Dobson - Learn NT Greek
Erik Westwig
ewestwig at palisade.com
Tue Jun 11 10:39:48 EDT 2002
It is very rare that I have anything useful to add to this list, so I am
glad to be able to contribute in this case.
When I decided I wanted to learn Greek (alas, on my own) I purchased
Dobson's book, sight unseen, from Amazon.com. I had no other book to
compare it to and no other real experience with Greek, except for the
"little Greek" tutorials that Jonathan Robie (very thoughtfully) put
together on the web. For the first half of the book, I was extremely
impressed. I made so much progress so fast. I had learned the alphabet. I
had learned lots of words. I had learned verb endings. And I had learned
all this stuff very, very fast. But then, as I progressed, I got more and
more confused. By the time he was introducing aorist participles, I was so
lost I couldn't continue. So, I went out and purchased William Mounce's
"Basics of Biblical Greek." and have not regretted that decision.
Please note, however, that doesn't mean I think Dobson's book is all that
bad. First of all, I don't think I could have done nearly as well with
Mounce's book without having read the first half of Dobson. I had already
mastered a good deal of vocabulary. I had lots of practice translating
simple sentences, which I think is a very big plus on Dobson's side. He has
zillions and zillions of simple translation exercises, at least at the
beginning of the text, which really helped me. Since that time, I have gone
through Mounce's book, as well as the first book of the Attic Greek book,
"Athenaze." I am currently about a quarter of the way through the JACT book
"Reading Greek." These books would all benefit from Dobson's example of
providing zillions of very simple exercises. Mounce in particular is
extremely weak in this area, I think. I know it sounds boring, but the "See
Dick Run. Run, Dick, Run." approach really works (at least for me). That
is not to say that having Mounce's extracts from the GNT, or the modified
texts of Athenaze or JACT aren't useful. They are. But when a new set of
vocabulary or a new grammatically paradigm is introduced, I can think of no
better way to master it that to see it in short, very simple exercises over,
and over, and over again. Then, I'll be ready for it in the context of a
larger text.
The ideal text (for me) would combine the features of Dobson and Mounce,
walking a middle ground between "inductive" and "deductive" learning.
Dobson is so inductive that I got lost. Mounce was better, but erred on the
side of being too deductive.
Another issue. Dobson goes out of his way to say that pronunciation isn't a
big deal, and as was mentioned in a previous post, he doesn't provide
accents. I couldn't disagree more with this, and I think it is another big
flaw in the book. I'm too ignorant to go into a theoretical or historical
analysis of why or why not accents or breathings should be included in a
text, but I will say this : knowing and understanding (at least at the very
basic level I understand them) the accent rules has helped me a great deal.
It certainly has aided my memorization of vocabulary. Also, it has helped
me read the text out loud in a more confident and consistent manner.
Erik Westwig
Software Engineer
Palisade Corporation
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list