Tagged: Pedagogy

Living Koine Greek Review – Part 2: Picture Lessons

I have thoroughly worked through the first part of the BLC Greek materials, which consist of 10 picture lessons on mp4 and an accompanying PDF. (For my first post in this series, see here.)

Each lesson is around 14-17 minutes long and cycles through 100 pictures. After every second lesson there is a quiz that tests comprehension of the previous two lessons. The idea is to watch the videos and merely soak up what you are seeing and hearing, becoming familiar with the way the language sounds and making sense of the language itself, all without translation into English.

In the accompanying PDF there is a section that provides some helps for especially tricky parts of speech as you’re working through listening. I didn’t have trouble with the Greek because of previous study but in my use of their Hebrew materials I did find them helpful at just the right points where I had trouble making sense of what was being communicated through the picture.

Once the learner has gone through the audio/video lessons, they are encouraged to begin learning how to read Greek by using the reading lessons in conjunction with the pictures. The reading lessons provide all 100 clauses from the picture lesson verbatim.

The PDF advises that the learner is exposed to 270 lexical items and 700 forms that cover a great deal of the grammar of the language. 270 lexical items nearly matches the number you get in an entire year of learning from Mounce’s grammar, and this is just part one! And the vocab, I would assert, provides a more helpful foundation already for reading widely in Greek since Mounce focuses merely on the most frequently occurring words in the NT (50x+). But if one wants to read profitably in the Greek NT, to say nothing of outside the NT (which should be a goal), then a much greater vocab base is needed than Mounce provides. 25-50 hours is recommended for the picture lessons (I believe the “500″ number on p. 85 is a typo).

The entire course utilizes a reconstructed pronunciation of Koine and you’ll need to use it as well. It’s pleasant to the ear, reads well, and is probably as close as we’re going to be able to be certain of to how it actually sounded given that we have no recordings of 1st c. speakers! The pronunciation is taught through listening to the audio but is also detailed in the PDF.

The alphabet is taught in the PDF and numbers 1 through 20 are taught in separate picture lessons. Numbers 1 through 10 are drilled in extremely thoroughly as each of the main picture lessons counts them 10 times each for the 100 pictures.

Some assessment of part one:

The first thing to say about this part of the course is that I know Greek better now than I did when I began. Now, just about any disciplined study with time in the language will result in knowing the language better so that first sentence doesn’t yet say anything positive for the course, though it is helpful to note I didn’t regress in my learning and I didn’t stay stagnant!

But, more can and should be said.

I found the videos generally fun which makes language learning enjoyable. I normally don’t have a problem with finding language learning fun, though I know I’m the exception and not the norm. But the videos nonetheless gave me a fresh approach to learning vocab and clauses. There were times where I felt they were moving much too slow but that might be a result of my previous study.

The videos engaged more senses than I customarily use in my Greek study. I have always been a proponent of audio learning with Greek, however, and I would record vocab on mp3 for me and my classmates during exegesis courses at school. They helped me study on my commutes to work and enabled me to master the vocab. I have never utilized pictures for Greek study though.

As such, I find the picture lessons to be helpful memory tools. The PDF asserts that more is going on here though: the structure of the language is being drilled in and you’re learning to understand Greek without translation.

Yes, but.

Yes, you’re learning without translation. I think that’s an important goal and one I’ve sought to achieve through disciplined study of Greek texts, reading more and more and seeking to think in Greek rather than translation. Being able to translate doesn’t actually show you know the language itself very well. Unfortunately I have lots of criticism of NT scholars that utilize Greek and show they’ve not sought to understand the attendant linguistic issues or have not moved past notions of one-to-one correspondence between Greek and, say, English. Lots of problems have been created by judging Greek based on English that are really no problem in the Greek.

But, I think there’s a place for starting with traditional approaches that utilize translation to get you up to speed and then you begin to shed that through reading more and more Greek. That’s what I’ve done. I don’t really translate in my head. I read Greek. If Koine Greek were a real living language—something we cannot actually recover—I’d be persuaded by the BLC approach. It’s easy for a picture of a concrete entity, e.g. a camel, with a corresponding concrete noun, to be correctly communicated through “immersion.” But this can’t be sustained as we get into abstract nouns and clause-level/discourse-level meaning and so much more that would have been understood in the 1st c. that cannot be communicated through modern “immersion” methods [update: I wasn't entirely clear here. I'm not saying no abstract nouns can be communicated through immersion; something that is patently false. I'll clarify and address what I believe are the limitations in a separate post]. I have to think some more on this one and will come back to it in the last post in the series. I welcome your criticism but keep in mind I’m merely processing out loud. My assessment isn’t written in stone. At any rate, the senses are engaged in this course and I’m remembering more Greek as a result.

