Announcement for June 30 Class

I. "GRACE WEEK"

With the amount of new material being introduced each week, the next couple weeks are going to be critical for people getting up to speed with the material so as to be able to keep pace for the rest of the course. We've also had a couple people recently join us who have to catch up with us, several people were gone 6/23, and some had not yet done the Lesson 3 Exercises for the last class. ;^( As I don't want to lose anyone at this date who may be temporarily overwhelmed or falling behind, this week will be a "grace week" to allow people to catch up. On June 30 we will again review Lesson 3 and preview Lesson 4, and spend time drilling on vocabulary and paradigms.

If you're behind, use this next week to:

a. (RE)LEARN the vocabulary (including the extra words) for Lessons 2 and 3. Also see this.

b. (RE)LEARN the verb conjugation and noun declension patterns for Lessons 2 and 3.

c. MEMORIZE the [definite] article pattern. See Lesson 5 Section 28 or the charts I've given you or that are on the blog here.

d. DO all the Exercises for Lessons 2 and 3 that you did not do.

e. PRACTICE your reading/pronunciation and writing.

f. LISTEN to the CD to help with your pronunciation.

II. "TWEAKING" THE CLASS FORMAT

While I have mentioned lengthening the class, there is only so much a person's mind can absorb at a time, so I'd prefer not to do that. In order to streamline things and focus on what's most important - and hence spend the most time on those things - I am proposing the following class format, or something very similar:

1. Quiz over vocabulary words and new paradigms (i.e., verb conjugation patterns/endings and noun/adjective declension patterns/endings) that were to have been learned the previous week. NO (or very few) TRANSLATION SENTENCES for now in the quizzes, as students will have done translations the week before as part of the Exercises homework, and this adds too much extra time to the quiz. (But see step 6 below.)

2. Go over the quiz just taken.

3. Review/answer a select number of the Exercises that were to have been done that week, e.g.:

a. Three sentences each from the made-up sentences, the LXX translations, and the NT translations; and

b. Two sentences from the English-to-Greek sentences.

STUDENTS ARE TO HAVE DONE ALL THE EXERCISES SENTENCES BEFORE CLASS, THOUGH, AND NOT JUST A FEW OF EACH. Answers to the Exercises will be posted ahead of time on the blog so students can check their translations after they do them and before coming to class. This, too, will help streamline the class time. (The answers to Lessons 2, 3, 4 and 5 have now been posted - see the links on the sidebar.) Feel free to email me or even post as blog comments questions you may have about any of your translations or about grammar subjects in the Lesson(s).

4. Discuss any problems or questions students say they had with any of the translation Exercises/sentences that we don't go over in step 3. above, or about the grammar part of the Lesson.

5. Read/preview the new Lesson and additional vocabulary words. Students practice saying (and writing?) the words and the paradigms.

6. Do some of the Exercises for the new Lesson based on what we have just discussed in Step 5. This gives students the translation practice that is being reduced in the quizzes, and also gives everyone a chance to put into practice the new information.

7. Do picture-word listening/looking exercise, and do NT readings.

I will try to avoid discussing extraneous or "nice to know but not need to know" subjects/examples, as the most important thing for you to be absorbing and learning and doing is the VOCABULARY and the verb/noun/adjective/etc. PARADIGMS. I'll try to focus on things that help you learn the subject at hand, while avoiding esoteric and interesting but non-essential things, unless time allows it or it seems germane to someone's question or understanding.

Learning Greek necessarily involves a lot of rote repetition, because the words and patterns are the building blocks of the language, and you must be able to recognize and understand them. Soon, though, we will be putting your newly-learned reading skills and knowledge to work and begin reading passages from the Greek New Testament in addition to the translations you are doing each week.