[B-Greek] You Are Smarter Than a Lexicon (?) The beat goes on...

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Jun 5 00:03:31 EDT 2010


Jeffrey wrote:

<The idea that some things can only be learned by practically 
mind-numbing
 (or maybe not just practically?) 
repetition/memorization/drill/rote, rather than
 by conceptual and 
contextual understanding FIRST, and not through other
 ways that make 
sense, is soundly refuted by decades of educational research
--both in 
language learning specifically and learning in general....it's just NOT TRUE
that some things--anything--HAS to be learned by rote. In fact, I would argue that NOTHING
 can be meaningfully learned by rote without a good amount of comprehension and contemplation attached to 
it,,,
If you think I'm crazy, please tell me off-list..>

Hi, Jeff,

I don't think you are crazy.  I always appreciate hearing your perspective. And we've missed you
on Dialogos. 

As a practical matter,  I bet most NT Greek learners learn the optative and the dual in the manner I think
you are advocating.  As you know, there are no duals and only  a few optatives in the Greek NT, so
most GNT text books don't bother to give you the full paradigms.  I bet even most classicists don't
memorize the dual and the optatives the way they do everything else.  But after you move on from the
GNT to Homer or Attic, you come across duals and more optatives and you just sort of figure them out.
When I read  a dual in Homer, I don't even know if it is an aorist or a progressive.  I have all the other paradigms
memorized but have never even really looked at the dual paradigms.  And yet they cause me no difficulty.
This is one case where I think I go directly to meaning and skip the analysis. This one thing I think I learned "naturally" or 
by "contextual understanding" or whatever you want to call it.

Really, by the time you get to the dual and the optative you say to yourself "No more!"  You've had your fill
with paradigms and memorization and you just sort of figure it out.  You have become, as Barry H. might 
say, your own verb chart. 

I'm not sure if this has much to do with your post.  If you think I'm crazy, please tell me off-list. 

Barry wrote:


<And after you've read enough of the literature, you begin 
to realize that tools, electronic or otherwise, are only the beginning of 
wisdom, and not the final word.  We should approach them with respect, and 
use them to become our own tools, to become our own lexicons...>


Hi, Barry,

This reminds me of your previous injunction that we all become our own grammars.  Hold that
thought for a moment,  I'll get back to you in a second.

James S. wrote:


<It is easy for a marketer to over-represent his/her product and tell the
public that it is the panacea for all evils (I wonder if it can stop the
oil spill?)>

Hi, James,

I've had a similar thought.  Let's say we all followed  Barry's advice and  became our own
grammars and lexicons.  What we would do with all those Robertsons and un-abridged LSJ's?
Do you see where I am going with this?  Let's say we took all these books, along with every book
written on the topic of NT Greek Linguistics or Traditional Greek Grammatical Analysis, every book in fact written
ABOUT Greek, and stuffed them into that hole in the bottom of the Gulf.  Would that not stop the ooze?

Probably not,  But would it not,  in its own way, be a good thing?



 Mark Light (φως) man (φως)



FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: Jeffrey T. Requadt <jeffreyrequadt_list at hotmail.com>
To: +Fr Patrick B O'Grady <fatherpatrick at fastmail.fm>; Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>; B-Greek B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Fri, June 4, 2010 8:23:15 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] You Are Smarter Than a Lexicon (?) The beat goes on...

My own 29 cents, as an educator (granted, one that hasn't taught anyone else Greek) is that education has moved on without much of the New Testament Greek teaching crowd, from my own experience as a student as well as what I've heard on this list. The idea that some things can only be learned by practically mind-numbing (or maybe not just practically?) repetition/memorization/drill/rote, rather than by conceptual and contextual understanding FIRST, and not through other ways that make sense, is soundly refuted by decades of educational research--both in language learning specifically and learning in general. I just finished helping to facilitate a workshop for my district for elementary teachers. I was reminded that we used to think that for some things, like multiplication combinations (4 x 8, 5 x 9, etc.), the only way to internalize them and become fluent with them was by a lot of drill--see the combination, spit it out. Since then, we've learned--and
 I've learned to teach
  children--to have lots of meaningful practice, either with games, or possibly a timed setting, or possibly with some kind of activity, but to be meaningful--thinking about what 4 x 8 means--that there are 4 groups of 8 things, or 4 rows with 8 columns, or adding 8 4 times, etc. The more CONNECTIONS that we make, the more we learn something. Isn't this true of language as well, whether written or oral? The more I read a text in Greek, and the more connections I make with it, and the more I act it out, and the more I rephrase it in English and possibly French (because those are languages I understand), and the more I maybe even draw it, the more I will understand it. We do the same thing with mathematical vocabulary. Rather than tell my third graders that "the product is the answer to a multiplication equation," and have them repeat that several times, and then memorize it, I use the word myself to explain that "product is the word that mathematicians
 use to say how many of s
omething there is if it's in equal groups" (or something similar) AFTER a need arises for that word, such as when we first start to solve multiplication problems. Then, I USE it repeatedly, and I use it to describe their thinking when they are explaining it to the class, and I expect them to start using it, and pretty soon, guess what happens! My students (the majority of them, anyway), start using the word "product" accurately, both when they understanding in reading and when they use it to describe their own thinking--not because I've made them memorize it, or had them repeat the word and the definition 20 times, but because they've used it meaningfully so many times that now they own it. Just like when they solve 5 x 9 so many times, they start to own it, and they just know that it's 45. Is there a place for repetition, and drill? Yes--but not to learn, rather to build efficiency. I actually do give timed multiplication quizzes, but mostly to see for
 myself which students
  own which combinations. I don't use them to teach multiplication or to build fluency. It's just NOT TRUE that some things--anything--HAS to be learned by rote. In fact, I would argue that NOTHING can be meaningfully learned by rote without a good amount of comprehension and contemplation attached to it.
Now, I have never taught a class on any form of Greek. But if I did, I think I would start with some kind of living language method, because that's how we learn language at all. I would also want to look at curriculum that involved real reading--not contrived passages or--even worse--artificial passages, but real ones that involve real, authentic language that was really written by real human beings to be read on its own terms by other human beings. And I would want to use lots of literature that required readers to think, to enjoy, and to deal with the text. Reading and writing really are their own form of language, separate from speaking and listening, but they are language. I think I might be coming at it from a different vantage point that Carl and the other writers on this list, but I sense that many of us are saying the same thing--word analysis and such has its place, but it's no substitute for learning Greek as a language in its own right. I
 agree with Carl; I don't s
ee how you can really use something you don't understand. It's like if I learned about all the details and mechanics of a car engine (which I haven't) but never actually involved myself in fixing a car or rebuilding an engine. I'm really relying on all the great thinking and fixing that other people have done. What I haven't done is really usefully learned anything.
Once again (and I say this on every post, I think), I have vomited my thinking. Hopefully someone is still reading by this point. If you think I'm crazy, please tell me off-list.
Jeff Requadt
Tucson, AZ


      


More information about the B-Greek mailing list