[B-Greek] Learn Nouns first, later Verbs

Eric Weiss eweiss at gte.net
Tue Jan 20 12:25:52 EST 2004


Terry and Gail Cook wrote:

> None of the books/systems on learning mentioned on this list 
> except Lyle Story's take a slowed down pace to learning Greek. I 
> don't particularly like his book/system but it does have that 
> going for it. I have Mounce (book and cd), Dobson, and Black as 
> helpers to my textbook which is "Essentials of New Testament 
> Greek, Revised" (I also have the workbook).

Actually, Lyle Story's GREEK TO ME does NOT take a slowed-down 
pace. In 24 chapters (Intro + Chapter 1, which should be learned 
together, imo, plus Chapters 2-21 -- there are three parts to 
Chapter 12), GREEK TO ME covers all the basic first-year material 
that Mounce does in 35 weeks/chapters, plus students learn nearly 
twice the vocabulary -- 640 or so words vs. 320 or so. But the 
mnemonic system helps most students learn this extra with no 
additional effort (i.e., if they review and study the material).

Story, as you've probably found out, isn't as detailed as Mounce 
and maybe some others (e.g., he doesn't explain why the second-
person singular middle/passive indicative ending is eta + iota 
subscript, rather than sigma-alpha-iota; he doesn't give the 
linguistic and grammatical terminology that David Alan Black does), 
and paradigms aren't methodically memorized as lists as much as by 
mnemonic devices, but the basics are there.

A curriculum using GREEK TO ME should theoretically be able to give 
the students time for 10 or so weeks of second-year-level Greek 
instruction for the end of their second semester/third quarter. At 
Multnomah, according to Dr. Wheeler, the students sight-read 
through the entire Gospel of Mark at the end of their GREEK TO ME 
course, something they are able to do because they have learned 
enough vocabulary to make working through the New Testament a 
practical project. As others have noted, reading large sections of 
the Greek New Testament is perhaps the best way to learn NT Greek.

(Plus, Dr. Story has just added a 150pp. parsing and translation 
book to his curriculum, which provides additional exercises for 
every chapter. This may or may not slow down or extend the 24-week 
learning plan; I won't know until I and/or my students use it.)

[/soapbox]

This has not been a paid advertisement :) I appreciate the 
different approaches Mounce, Dobson, Black and Story bring to 
first-year Greek instruction.


Eric S. Weiss
eweiss at gte.net
http://www.geocities.com/papaweiss1/index.htm




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