The materials are well-conceived and I noticed some clear growth once I sat down to read through the lessons and found my reading to be very easy and enjoyable. Lots of thought has gone into the content. Specific registers (or, social situations let’s say) are focused on at any given time, helpful for the learning process. So, one lesson largely focuses on wine production from the grapes and the vineyard, to the plucking of the grapes, to the carrying of them in the basket to the winepress, to the stomping on the grapes to produce the juice to the fermenting of the grapes in the vats to produce the wine. We learn vocabulary and language in this way rather than by producing word lists in alphabetical order or anything like that. This sure beats trying to learn vocab by memorizing out of a dictionary or frequency list! Another lesson focuses especially on Israeli geography, teaching biblical place names, directions for north, south, east, and west, etc.

The bottom line:

This was a helpful use of time to supplement and grow my understanding of Greek. Recall I am coming at it already having a basis in “traditional” approaches (largely) so I need to take account of that. But for those beginning with no prior knowledge, I think that anything that helps a person get into the language is good. Whether it is best is another question that I haven’t decided upon yet. In the last post in this review I will engage with the pedagogy some more. I do have some big unanswered questions. A hint in the meantime: I’m really liking the materials so far and will already recommend the picture lessons as a very helpful learning tool though I’m not 100% convinced by the methodology as a sole approach. I’ll be in a better place to assess this after working through part 2 of the course. That will be the subject of the next post, hopefully later this summer.

Living Koine Greek Review – Part 1: My Background and Hopes

I have just received my copy of the Biblical Language Center’s (BLC) Greek materials for review. (As usual—I have purchased from them before—the package was shipped the next day and it arrived safely and quickly. Great service.)

Here is my plan for review.

Since this is a language learning program, and I want to genuinely test the program and the claims of some people for the benefits of “immersion” techniques for Hellenistic Greek (or, living language techniques), I won’t provide a one-time 1000 word review or anything. I’ll handle it in stages.

So, in this post I’ll explain my Greek background and why I’m interested and what my hopes are. In a second post in the next month or two I will outline and evaluate the materials to whatever point I’m at, also making use of the claims of its proponents. In a final post I will try to engage with the theory and practice of “immersion” with respect to a dead language. I envision this as a summer-long project.

MY BACKGROUND

I have been studying Greek since 2007 in my undergrad when I began with a year and a half of Classical Greek study and then moved on to Hellenistic Greek study thereafter. I first learned with Athenaze for Classical and then I moved to Mounce’s beginning grammar for Hellenistic. I have spent the last few years at McMaster Divinity College studying Greek with one of the foremost experts in the field. I’ve had the opportunity to take two Greek exegesis courses, an advanced grammar and linguistics course, Johannine studies with linguistic study applied to John’s Gospel, and I’m about to begin my last Masters course, linguistic modeling, and my thesis, which is investigating—and hopefully contributing to the field with my research—linguistic issues in Greek linguistics applied to John’s Gospel. I recently presented some of my research at a linguistics circle gathering and have been encouraged to move to publication in the near future.

So, I’ve got what would be considered a good background, I think.

That said, all of the training has been with tools that are reading based and use an English metalanguage to discuss Greek grammar. This is largely because Hellenistic Greek is a dead language; no one speaks it natively so we can’t learn it like we learn German today.

Or can we? This is a big question in Greek pedagogy.

I began with Erasmian pronunciation but last August I switched to Randall Buth’s reconstructed Koine pronunciation. The transition only took a week or so (maybe I can detail that on another occasion). My main three reasons for the switch were 1) to make use of the audio materials coming out of the BLC including readings of the Gospel of John and Letters; 2) to enjoy the sound of the language more in hopes that it sounds closer to a native pronunciation than Erasmian does; and 3) to be helped along in text critical matters as I investigate manuscripts and make sense of spelling changes and variants across texts.

