
Well, I imagine that anyone can help with the forum's search tools. ;)

It's certainly a good idea to begin searching there. Of course, the archives for the old listserv have a ton of information from before the forum itself was established.

Re: Hi, I'm Friedrich de Wet

Posted: April 12th, 2019, 2:50 am
by Friedrich de Wet
The search function helps a lot, thanks! This is a great platform to get an orientation as to what is going on in the Koine world.

Is there a website devoted to writing in Koine? I'm looking for something like a chatroom. I would love to practice writing as well.

Re: Hi, I'm Friedrich de Wet

Posted: April 15th, 2019, 1:37 pm
by Paul-Nitz
Friedrich,

Good to hear from down South.

The Grammar-Translation method does work for a very small percentage of learners. The rest end up with the same sort of facility with the language as you describe. Communicative methods work for a large percentage of learners. In order to reach reading fluency anything like what you are aiming at, you need to encounter Ancient Greek as a true language, that is, a vehicle of communication.

Follow this link to the sub-forum on pedagogy. Look especially for threads with many replies and views. viewforum.php?f=15

For writing Greek, there is a spot on this forum here. viewforum.php?f=61

Textkit.com has a more active community of people who write back and forth in Greek.

Paul Nitz