Dobson - Learn NT Greek
c stirling bartholomew
cc.constantine at worldnet.att.net
Mon Jun 10 00:53:03 EDT 2002
on 6/9/02 9:17 PM, Eric S. Weiss wrote:
> Also, he uses a very inductive approach, and just gives the
> students/readers the words and usages with no technical grammatical or
> linguistic names or explanations, at least not early on (I'm at about
> chapter 14 of 52 chapters). So I docked him another few points for this.
> It is here, in my opinion, that a teacher would likely be most helpful,
> informing/acquainting the students with the terminology they will be
> encountering in other books they will be reading in their studies. E.g.:
> In the first 13 chapters, the student has been given or exposed to the
> definite article, the present tense, demonstrative pronouns, the
> subjunctive mood, relative pronouns, participles -- yet NONE of these
> terms/words has been used in the text. Dobson does introduce these, or
> some of these, terms later on ... sometimes MUCH later on, it seems. But I
> think it would be useful to acquaint the students with this knowledge
> early on.
>
> Is this approach good? Bad? It's hard for me to judge, as I can't judge
> this book as one who has never studied NT Greek before.
Eric,
The "metalanguage" one uses exercises a great deal of control over how one
understands the language. The reason so many students of NT Greek have a
difficult time thinking intelligently about texts is that they have been
taken captive very early in their studies by the traditional terminology
which brings with it a implicit language model that the new student isn't
even aware of. If you start adopting all the terminology found in certain
900 page grammars you will inevitably drawn into the way of thinking about
things associated with that metalanguage.
Most SIL language consultants understand this issue.
One important qualification. There is a set of certain basic terms which are
almost universally accepted and used in all models.
greetings,
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
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