[B-Greek] Proficiency Guidelines/just for the joy of it
Eric Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 13 18:58:22 EST 2005
Re: the Dobson book
My comments/experience:
Learn New Testament Greek: Second Edition by John H.
Dobson. ISBN 0801030196. Learn New Testament Greek
Cassette Tape. ISBN 0801029945. This book uses an
inductive approach that minimizes vocabulary and
paradigm memorization and maximizes reading exercises,
and gets the student into the New Testament text very
quickly compared to most other first-year grammars.
Dobson also introduces the student to material (e.g.,
textual criticism, discourse analysis) rarely touched
on in first-year Greek classes. He continually
stresses learning to translate meaning, so that
students do not come away from the course thinking
that translation is basically an exercise of
substituting English words for Greek words. The
cassette tape reads aloud the content/exercises in the
first 14 chapters to help students with pronunciation
and reading and listening.
Some caveats:
1. Dobson's book uses no accents (but this is somewhat
remedied when students begin reading from the UBS
Greek New Testament after a few weeks and thus see
accents in the text);
2. Dobson presents noun paradigms as nominative,
accusative, genitive, dative, whereas most other
first-year grammars that use the 5-case system put the
accusative case last;
3. Dobson's approach, while it enables diligent
students to "read" the New Testament with some
understanding and recognize forms, may not train them
sufficiently with verbal and nominal paradigms and
parsing exercises to prepare them for a standard
second-year Greek course. A group of students I taught
at church with this book did not do as well as the
book claims they should have, and several retook NT
Greek with me using GREEK TO ME (J. Lyle Story) - and
got much better results (but with a lot more work on
their part, however!).
- - -
There is also a new edition of TEACH YOURSELF NEW
TESTAMENT GREEK by Gavin Betts (the previous edition
was by D. F. Hudson). It's looks somewhat formidable
for the do-it-yourselfer, though, and Hudson's book
may be easier, if you can acquire a copy (but I
personally think the TEACH YOURSELF series of books is
more rigorous than the name suggests). Whatever you
use, David Alan Black's handy-sized LEARN TO READ NEW
TESTAMENT GREEK - REVISED EDITION is a helpful
companion even if it's not your primary grammar, as
Black gives clear and concise explanations of terms
that may not be clearly explained by others.
=====
Eric S. Weiss
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