[B-Greek] Teaching mi verbs first

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Aug 1 14:04:05 EDT 2007


On Aug 1, 2007, at 1:18 PM, John M. Linebarger wrote:

> Hello!  Deus  [Deo?] Volente, I will be teaching a first year Greek  
> class at our church this Fall, using Mounce's Basics of BIblical  
> Greek.  I have been advised by my teacher and mentor, Dr. Glen  
> Riddle, that it would be wise to teach mi verbs first instead of  
> omega verbs, because mi verbs occur all over the New Testament, and  
> because mi verbs are often an afterthought in the teaching of first  
> year Greek.
>
> The problem is paedogogy, finding appropriate exercises to teach mi  
> verbs that don't presuppose omega verbs and other moods having been  
> taught first.  Mounce teaches mi verbs last, and his exercises are  
> rife with things taught in the previous chapters.
>
> Two questions.  First, what does the group think about this  
> approach?  Second, what exercises and sources would you recommend  
> should I decide to go ahead and try to teach mi verbs first?

(1) The rationale strikes me as fishy from the start: MI-verbs do not  
appear ubiquitously to any greater extent than do W-verbs. Of course,  
this is a NT Greek class, but a somewhat comparable approach in  
Classical Greek was the one used at University of Text at one time  
(Morgan?) that did Ionic dialect and read Herodotus for the first  
semester before shifting over to Attic, on grounds that there's no  
irregularity of long alpha and eta vowels in Ionic. It matters not a  
whit with what item you begin; you will find that you can't do  
exercises or readings without building them upon elements not yet  
introduced and needing explanations.

(2) Exercises and sources -- if you decide to go through with this  
experiment:
  (a) Whatever you do, don't create artificial sentences that aren't  
at least very closely based upon authentic Greek texts; (b)
  (b) Choose source texts that only use -MI verbs, if you can find  
them. If you can't, then consider going back and starting with W- 
verbs; if you decide to do that, I would urge that you get quickly  
into contract verbs, inasmuch as they really ARE ubiquitous.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)





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