[B-Greek] Intensive Greek Refresher course

Benjamin Pehrson benjamin_pehrson at sil.org
Mon Mar 14 08:39:07 EDT 2011


Hi Paul,

The person I team taught this course with was responsible for leading the
oral TPR exercises, so I don't have ready access to what was included in
print, but I could eventually describe it to you in one way or another.

Below is the feedback we received.

Ben


>From participant A...
Thank you so much for all your efforts - I really enjoyed it and am pleased
that I was able to keep up for the most part! What worked well? The variety
worked well for me.  I enjoyed all of it - the songs, the 'theory', the
practical bits and especially the examples from texts.  The readings in the
afternoons helped build confidence and I felt I was able to put into
practice some of what we'd learned in the mornings.  I liked having some
time in the afternoons to myself, and most days I did read some of the
chapters we'd covered in the morning, which helped to consolidate things a
bit.  The visual prompts of having things stuck on the wall was very
helpful.  The way you summarised complicated bits was good, like the clues
to recognise different tenses.  Thank you for putting so much effort into a
few people. What didn't work so well? The linguist-speak at first was hard,
but either I got better at understanding and/or you got better at explaining
what you meant in real words!!!  I wonder how much 'stuck' as it was very
fast!  But it is up to me to go over things again and keep up. Other ideas
or suggestions? Three weeks would be better - four days a week is ok.  Make
sure the displays on the walls are big enough to read from a distance.
Simple drawings and words are good.  Handouts with simple summaries for
every lesson would be helpful.

>From participant B...
What worked well? TPR was very good, lectures with examples straight away,
hand outs, reading together in the afternoons, BART demonstration. What
didn't work so well? Lectures with no examples. Not that it shouldn't be
done, but I can't sing in English let alone Greek!!!! Other ideas or
suggestions? This was many times better than my original Greek course. Maybe
more work with BART? Not sure how to help with teaching a dead language!

>From participant C...
Thank you for teaching the course.  I truly enjoyed it and learned lots more
than I imagined I would.  Thank you for your humble attitudes and patience
with beginners.  I would have to say that this was the most beneficial
course I have taken in my 20 years of being here.  Keep doing it.  I'll
probably take it again later on. What worked well? I appreciated the
"wholistic" approach of doing analytical, lecture, example discovery, and
experiential tasks of making a fool of ourselves running in place and
sounding like a rooster, ha ha. I loved the singing.  Great job!
...knowledge of the etymology of things was amazing.  It really helped me to
associate words a lot better.  ...insights from classical Greek was helpful
and beneficial to the course... The BART demonstration was great and opened
my eyes to some new things.  Thanks for that.

>From participant D...
As you know I was rather apprehensive signing up for this course, since I
didn't really do any formal Greek earlier. I was afraid that I would hold
the rest of the group back, but fortunately that was not the case. It was
strange though to see how the answers to some of my questions made the penny
drop for one of the other students while leaving me still confused because
the amount of new information that I had to process was just too
overwhelming. I clearly still have a long way to go, but I have reached the
stage where I see that task as very doable. Thank you, both of you, for
giving me several encouragements during the course! What worked well? The
total experience (oral exercises, analysis, learning stuff by heart,
reading) worked better than I had anticipated. It was also fun to bond
together as a group and enjoy each other's insights, mistakes and sense of
humor. You managed to show how everything in the Greek verb system hangs
together and how even the exceptions are nothing to be afraid of. What
didn't work so well? Lessons where it took too long before actual examples
were presented. I think that all three of you teachers know so much about NT
Greek that you were all hesitant in making generalisations. Although I
respect that, it would have been helpful for me if every new subject would
have been introduced with a few simple and straightforward examples, then an
overview of the paradigm, more examples, and finally an awareness of the
exceptions. Some lessons were like this, but most started off too
overwhelming and theoretical. Also, because of my [other]
responsibilities... I often wasn't able to do any Greek work at home. I am
sure it would have helped a lot if I had been able to read Mounce every day.
Other ideas or suggestions for further Greek workshops? Keep offering it!








-----Original Message-----
From: Paul D. Nitz [mailto:paul.d.nitz at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 3:49 AM
To: benjamin_pehrson at sil.org; 'B-Greek'
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Intensive Greek Refresher course

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
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
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> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
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