[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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