[B-Greek] Proficiency Guidelines/just for the joy of it

Barry Hofstetter nebarry at verizon.net
Sun Feb 13 17:01:39 EST 2005


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Revdpickrel at wmconnect.com>
To: <TuNeCedeMalis67 at aol.com>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Proficiency Guidelines/just for the joy of it


> Howdy KD, homeschool mom,
>
> You just nailed me 100%.  I am a retired minister that wanted something to do
> during the day, so I purchased a homestudy book requiring thirty
> minutes-a-day of NT Greek and jumped in.  I decided next that I wanted to 
> translate the
> Septuagint, bought one and a parsing lexicon and begin.  I think ancient Greek
> students drop out because of the regimentation it takes.  You didn't start 
> your
> baby out learning technical rules to English, you started the child with
> simple things like, daddy, momma, and dog and cat.  I'm learning how to 
> research
> and translate Septuagint Greek and I still don't know what a aorist is.  When 
> I
> ask I get forty miles of technical jargon that I don't understand anyway.
> Sorry, I just jumped on a soap box.

Part of the problem is that children and adults do not learn language the same 
way.  Children can learn language just by hearing it: adults need to learn it 
systematically.  This has to do with the way our brains develop -- an adult 
simply cannot learn language without a certain amount of systematization. 
Chances are, BTW, that you didn't teach your child how to talk at all -- they 
just started doing it, because their brains are hardwired to learn speech. 
Young children who are "taught" language don't acquire it any faster than those 
who are not taught.  With or without special help, children between the ages of 
2-5 learn up to 50 new vocabulary words a week.  By age three, a child already 
has the basic structure of his or her language down (of course, different 
children develop at somewhat different rates) -- the rest is just fine tuning

Now, that doesn't mean that the traditional grammatical approach is necessarily 
the best way.  The inductive and inductive-immersion approaches can work very 
well, but if you sooner or later you are going to need a comprehensive and 
systematic review of the grammar.  Otherwise, you'll be like some of the 
advanced Ph.D. students in Classics that I knew, who could read Greek flawlessly 
but often couldn't tell you why their translation was correct...  :)

Personally, I prefer an inductive-immersion approach that requires extensive 
exposure to the language along with a traditional grammatical summary and 
overview at regular points -- the best of both worlds, so to speak.

With all due respect, Rev. Pickrel, I often find that when individuals such as 
yourself actually attempt to use what they have learned, that their 
understanding of the Greek will be erroneous and their conclusions even  worse, 
but I hope that you are an exception to that general rule.

N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Adjunct Faculty, The Center for Urban Theological Studies
         Philadelphia, PA
http://www.cuts.edu
Visiting Faculty, Reformed Theological Seminary
         Washington, D.C.
http://www.rts.edu/campuses/washington_dc/index.cfm

And me:
http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry/

Opinions expressed by author of this message do not necessarily reflect the 
opinions of the institutions listed above... 




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