HOPES

My number one hope is simply to continue to become a better reader of Hellenistic Greek. I’m a good reader now (I try to shun translation in reading so I don’t mean I’m a good on the spot translator) and I have a good handle on linguistic issues related to Greek. But, I want to go deeper, driving the language further and further into my mind. Audio materials should benefit me to that end.

My second hope is to be able to better navigate the debates occurring in Greek pedagogy. I’ve had opportunity to teach Greek and may yet again, so I want to decide what approach to take. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the immersion approach (yes, I’m sure there are disadvantages, contra one opinion!) and should it be used as supplementary to traditional approaches or can they take the place of them? Maybe I will be converted. Maybe I won’t. I’m open.

I think talking about Greek pedagogy is important for our own development in the language and for future generations of Greek students.

If you have any experience with these matters, what do you think about it all?

Porter et al.: Fundamentals of New Testament Greek

I may have an opportunity to teach Greek next year and so I’m thinking through pedagogy and textbooks. I started with classical Greek in my undergrad and used Athenaze. Once I had completed a year of classical I went through Mounce’s beginner’s grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek, on my own. I appreciate that the book is clear, easy to follow, and even mildly entertaining, but I don’t find his incorporation of semantic discussions of various morphological forms extremely helpful. That’s not to say I wouldn’t use this text with supplementary discussion, but I’m also interested in looking at other options. I did teach from Mounce once before.

Of course, a natural place for me to look (seeing as I’m an MDC student) is to the fairly recent Porter, Reed, and O’Donnell volume: Fundamentals of New Testament Greek, published by Eerdmans.

At this point I haven’t used the grammar so I’m not going to provide a full out review. Instead I thought I’d provide a number of links to reviews and helpful pages related to the book along with some of my initial impressions.

First, there is a website devoted to the book: portergreek.com. There you can view some chapters in both the text and the workbook, read D. A. Carson, A. C. Thiselton, and Craig A. Evans’s positive blurbs and gain access to accompanying study materials like paradigm charts.

Second, there is a blog post from the Eerdmans editor, Craig Noll. He highlights a number of exciting features of the book.

Third, there are some published reviews that contain both positive and negative elements:

RBL: Vance.
RBL: Coutsoumpos.
Themelios: Mugridge.

Fourth, blog reviews:

Paroikos analysis of 4 first year grammars.
There is another from Ricoblog but it’s making my computer freeze.

Finally, my impressions:

Just as others have picked up on, this is a serious first year grammar. In thinking about how to teach from it, I was a little scared at first but once I analyzed the ordering of the chapters and the layout of each chapter, I became more comfortable with it. I got a vision for how to set in front of the student the big picture at the start and produce a “map of the language” so that they don’t get lost moving through the chapters (helpful for any 1st year grammar perhaps).

And serious isn’t a bad thing. Porter et al. are consciously providing a rigorous first year grammar to challenge and bring students up to an excellent start in Greek. My only hesitation in this area is knowing the context of the students. I think that I would certainly use this textbook if teaching in a seminary/university environment. But I’m not yet sure about pastors and students who are currently in ministry and don’t have the same amount of time to devote to their Greek study. My hesitation is lessening as I become familiar with the text and think about how to approach that. I’m curious to get Porter’s thoughts on whether there are any groups of students he doesn’t think this book is for also.

Not surprisingly, I like the content. Aspect, as the primary semantic component of the tense-forms, is introduced with the introduction of verbs in chapter 4. The timeless model of the verbal tense-forms is explained. Great descriptions of the verbal moods and other parts of the verbs are given. My gripe with Athenaze and Mounce is that I felt the semantic component of verbs was not adequately dealt with off the bat. Or maybe I just don’t like the “list approach” to the verbs and cases: dative of time, dative of this and that; gnomic aorist, etc. For cases, I’ve found it much more helpful to begin with the core semantic component. For example, the genitive case signals restriction. I’d rather engage with that first than to be given a list of umpteen different uses with no real idea of how they hang together or to be told it means “of” in English, which it doesn’t.

And, I like the idea of starting with learning the aorist tense-form given it’s being the most frequent and its aspect (perfective) is the default one. I haven’t yet thought through how that affects the learning of the principal parts. It may be strange to me since I learned the present tense-form first.

More thoughts to come in the future as I look at it some more.