I am just kicking off racking a small group koine. The text I will be using is Mounce’s latest edition but using a heavily communicative class approach. Within this book he requires 319 words to be learned, whilst noting that many modern language courses would require 2,000 in the first year. I want to do a conpromise with the vocab from the gospel of Mark (approx 1,300)
After finishing first year Greek I found having to look up most words when reading to be frustrating, I had anticipated moving onto reading quite easily. To get the vocab better I focussed on translating smaller books and learning all the vocab in them. In this way I knew I could read a given text knowing the vocab when I next came back to it (I have the cards in envelopes marked per book). I want to do this for my group, so that after first year Greek they can focus on grammar in Mark as well as getting the joy of progressively unlocking that book this year.
Two questions:
1) do you think 1,300ish words is too many? I am tempted to do 1,000 minimum if a compromise if required
2) after getting a basic introduction to construction grammar, I now recognise the importance of teaching idiom and other constructions as part of the vocab Do you know any good lists of these for Mark?
I'll be a bit categorical here, to make a point. Direct, explicit learning of vocabulary doesn't work. We learn vocabulary by reading. That said, there is a case for limited use of things like vocabulary lists. Learners might review a list in preparation for a communicative encounter or a short reading. Teachers might maintain a list (as I do!) to guide what they put in front of students in stories or activities. My list is about 600 words long. See... https://drive.google.com/file/d/11VWNbleyHdmQ2ajFxiwySbc_PZSG5DUI/view?usp=sharing
Hey Adam, sorry for the delayed response.
I am going through the materials on the biblical language centre and also doing one to one tuition through them. The approach has me excited and definitely keen to impart some of their methods onto the new group.
I think I had much the same result from Mounce, although I worked through it on my own with such poor focus that I had to re-learn a lot of it some years later when I decided to properly invest time. The desire to progress, allowing chapter progression rather than comprehension to give me a feeling of doing well was a great mistake.
Where I find Mounce to be strong is showing that the language system as a whole is systematic and not a hodge-podge of forms to be learned by innumerable charts. Supplementing that with conversational koine in the sessions allowing mini dialogues at church in the intervening weekends will hopefully help a lot.
" That might mean initially focusing on listening and reading comprehension while only gradually adding verbal communication as you are able. I think Mounce's textbook would be rather challenging to adapt to a communicative approach. You'd almost have to produce an entirely new curriculum. "
Completely agree with this statement, It is likely to be a challenge and the verbal communication will be initially relatively limited, but I think it can work. That said, I am likely to be on here a lot asking how on earth I can convey concepts in a better way!
longhornm, I was wondering if you have any familiarity with Randall Buth's Living Koine Greek: Part 1? I was probably about about as "successful" as you can get with Mounce's BBG. (In fact, I often wish I was as diligent with a communicative approach. I seriously burned myself out grinding through BBG while also trying to supplement its deficiencies leading up to and during my undergraduate studies.) In the end, however, I found the results very poor and frustrating. In many ways, I had to start over because his method didn't even really begin the process of internalization and fluency building (i.e., learning Greek as an actual language, not as something to be rapidly decoded and translated in one's head). I can't imagine how far along I'd be now if I had started on a better course with a stronger foundation. But I don't begrudge God's providence; I have learned much and have much to learn. I provided a little of my background on the B-Greek forums earlier last year, as Harlan mentioned in a previous thread (sharing similar experience): https://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=4451 Anyway, I wouldn't want to derail your plans at all, quite the contrary! We all have to start with what we already know and branch out from there. For many of us that's Mounce's BBG. Your class will probably be better off since you clearly recognize and will be supplementing some of its weaknesses. You might want to consider some of the Living Biblical Language materials for down the road. I've seen students make tremendous progress even just with Part 1. That might mean initially focusing on listening and reading comprehension while only gradually adding verbal communication as you are able. I think Mounce's textbook would be rather challenging to adapt to a communicative approach. You'd almost have to produce an entirely new curriculum. https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/books-products/koine-greek/ https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/blc-online-2/ I'll be interested in hearing how your plans develop and work out.
Very good, and keep us posted how your teaching goes.
Any materials you develop (exercises, vocab pictures, etc.) that you think others might appreciate and learn from, feel free to share them here if you're so inclined.
I will check that link out
i have created a document of terms linked by group, body parts (head items, thorax level, arm level etc) so definitely agree with that approach from you. My own cards were done based off highlighting words I didn‘t know as I came across them in a text, looking up in BDAG and then writing the card entry. At the top of the cards it shows what chapter and verse range is on the card. that Won’t work for them in this context so great suggestion
That's nice you are also reading through the church fathers. They have a lot of good meta-language for talking about biblical passages in Koine Greek.
And learning vocabulary in semantic groups and language tasks/situations is always best. In other words, where possible, if students can learn πνεῦμα, νεφέλη, ὑετός, οὐρανός, ἄνεμος all together, they have a better chance of remembering them. Further, if they can learn those words in context when reading a text about the weather (or talking about the weather), they will remember them even better.
So that would be one other piece of advice for vocab learning and what has been proven to work well. Learning words in isolation (or in alphabetical order) only works for a very small percentage of people with a certain mind (it is often a gift for academics to have a mind so inclined, but definitely not shared among most).
Also, this is the best website I know for royalty/copyright-free images to use in teaching:
https://pixabay.com/
Great feedback.
I am definitely not planning far ahead at the moment. I have a full time job (unrelated to languages) and also a 1-1 with someone else I am teaching and on top of that trying to keep up with a 1-1 learning from BLC.Mand trying to read through the church fathers. Burnout for me is a distinct possibility if I am not careful especially as I will be reviewing their workbook answers and feeding back
I am aiming for a mix of language competence and passive understanding. I don’t have the training to do full on communicative teaching but can read with ease most of the New Testament.
I will focus then on chapters and parables / pericopes (or periscopes as Apple want to call it) as you suggest. That will allow me to get the sense of progression across rather than a random list of vocab and hopefully the sense of acheivement that comes with it.
Having learned vocab through self-written cards of 11 words each card and BDAG definitions I guess I still have a love for that approach that not all may share
That sounds like you have a nice group/setup and can have a really fun and productive time teaching!
My first thought, though, is to immediately lower your ambitions for vocabulary learning. Without good communicative resources for learning the vocabulary you are trying to teach them, 1300 words is too much. If you had nice videos, lots of class time, etc. it might be doable, but I would expect that 1300 for your context is far too much. By the way, this has nothing to do with you personally, I don't know of anywhere in the world right now that would solidly do 1300 vocab words in one academic year in communicative Koine Greek. I am building a curriculum right now myself and I will do far less than that many words.
If this is your first time doing this, I would not try to make a plan for the entire year. Start with planning just a few weeks in advance and see what you can cover. Have fun with it. Get an idea of pace with your students and see how far you can go, what you can talk about, how much they can control at any given stage. Set as a goal reading a certain parable or reading one chapter in the Gospel of Mark, see what it takes to get to that, and then broaden your goals for a longer period of time.
Trust me, even after having a good deal of communicative language teaching experience, when I tried to plan 6 weeks of a course in advance I had to re-do it because I went too fast, and we were meeting every day with 3 hours of homework per night.
A lot also depends on the control you want them to have of the language. Do you want passive understanding or active fluent control (both of which can be communicative)?
Thanks for the post!
I have a couple questions.
How often are you meeting per week? How much work do you plan to give for homework? What will your students' background be like? What will your meeting/room setup be like?
Would be happy to give pedagogical advice based on this.