[B-Greek] Ancient Greek-Grammar war?

Donald Vance donaldrvance at mac.com
Mon Feb 27 22:55:59 EST 2006


See comments interspaced below.

Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
Oral Roberts University
dvance at oru.edu
donaldrvance at mac.com
On Feb 27, 2006, at 3:10 PM, Carl W.Conrad wrote:

> Grammar in Teaching and Learning Ancient Greek
>
>
snip
> In the course of my own teaching of Greek I tried several different
> textbooks.  I came to feel more and more that traditional instruction
> focused on learning rules and vocabulary lists and paradigms and then
> TRANSLATING sentences from Greek to English and English to Greek
> (sentences all too often composed by textbook-authors in quite
> unidiomatic Greek and English)  would work only with the exceptional
> students who actually went beyond those procedures and internalized
> the language in a manner not altogether different from the way
> children learn their native tongue. I knew that I myself had acquired
> as much fluency as I had in Greek and Latin through reading long
> sequential texts of good (and some less good) ancient authors. I felt
> that what was needed was a textbook that moved as soon as possible
> into sequential discourse in the Greek or Latin. Of the traditional
> type of textbooks the best I ever found for classical Attic was
> Hansen and Quinn (the sentences were written with authentic
> understanding of both Greek and English idiom). But I was really
> looking for something that focused on getting the student to THINK IN
> GREEK.
>

In defense of the traditional grammatical approach to language 
acquisition, it must be remembered--as our incoming freshmen make 
abundantly clear--it takes 18 years or longer to learn a language "the 
way children learn it." The grammatical approach enables one to shrink 
that to 18 months or less. The inductive approach fails miserably in 
teaching an ancient language for modern students for precisely the 
reason that Mulroy pegged: students don't have the boxes built for 
language learning. If a student can't figure out how "You done good!" 
is wrong, how are they supposed to intuit the meaning of a Greek 
sentence? The inductive approach is too slow. On the flip side, the 
problem with the traditional grammatical approach is that it does not 
lead automatically to internalization.

In my own personal study, I have striven to internalize the language. 
When I read my Greek New Testament, I try NOT to translate the sentence 
into English, but to think the Greek words. As my eyes scant the Greek 
text, in my head I hear PANTA ISXUW EN TWi ENDUNAMOUNTI ME, not "I am 
strong enough for all things in him who empowers me." This often means 
that I have to read a paragraph several times doing mental translation 
first, but eventually I can think the Greek text. This has had a 
significant impact on my understanding and comprehension of Greek. But 
I am still in the infant stages of this process.

snip

> Ultimately the goal of assimilating ancient Greek
> requires learning to think, to speak, and to write in the fashion of
> ancient Greek thinkers, speakers, and writers.

This may be our goal, but it may not be the goal of our students, 
especially those who study Biblical Greek. They want to understand the 
text for exegesis.




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