Teaching Greek
yochanan bitan
ButhFam at compuserve.com
Thu Mar 2 07:51:22 EST 2000
I like relating a question of teaching to the 'real world'.
>I would phrase it in these terms: If this were a modern language, you
>wouldn't even _consider_ learning it from a student who had had only three
>years of the language.
Well, I would say that three years in Germany/Mexico would enable someone
to reasonably control German/Spanish, and with second language teaching
skills could do an excellent job.
But what about a German/Spanish TEACHER who couldn't say, "I need to go to
town to get food for the party."? Pretty simple, huh?
How long is an appropriate pause,?, before saying something like ofeilw eis
thn polin poreuqhnai agorasai brwmata kai pomata tw deipnw.
Personally, I think the field could use an 'overhaul', so that Greek
teachers/students could speak in class.
As things stand, after five or ten years of 'old Greek', a student is not
expected to have internalized the language, but after five or ten years of
a 'living' language a student would/(should?) be thrown out of a program if
they didn't control the language reasonably well and relatively fluently.
This is not meant to chastise us unduly but to point in the direction of
where we should/could move. I'll get back on a related, positive proposal
later.
errwsqe
Randall Buth
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