[B-Greek] Where is Grammar-translation supported?

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Thu Apr 7 17:53:33 EDT 2011


Thank you for this.
That is in the right direction. Ellis 2001 is particularly useful.
(Actually, there are more than one 'ellis', and helpful.)

I would only add that explicit grammar instruction should be fit into every
system and can be done in many effective ways.
But that is distinct from 'grammar-translation' as a method. The studies
that the books are talking about also work with students in communicating in
the language, and not as an afterthought.

For the record, James Asher says the same thing in his materials. There is a
time and a place for focusing on form and grammar.

But none of these are advocating what we have in 'NT Greek grammars'.
Night and day different. Five-Ten-fifteen years of grammar-translation sort
of shows itself for what it is: by its fruit.

ERRWSQE
Randall Buth


On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 11:34 PM, Gary A. Staszak
<garystaz4444 at verizon.net>wrote:

> A question was raised regarding studies. In an interest of fairness, I
> provide the following for further thought.
>
> There are a number of recent studies that do suggest explicit grammar
> instruction is helpful to L2/FL learning.
>
> There is a wonderful article by Pawlak in Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
> (2004) that summarizes the latest research (Ellis 2001, 2002; Doughty and
> William 1998) about the forms, timing, and intensity of explicit grammar
> instruction (aka teaching of forms). Pure communicative learning
> environments may produce students who are communicatively fluent but fail to
> acquire basic grammatical and sociolinguistic distinctions or high levels of
> grammatical accuracy (Swain and Lapkin 1989; Tarone and Swain 1995) and poor
> quality output (Lightbrown and Spada 1990).
>
> Ellis (1994) found that "grammar instruction should be included in the
> language curriculum and speeds up acquisition and leads to higher levels of
> ultimate achievement" (Pawlak 2004). Despite the natural acquisition
> sequence of L2/FL learning, Mackey and Philip (1998) found convincingly
> "attention to form can assist learners in moving from one stage to another
> more rapidly, an effect that is no doubt more than welcome by language
> teachers" (Pawlak 2004).
>
> The article outlines more research. I am surprised these studies were not
> at least mentioned!
>
> Do they support a return to grammatical-translation methods of teaching
> L2/FL, in particular New Testament Greek? The empathic answer is no!
>
> Pawlak as well does not advocate a return to the grammatical-translation
> method of bygone days of L2/FL learning, which is still unfortunately the
> hallmark of NTG learning, but suggests there were other factors at play
> rather than grammatical instruction. These include the form of the teaching
> of grammar, namely synthetic, isolated, etc. Hence the recommendation of
> Long (1991) that grammar be taught in/from meaningful contexts.
>
> There is a balance between communicative approaches and grammar
> instruction.
>
>
> Gary A. Staszak
>
>
> On Apr 7, 2011, at 12:53 PM, Randall Buth wrote:
>
>  I visited b-greek today and found a long thread on a frequent topic,
>> comparing 'pedagogical grammars'.
>> But there was not a word about how to justify such an approach for
>> our field of studies.
>>
>> It wouldn't hurt to ask:
>> Are these pedagogies supported through any kind of
>> psycholinguistic or pedagogical research? Can they or do they
>> lead to internalization of ANY language? I leave these as open
>> questions, though some may have read them as rhetorical
>> questions.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> ERRWSQE
>>
>> Randall Buth
>>
>
>
>


-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



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