[B-Greek] Drilling/ was Re: Greek & Hebrew brush-up tools

Warren Fulton WarrenFulton at telering.at
Fri Feb 27 16:17:18 EST 2004


Earlier I wrote:
> The purpose of the paradigm drill is to learn the inflections.

I then tried to make a case for using sentence transformations and
student-to-student dialogues to learn them. I used the term "fun"
for my approach and "military march" in describing traditional
rote memorization. Like all blanket assessments, this covers up
some facts.

We have already heard a number of ideas on how to turn paradigm
memorization into games and other motivating activities. On the
other hand, the the exercises I proposed are also "paradigm
drills" in that they focus rigidly on repetition of the forms to
the point of automatization. Moreover, by operating with more than
one paradigm at a time, they are heavy on conscious contrast. They
are drills disguised as dialogues.

One way or another, every Greek student has to put a lot of sweat
into learning the extensive morphology of this language and sooner
or later every student needs to know that TIMW turns into TIMAS in
the second person. You can get there by tackling the paradigms
head on, or by doing dialogue drills, but the goal has to be, as
stated above, "to learn the inflections." How you learn may be
dictated by your teacher's teaching style, but ultimately you
will never be able to escape your own learning style.

If your personal learning style is rule-oriented, you probably do
not want to be in a class or very long that keeps the conjugation
chart locked out of sight and makes you jump through a lot of
sentence hoops as in the drills I outlined. You want to see the
chart and refer to it. It will make you uncomfortable if you are
asked to "intuit" your way through a dialogue. On the other hand,
if you are an expressive learner, you will resist any authority
that tries to force the raw forms down your throat before you
understand what they mean or before you can use them. You do not
want to learn new language from a formal framework, but when you
need it in a sentence.

Most adults are on a scale somewhere between these extremes and
need a balance of exercise types depending on where they are in
the learning process. Younger people tend to appreciate working
their way to rules experimentally from examples; older learners
may need cognitive structuring earlier. A skilled teacher will
react to the different needs of the different personalities in
the class and on good days will get them to learn from each
other.  Miss Bouncey, can you give us an example of that? Mister
Schachbrett, can you tell us the rule?

Oh, isn't this fun? Now where did I put my whip?

Warren Fulton
Vienna


 



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