[B-Greek] learning greek KATA english
Jonathan Robie
jwrobie at mindspring.com
Tue Jun 12 07:45:46 EDT 2007
In learning modern languages, I've never had a completely pure immersion approach, it's always been supplemented by some exposure to formal grammar. For Dutch, I used about 85% Rosetta Stone software, which uses a language immersion approach, and divided the rest of the time between a phrasebook and a brief grammar. That mix seems about right to me, and in about 6 weeks I learned enough to be able to communicate reasonably well. (I've now forgotten most of that, I can still read Dutch well, but I'm not often exposed to it.)
I'm probably following similar proportions in learning Greek now, about 85% working on texts, supplemented by some grammar and some attention to recurring phrases and such.
To me, that 15% of the time where I'm learning more formally about a language from the outside is also valuable, and drawing from my intuition about English is an important way for me to understand other Indo-European languages. Of course my intuition for English does not map directly onto Greek, I need to learn the differences as well as the similarities. But I've found Mari Broman Olsen's comparisons of aspect across Greek, English, and Chinese invaluable, playing off one language against another to compare and constrast the way different languages work.
I know that's not how children learn languages - the 85% of the time spent in direct target language experience is more like that, but you still don't have the same kind of intense playful interaction with your teacher that you had with your parents as a young child, and adults have different learning skills which are worth leveraging. Analytical reasoning about grammar and intuition for other languages that an adult might already know are valuable tools to leverage when learning or teaching a new language.
I think Funk does a very good job in general of teaching how things work in English, then transitioning from this intuition to the way things work in Greek, in a way that generally implies there are similarities, but also that the languages are different and understanding the differences is important.
Jonathan
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