First Year Greek

Dr. Dale M. Wheeler dalemw at multnomah.edu
Sat Apr 20 14:20:12 EDT 2002


XAIREIN Randall:

I hope this reply finds you and yours safe; I find myself praying for 
you'all regularly.

Your are correct that the mnemonics in Greek To Me provide intermediate 
links between the known (English) and the unknown (Greek).  My observation 
after all these years is that these links are quickly discarded by the 
student's mind and the direct link between the language equivalents is 
established.  The reason for this is the massive amount of translation of 
graduated Koine stories the students do; one story per chapter, with 
additional practice exercises (and then for the last 10 weeks of the second 
semester I have them translate the whole Gospel of Mark, while we review 
the entire grammar 3 more times)...without all of this translation the 
words and forms *would* simply remain abstractions to them.

As to quizzes/exams...none in Greek per se.  However, they will see ALL of 
the vocab and parsing info *at least* five times (most stuff 7 or 8 times) 
on quizzes/exams by the end of the 2nd semester.  This repetition, in 
addition to seeing these things in the stories/Mark, is what makes it stick 
(ie., move from short term to long term memory).  What I do in class as we 
translate the stories is to teach them a method for translating (ie., Look 
for the Nom first, then the verb, etc.), and a method for parsing 
verbs...and I do this over and over and over and over again.  For me, its 
all about the translation skill, since that is what they are going to be 
doing long term...this is one of the major reasons I don't use any of the 
traditional grammars; they don't give the students enough vocab (by the end 
of GTM the student has learned words which occur 25x or more) and enough 
real Koine sentences to translate.  It is my personal belief that exercises 
which ask the student to translate from English to Greek end up creating 
English sentences with Greek words, and thus create incorrect 
understandings of Greek in the student's mind (BTW, once a student has 
read/translated Greek for 2 or better 3 years, then those types of 
exercises can actually be good--which is what we do here at Multnomah; part 
of 4th year is composition in Koine--...but I don't think they are helpful 
at the outset, IMHO).

This is, of course, just my perspectives on the matter...

BRWKYM



At 01:12 PM 4/20/2002 -0400, Randall Buth wrote:
>shalom Dale,
>
>I appreciate your comments and am grateful for anyone pursuing paths
>for greater efficiency.
>
>A question:
>Wouldn't it be more correct to say that the mnemonics that Story
>uses teach a metalanguage (English-based) rather than the language
>itself?
>E.g., rather than have a student know ANASTHQI and KAQOU so
>well that they stand up and sit down when they hear it, my impression
>of Story was that they would learn trigger words for AORISTS and
>SUBJUNCTIVES and English vocabulary tags.
>Having said that, of course, I would expect students to do well in
>a parsing type test.
>
>A second question:
>Do you have any Greek tests in Greek?
>
> >
> >As some of you know, I've been using Story & Story _Greek To Me_ for
>almost
> >20 years now teaching first year Greek, and I am still impressed year
>after
> >year as to how well my students (usually about 30-35 a year) learn Greek
> >with this book and cards.
>
>ERRWSO
>
>Randall Buth

***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Research Prof., Biblical Languages          Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan St.                                  Portland, OR 97220
V: 503-2516416                                 E: dalemw at multnomah.edu
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