[B-Greek] grammar-translation

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Aug 4 16:49:16 EDT 2009


I do very much regret that I have contributed to or appeared to  
espouse an "either/or" stance toward the issue of methodologies for  
teaching and learning Greek.

My own experience of 40+ years of teaching Greek in the classroom and  
in the small tutorial group is that different students respond well to  
different teaching and learning methodologies and to different  
teachers and textbooks. I have seen instances of successful learning  
with what I thought were wretched textbooks. I have seen bright  
students fail to gain any appreciable grasp of ancient Greek after a  
considerable expense of time and effort. I've known students who would  
have done just as well if they hadn't participated in a regularly- 
meeting Greek class, although I think most students need to have an  
opportunity to pose their questions and get them answered as best  
possible by some experienced person or persons. On the whole, I am  
persuaded by my experience that an analytic methodology -- learning  
paradigms and syntactic constructions and practicing parsing and  
grammatical analysis and outlining and memorizing vocabulary lists --  
doesn't succeed very well at bringing students to a reasonable degree  
of competence at reading ancient Greek texts. I'm most skeptical of  
lesson exercises that involve chiefly conversion of short Greek  
sentences (often made-up rather than original) into one's native  
language and short sentences in one's native language into Greek (and  
too often it is the Greek to English sentences that get assigned, not  
the English to Greek). I think that translation exercises are more  
effective if they involve paragraphs or sequences longer than the  
short sentence. I think that reading longer chunks of text is useful.  
I think that memorization of chunks of Greek text is useful in  
habituating the student's mind to structural patterns of standard  
Greek usage. And I think that teaching composition is also valuable as  
a means of habituation to how the ancient Greek linguistic mind  
functions.

I really do believe that the ultimate objective to be desired by those  
studying and teaching ancient Greek should be to read original ancient  
Greek texts in their own sequential order with a cumulative grasp of  
what those texts mean as one reads. I think that one ought to aspire  
to that, even if one never quite reaches it. I think one ought to  
progress in one's ability to process ancient Greek texts sequentially.  
I think that one ought to be able to process these texts with  
increasingly less reliance upon analytic processes of parsing the  
morphemes and pondering of the syntactic structures -- outlining,  
whether mentally or on paper. I certainly think that the objective of  
ancient Greek pedagogy ought to be something more than learning to use  
original-language Biblical software.

I heartily agree with those who say that a "woodenly literal paste- 
together of glosses in one's native language" should never be confused  
with "translation." I've said many times that I think that translation  
is an art requiring not only understanding of the original-language  
text but an ear and a keen sense for the usage in the target language.  
I do not believe that every student of ancient Greek can or should  
attempt to be a translator in the real sense of that word. What is  
objected to as a pedagogical exercise of "woodenly literal paste- 
together of glosses in one's native language" is that this is DEFINED  
as a translation or is what students of ancient Greek are told that  
they need to produce as proof that they understand the text they are  
working on.

If I have applauded Randall Buth's "total immersion" pedagogical  
method as preferable to the standard pedagogical methods for teaching  
and learning ancient Greek that dominate our religious schools and  
seminaries, I have to say that I realize perfectly well that the  
opportunity and access to learning in that fashion are simply not open  
to the great majority of those who would like to learn Biblical Greek.  
I could wish that it were. But I did not learn ancient Greek that way  
myself; I learned by the traditional method, at least at the outset,  
but it was reading in bulk and doing a lot of composition exercises  
that brought me to the ability to read lengthy sequences of ancient  
Greek text. I cannot speak ancient Greek although I can formulate  
ancient Greek phrases and sentences, nor can I now listen to and  
comprehend spoken ancient Greek, although I think I could, given the  
opportunity -- and I believe that others could too, given the proper  
opportunity. What I find most disturbing is the renunciation of the  
aspiration or the emphatic avowal that one really does not have any  
wish to read Greek on its own terms.

On Aug 4, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

> On Aug 4, 2009, at 10:59 AM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>
>>
>> Last night I had an opportunity to view samples of the DVDs from D.A.
>> Black's intro class. I watched portions of the first session and
>> portions of session 24 on the imperative . I know know why this  
>> method
>> of teaching is called grammar-translation. Transaltion is a central
>> feature of the discussion. Every thing is explained by looking at
>> translation alternatives. I had never see this method in action
>> before. Well perhaps I have, once. I think a while back I watched
>> something by Mounce on his web site.
>
> It is ,alas -- my reaction, shared, I suspect by very few --,  the
> wave of the future in Biblical Greek pedagogy -- less so in Classical
> Greek pedagogy. There is no pretense of such fool notions as "thinking
> in Greek." Rather, it is: Parse, decode, and use the glosses to
> convert to woodenly-literal English, somewhat like an attempt to
> describe the taste of a cucumber or broccoli that one has only
> sniffed. Granted, this is a gross exaggeration, but there is, I think,
> more than a little truth in it.
>
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
> ---
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