Dobson - Learn NT Greek

Randall Buth ButhFam at compuserve.com
Tue Jun 11 15:47:37 EDT 2002


  shalom Eric
CAIREIN

(Eric Weiss)
>>>But I
>>>think it would be useful to acquaint the students with this knowledge
>>>early on.
>
(buth)
>> If the student is learning GREEK, (not English), why does it matter when
>> they learn to interact with an English word like "subjunctive"?
>
snip
(Weiss)
>So, it sounds like you might give a tentative "thumbs up" to Dobson's
>book/approach? Have you seen his book and/or his book on Hebrew?

(Buth)
I'm for anything that helps a student learn a language efficiently. 

Dobson has lots of simple sentences. That's good.

He has translation on the page to save time and prevent mislearning 
at the initial learning stages. That can be good, and doesn't seem to 
have been mentioned yet in this thread. (The prevention of mislearning 
is certainly good. The foreign language [English] can be seductive.)

The lack of accents is symptomatic of what I would see as a serious 
flaw, though. The course is not designed to lead to internalization of the
language. I would personally want the accents written, but only while
assuming them to correctly reinforce rapid, interactive language work.

In the first millenium, when accents weren't written, people learned to 
READ Greek by SPEAKING with their teacher. Imagine what Greek 
studies would be like if students spoke Greek with their teacher?
Anyway, that's how they did it way back when. And the 'remarkable'
result was that those speakers could read the ancient texts that 
they studied, even without accents. So writing the accents won't make
the difference, but speaking with the teacher will. 

Hmmm, don't get your hopes up too high. An eight semester-credit 
program doesn't produce fluency in any language. I would calculate 
30 to 50 semester-credits IF speaking with the teacher.

As for the Hebrew question. Ditto on the above. 
(You might want to look at our website:  www.biblicalulpan.org   
where we have a foundational biblical Hebrew program that has 
successfully led students into fluency with Hebrew through various 
follow-up programs. NB: the summer ulpan is a 'live' foundation.
It is not the final end product but it leads into multidimensional 
learning with the 'ceiling' removed. And yes, it is 'more efficient'.
[The year-abroad program shows what can be done with 
biblical Hebrew. Notice the number of Hebrew hours, all 
intertwined with "live" language use and lots of reading].)

ERRWSO
Randall Buth
Jerusalem



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