[B-Greek] Needing some advise

John Owlett owl at postmaster.co.uk
Sat Nov 14 16:26:23 EST 2009


Hi John, and welcome to the community,

I'm an intermediate learner (at best!) myself, so I squirreled away
a reply Rodney Decker gave about 5 years ago, when a B-Greek member
in India suggested using "It's Still Greek to Me" as an intermediate
course.

Professor Decker's response, which I hope may help you was:

"Black's grammar is helpful, but very much on the "light weight" end
of the intermediate grammars. I use it as a transitional tool from
first year into second year. It pulls some things together that 
Mounce (my 1st year text) doesn't handle systematically and 
then goes one step beyond some of the grammatical and syntactical 
discussion of 1st year. Students need to move beyond Black to work 
with more substantive intermediate grammars such as Richard Young, 
Stan Porter, and Dan Wallace.  Young's is better designed as a 
textbook. Porter's strength is the verbal system. Wallace's forte 
is the noun and article. Of these 3, Wallace is far and away the 
largest and really serves the role of both grammar and exegetical 
commentary. It makes a very useful reference tool once the student 
understands enough Greek to be able to "dip in" a random and make 
sense of the discussion (the indices are a big help in that regard).

"And then there's the role of the "high end" reference grammars: 
Blass-Debrunner, Robertson, Moulton-Howard-Turner, and Smyth. Your 
students in India will likely not have ready access to them (due 
to cost if nothing else), but they ought to be aware that such 
tools exist and the role they play.

"I would encourage you to consider something other than Summers 
for first year. Especially since you are working in a context 
where English is often a second language, I think you'd find the 
English discussion and illustrations in Mounce far more helpful 
to your Indian students. Mounce also reflects more recent study 
of the language than Summers.

"[And to address a question raised on another b-greek thread, I 
do *not* recommend the abridgement of Wallace--it's sole purpose 
of existence, so far as I can see, is to offer a digest that is 
less intimidating for textbook purposes. I've never understood 
the value or wisdom of systematically attempting to work through 
a large grammar page-by-page in the classroom; it's a tedious 
task that students tire of easily--better to read inductively 
and systematically and use the grammar for reference at 2d year 
and above, esp. when using Wallace. But if someone is working at 
their own pace, has the motivation, and is willing to take the 
time, working though Wallace after mastering one of the smaller 
intermediate grammars would certainly be a valuable education--
albeit one that would likely take several years of study.]"

----------

A clear analysis of one teacher's assessment of the options.
Not everyone will agree (this is British understatement!)

Another possible option is the online version of Robert Funk's
Beginning-Intermediate Grammer of Hellenistic Greek:

http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/funk-grammar/pre-alpha/

The option I have chosen is to start my quest by learning 
Attic Greek:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2009-October/050900.html

This not what you're looking for at the moment, but the New 
Testament Greek Reader from the second year of that course
might be useful to you ... as might Bill Mounce's Graded 
Reader of Biblical Greek.

Later,

Dr Owl

----------------------------
John Owlett, Southampton, UK



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