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.