[B-Greek] Intensive Greek Refresher course
Paul D. Nitz
paul.d.nitz at gmail.com
Sun Mar 13 13:48:48 EDT 2011
Benjamin,
Your post came as I was just considering a refresher course. Many thanks.
With Lightman, I would be interested in a bit more explanation of your point
# 5 - Oral techniques.
Do you have any feedback from the participants which you could share?
Paul D. Nitz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Benjamin Pehrson" <benjamin_pehrson at sil.org>
To: "'B-Greek'" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 3:40 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Intensive Greek Refresher course
>I just finished team teaching an intensive eight day Biblical Greek
> refresher course for translation advisors/trainers in Papua New Guinea. I
> hope some of the ideas I share here may be helpful to others.
>
> This is the second time we've offered this course. The first time we did
> it
> in ten days, and having those two extra days worked a little better. Both
> times, we reviewed an entire first year grammar (using Mounce).
> Previously,
> we were able to go a little slower and include some lessons on discourse
> features. Here are some key components that have helped to make the course
> a
> success...
>
> 1) We have stressed the idea that we are learning Greek in order to love
> God
> and love others. We love God with our minds by learning Greek. And we do
> not
> simply learn Greek for our own benefit but in order to love others through
> sharing our knowledge/skills with others.
>
> 2) This course for translation advisors/trainers has happened in the same
> years that we offer a 6-week Intro to NT Greek course and a 5-week Greek
> Exegesis course to Papua New Guinean translators. The refresher course has
> served to build up a larger pool of trainers/mentors who are ready to
> facilitate for the longer intensive courses.
>
> 3) Leveling the playing field - it's easy for participants to be
> embarrassed
> or feel guilty for needing to be a part of a course like this. But
> everyone
> quickly realizes that it's better to go back and review than to continue
> without it. It's humbling for everyone, but also a bunch of fun. And the
> benefits of the course are evident from the very start.
>
> 4) Keep moving. The course includes a combination of grammar & morphology
> explanation, looking at real examples, and oral learning techniques. We
> met
> from 8:30 to 12:00 every morning and we never did anything for more than
> 20
> or 30 minutes. We would alternate between five grammar lessons and six
> oral
> learning sessions every morning. We also met from 3:00 to 4:00 every
> afternoon to read from the NT, parsing words as we went.
>
> 5) Oral learning techniques - we are trying to facilitate learning by
> involving the different senses, internalizing the language, and meeting
> the
> needs of people with different learning styles. Two of the oral learning
> sessions included singing Scripture songs taken from the NT. The other
> four
> sessions included TPR (total physical response) exercises that included
> pointing to body parts, picures, objects taken from the NT (animals, cups,
> bread, etc.), people wearing role cards, doing motions for verbs. These
> oral
> sessions even include different person/number exercises and tenses for the
> verbs with appropriate hand/body motions to correspond to the morphology.
>
> Because we are also training Papua New Guinean translators who are very
> used
> to working in languages with phonetic spelling conventions, and because we
> are a mixture of colleagues from many different countries (this course
> included American, Dutch, British, Australian, and Korean participants),
> we
> have followed a sort of hybrid Erasmian pronunciation. I would personally
> like to pursue immersing myself in a combination of reconstruced Koine and
> modern Greek pronunciation, but for now, this is what we are doing here.
>
> 6) Grammar/morphology summaries. I have written summaries of many of the
> grammar/morphology lessons to give out as handouts. The chapters in Mounce
> procede very slowly with much encouragement, comparison to English, etc.
> People taking a refresher course very much appreciate seeing the main
> points
> of the chapter summarized on one or two pages. I have also summarized the
> 100 pages of Wallace's uses of the article in four pages.
>
> 7) Quickly moving to examples. This was something I was learning from my
> fellow trainer. I tend to give too much theory before looking at examples.
> The participants appreciated moving to examples much more quickly. It
> worked
> better to give a paradigm, quickly point out the key
> elements/consistencies,
> and then start looking at short example sentences where we could
> illustrate
> the morphology for that tense/voice/mood.
>
> 8) Focus on forms used in the NT. In a refresher course, the goal is to
> help
> give the participants a jump start on reviewing the grammar on their own.
> In
> eight days, not every tense/voice/mood can be covered with adequate time
> for
> letting it sink in. Some things must be given a cursory treatment. But
> that
> means that we need to focus on the forms that occur more frequently.
> There's
> not much point in taking 5 minutes in this kind of course to explain the
> morphology of a verbal form that occurs only two times in the NT.
>
> 9) Community of practice. A refresher course is pointless if we go out
> from
> it and do not continue reading Greek and gaining a better understanding of
> its grammar, syntax, semantics, and discourse structure. So we also shared
> many ideas for continuing on, including ways that we can continue to be a
> community of practice that reads Greek together and encourages one another
> and holds each other accountable. This element seems to be missing for
> many
> people who first learn Biblical Greek.
>
> XAIREIN,
>
> Benjamin Pehrson
> Trainer in Advanced Biblical Studies
> Ukarumpa Training Center
> Papua New Guinea
>
> ---
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