Teaching Top Down Analysis

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon May 1 09:06:05 EDT 2000


At 8:58 PM -0700 4/30/00, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>What I am wondering is can top down analysis be taught to students early on
>or is there something inherently difficult about high level analysis? I was
>taught the rudiments of high level, top down analysis in English Bible
>classes a decade before I started dabbling in NT Greek. The idea that this
>is an "advanced" subject is the idea I am challenging. If I could learn some
>of it in English Bible classes than certainly it could be taught along with
>the core curriculum in a NT Greek sequence and not stuck in some high level
>elective course which few students ever take.

Perhaps I ought to put this question off-line, but I think it may really be
of general interest. As one who started learning Greek half a century ago
and who found it awesomely challenging at that time to master the detail of
morphology, diction, and syntax (just those simple matters!), I'm wondering
just how it is proposed that incorporation of Discourse Analysis should be
done at the beginning level.

Moreover, as one on the verge of going out of the profession feet first
(although I hope I may yet walk out on two feet), I have seen my own field
of Classics (I really am an outsider and usurper in the area of Biblical
Greek, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) overwhelmed by
numerous theories, such that one must know which cell in the Tower of Babel
one is talking to in order to carry on meaningful discourse with another
Classicist, AND as one who grows older becoming increasingly skeptical
about most things people make grandiose assertions about, I need yet to be
convinced (and I AM ready and willing) of the value and importance of
Discourse Analysis; I expect to be reading more of it and about it, but
what has impressed me thus far is the seeming subjectivity of it (I should
also add, perhaps, that I am one who is very skeptical of social-science
methodologies and claims to be "scientific" in their analysis of human
behavior). I continue to feel (although I am willing to be convinced
otherwise) that one doesn't get on toward fluency in reading ancient Greek
prose very well by any means more succesfully than by reading, reading,
reading, oodles of ancient Greek prose.

So I still wonder how it is proposed that "top down analysis" is to be
taught to students at the beginning level. Is it something like, "This is
John. John is running. See John run."--or what?

What is it, Clay, that you were taught about "top down analysis" in English
Bible classes; if I knew that, I might have some better conception of what
it is that you are suggesting as something desirable to institute in
teaching ancient/Biblical Greek at the elementary level.

-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu 



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