You're certainly one of the experts, and I definitely appreciate your advice.Paul-Nitz wrote:You’re getting expert advice from Palmer, but I’ll throw in a couple ideas.
A few questions and thoughts ...Paul-Nitz wrote:I wonder if you should split things along an in-class and out-of-class division. In-class, you would largely do what you have done. You talk through the Greek together and then discuss application. But a discrete segment (probably beginning) of your class would be to “play” with some of the Greek in the text and give the students ideas how they might, as autodidacts, internalize the Greek better.
The Greek you want them to learn and they want to learn out of this text is something you would have to determine. But if, let’s say, the target structure is internalizing the Nom & Acc functions and forms, you could take all the clearly transitive verbs here and do a 10 min exercise. I would act out a scenario using 3-4 verbs (hinder, answer, say, receive, etc.). The students would be actively doing the hindering, answering, saying… Then you simply ask questions about what happened. Who hindered whom? If any student hesitates, give them an “either/or” follow up question. I don’t think Palmer’s point about “success breeds success” can be overemphasized. So, for example, if I ask “τίς ἐκωλυε τοῦτον τὸν μαθητην;” and if there’s some hesitation, then I follow up immediately with “τίς ἐκωλύε τοῦτον τὸν μαθητήν; Μᾶρκος ἤ Ευοδία;”
I like having follow up questions that provide alternatives to choose from.
I'd like to keep the focus on the text, but these verbs will come up as we build phrases into sentences, that might be a good time to do something more along these lines. It might not need an entire cohesive skit, which would have its own story line and take up more class time than I might have in a 45 minute class, especially if this were in addition to learning the question forms. It's easy enough to mime preventing someone from taking an M&M from the jar at the time we hit that verb, then ask those questions. But I wonder if I couldn't use hand motions and miming to convey the meaning of each verb, then ask the τίς / τίνα / πρὸς τίνα questions for each transitive verb as we encounter them, taking answers from the text itself. The text already gives us the story that we want to focus on.
If I were to set up a skit, it would make sense to use one based closely on this text. I could have one guy trying to cast out demons from another guy, then have a third guy try to prevent him, and a fourth guy observe the whole thing ... but that gets kind of complicated. I'm not likely to try this for tomorrow, since I'm already trying some new things and I don't want to try too many new things in the same class, but I'd be interested in seeing if I can do something more along these lines for next week. And I'd like to explore doing it as part of working through the text versus doing it in a separate skit. I do want whatever I do to keep the focus on the text itself.
For this week, though, I might use all the transitive verbs the way that Micheal suggested.
I don't think a certain number of verses is immovable, but we do need to cover enough material in the Greek portion to have something to discuss at the end when we interpret and apply the text. I am trying to divide up my time roughly like this:Paul-Nitz wrote:I guess what makes me think in terms of splitting up your objectives is the text. If a certain number of verses is an immovable part of your lesson, I think that really limits what you can do in the way of communicative teaching of the Greek language. But it does seem feasible to use a few minutes of your lesson to spark some interest and give some idea of how the students might learn more communicatively on their own, outside of the class. Just a few thoughts.
- 5 minutes greetings and small talk
- 5-10 minutes language instruction, directly applicable to the text. This week: asking and answering questions.
- 20 minutes work through the text to the point of understanding it well
- 10 minutes interpretation and application