[B-Greek] my AREIOS POTHR arrived
Norbert Rennert
norbert.rennert at sil.org
Wed Nov 3 14:35:04 EST 2004
On the recent topic of Harry Potter in greek, does anyone know of short
stories that have been created to teach Greek for beginners? Most textbooks
point students to the NT as soon as possible, which I find very
counter-productive because the NT wasn't written to teach Greek for
beginners. I'm developing a language learning website which will use simple
stories that the user can manipulate to modify things such as 1,2,3 person,
singular or plural, masculine or feminine. For the verbs I hope to be able
to change tenses as well. This will "re-write" the story from that
perspective. I think that this is an advantage for the student because in
this way new forms can be introduced in the context of a story. The plot and
meaning of the story remains the same except for the changes selected by the
user. This fills the new forms with meaning immediately without having to
consult a lexicon or refer to a memorized paradigm.
Another advantage of this method is that it gives the student a lot more
reading practise at a level where they are at the moment. Each story can
currently be changed more than 24 different ways. When I add the ability to
change verb tenses to the controls it will be substantially higher yet. By
being able to control the story I hope to motivate the reader to continue
reading. This motivation is key to helping new students succeed. I think
that giving students stories to read is far superior to mere isolated
sentences or phrases.
The main strategy for choosing vocabulary will be to try to use nouns, for
example, from one declension type and use them in all 4 or 5 cases, so that
the whole story will contain words which decline the same. Thus at the end
of reading the story and manipulating it between singular and plural, the
student will have read and learned the entire paradigm.
I realize that one story per paradigm type will not be enough reading
material (even if it can be manipulated dozens of ways) to be able to
internalize Greek paradigms. What I envision is that I gather stories that
others have written, or invite Greek professors to write new stories which
can be added to this website. I am making this website accessible without
charge and am hoping to attract potential authors.
I invite the readers of this mailing list to view the page at: HYPERLINK
"https://www3.telus.net/norbertre/Greek04.html"https://www3.telus.net/norber
tre/Greek04.html .
I would appreciate feedback from you, especially if you would be willing to
point me to other Greek stories which can be found in textbooks or if you
would be interested in contributing stories which you have written. Please
note that some of the vocabulary used in the stories on my webpage are not
yet in my database and therefore cannot be changed. This is not the fault of
the method, only a temporary state of the database which will be corrected
in the future.
Norbert Rennert
Canada Institute of Linguistics
Langley, BC
Canada
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