[B-Greek] Class Frequency

Bryant J. Williams III bjwvmw at com-pair.net
Mon Apr 16 11:26:53 EDT 2007


Dear Ken,

When taking Greek in undergraduate studies my classes were 50 minutes 4 days
a week. It proved invaluable, because even with a one year layoff between
college and seminary, only 4 students passed the Greek entrance exam. All 4
students including myself were from the same college.

At the seminary level, we had Greek 4 times a week for the first year Greek
class, while the baby Greek class was 5 times a week both at 50 minutes. By
the second year it was 3 times a week. By the third year, advance Greek and
reading, it remained at 3 times a week. The students went from Machen (baby
Greek), to Dana & Mantey (supplemented by Williams' Grammar Notes & AT
Robertson-Davies *Short Grammar* (Dr. Phil Williams, PhD in Classical Greek,
USC, and taught at Dallas Seminary, 7 yrs., and translated NKJV) and BDF
(3rd yr/advanced also supplemented by AT Robertson, larger tome). Even
though I was able to cram 3 yrs of classes into 5 yrs, I was still able to
take Greek and Hebrew every tri-quarter and year that I was in seminary
(total of 7 yrs of Greek and 5 yrs of Hebrew).

It was interesting to see the number of students that took Greek at the
start and the number that continued into the third year. There were 30
students in baby Greek and  30 students in first year. The number of
students in first year remained at about 30 students, 2nd year to about  30
students. Finally, there were only 5 students in 3rd year Advanced Greek and
Reading. After the 3 years of Greek, it seemed that the students were
well-rounded in grasping most of the nuances of Koine Greek. I was blessed
to be able to obtain the additional 2 years of Greek because of the
additional reading and the use of BDF and ATR. We did not have linguistics
then, because of the fact that it was just starting to come into its own and
was, and still is, quite new. In fact, Porter, Black, Mounce, etc., were not
available then.

En Xristwi,

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Penner" <ken.penner at acadiau.ca>
To: "greek B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 6:03 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Class Frequency


> Dear B-Greekers,
>
> How many times a week should an Introductory New Testament Greek class
meet?
>
> My own sense (based on some research I did 12 years ago) is that meeting
three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) for 50 minutes is preferable
to meeting twice a week for 75 minutes, or once a week for 150 minutes, so
that students have a chance to assimilate what they have learned before
moving on. Therefore this is what I recommended to our academic dean. Today
that recommendation was questioned, so I thought I'd seek the experience of
others on this question. The textbook used in this case will probably be
Mounce's. (I don't want to get into the question of inductive/immersion
methods; I can't change that for next year.) Might it take too long to
settle the class in a 50-minute session, or are there other drawbacks I
might not have considered?
>
> Ken
>
> Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.
> Acadia/Greek&Hebrew
> Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic vocabulary memorization software:
> http://purl.org/net/kmpenner/flash
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