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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