[B-Greek] Teaching languages alive in the classroom (was: reading for translation or understanding?)
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Tue Feb 5 06:48:17 EST 2008
Bryant raised an observation that deserves a separate thread, especially after
many responses have already transpired on the original thread.
On Feb 4, 2008 2:48 AM, Bryant J. Williams III <bjwvmw at com-pair.net> wrote:
> Dear Randall, Barry, Eric, et al,
>
> I think that what is happening is that there is a clear distinction between
> learning, reading and speaking a language that is NOT DEAD and learning, reading
> and speaking a language that IS DEAD.
This is a commonly heard idea that is used to justify an ancient language
program that does not produce an ability to fluently think in a
language. Things
are so far out of sync with reality that many practioners do not even recognize
the situation.
(solution for recognizing the problem: take a NEW text of reasonable clarity or
difficulty, have it recorded in any pronunciation you like at a reasonable
conversational speed, and listen to it. If you can follow the text at
that speed,
then you can think in that language, at least at some minimal level.
If not, that you are still on a major, uphill, learning track, and
will have the
delightful experience of many a surprise catching up on you.)
Somewhat over a decade ago I made an observation that changed the way
in which I thought about this "dead language" question.
Inside of a language classroom,
all languages are equally 'dead',
in the sense that the audience does not speak the target language.
In too many cases, even the teachers do not speak the target language,
and I'm taking about modern languages here. (You will find that not every
high school or elementary school language teacher can speak the
language, and in most cases the teachers are not mother-tongue speakers of
the language.)
> Let's think about Spanish, French, English, etc., all living languages.
> Ancient Hebrew, Koine Greek, Classical Greek, Latin, etc., are all dead
> languages. It is much easier to learn, read and speak a LIVING language. That is
> what "immersion" is all about. That is NOT to say that the attempt to
> "immersion" cannot be done [as you are attempting to do (you can thank me for
> the free plug for your classes later)], but classes in Greek, Hebrew and Latin
> can only approximate the process.
(for the plug, see the website below.)
Yes, let's think about Spanish, French, and English.
The first question to ask, is
"Can they be learned in a classroom?"
This is not a trivial question and the question has been raised in second
language acquisition literature on more than one occasion.
"Can a language be learned in a classroom?"
The answer is not a resounding 'yes', but more of a whimpering 'yes'.
It is possible, IF..., IF..., IF....
A second question to ask is "Can a language be learned from second-language
users, non-mother-tongue speakers?" Again, while everyone agrees that
exposure to mother-tongue speakers is a definite plus, the answer is that
second-language users can teach effective language acquisition programs.
A third question then becomes,
"Can an ancient language be learned in a classroom?"
Again the answer becomes, Yes, IF ..., IF ...., lF ... .
A fourth question then becomes, "Why don't programs promote or do
this very thing?" Here the answers are too painful to put in words. At the end
of the day the result is that the 'dead language issue' is simply an excuse to
perpetrate the status quo. For languages with less than an attested 10,000 --
15,000 word vocabulary a person might make a legitimate case that the task
is not practically possible. But Greek is not such a language.
(Nor is Hebrew such a language if Qumran and the Mishnah are included.
But Hebrew raises special considerations tangential to this discussion.)
A fifth question, unrelated to the 'dead language issue', is the appropriate
training for persons with limited goals of 1 or two years of study. I
might argue
that the training should be the most efficient possible, one that allows the
student to meet their limited goals, and preferably, one that would allow
unhindered progress to more complete goals for those who want to go on.
6. My thesis, then, is that the 'dead language issue' is a dead question, a
non-issue in terms of theory. Stated as a positive:
All languages may become ALIVE in a properly run classroom.
7. (PS, an aside: non-mother-tongue speakers WILL make mistakes in
production, even mother-tongue speakers make mistakes, (though fewer
and often corrected correctly). Somehow, the human race survives.
There are occasionally people who claim that not learning a language
to a fluent level is preferable in order to never hear a mistake made.
Such an attitude will probably hinder any language learning and
invariably leads to 'unreal' language imaginings. I see this a lot in the
field of biblical Hebrew where professors 'generate' what they claim is
'pure' biblical Hebrew, untainted by fluent use of any Hebrew dialect,
and they are chagrined to find out that their 'tower of Pisa' is leaning.
They produce "grammatically correct" utterances of common material
but their production doesn't occur in the Hebrew Bible or match what is
there. They are happily operating within a system that no ancient speaker
followed. Poor Samuel and Isaiah, who hadn't had the benefit of
Gesenius [a famous 19th century grammarian].
> Most seminaries are trying to get their students to learn the original languages
> for the purposes of understanding the Biblical text for sermon preparation,
> theological understanding, etc. This is being "poorly done."
NAI, Yes, it is.
ERRWSQE
IWANHS
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
randallbuth at gmail.com
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