Well, we didn't achieve my ambitious goal of doing both Lessons 1 and 2 in Croy's textbook, partly because we started late and partly because I digressed to a couple other topics.
So next week we will do a review of Lesson 1 (I am expecting a couple new people in the class) and then cover Lesson 2 and maybe Lesson 3. Students can read and print out Lessons 1-4 from the class Webpage, but should order or buy the textbook as soon as possible, as I hope not to have to post any more Lessons online or have to make copies of, e.g., Lesson 5, while people are awaiting their books.
To repeat and/or sum up some things from the first class:
Thanks for being enthusiastic about learning, and patient about the process! Not only are you new students whose learning style I don't yet know (nor do you yet know your own style for best learning Greek), but I am working from this textbook for the first time. I selected it primarily because:
- A noted and highly-respected Greek teacher (now retired) said that he would likely pick it for teaching first-year New Testament Greek, were he to again teach such a class.
- It seemed from my reading of it that Croy covers the basics simply and straightforwardly and in reasonably-sized chapters, without overly complicating things.
- There are readings/translations from the Septuagint (LXX) in every Lesson, so students are equally exposed to the Greek Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. (Since our other class readings will be from the Greek New Testament and not from the LXX, you will get a lot more "New Testament" in this course than Old Testament.)
As I said, there are four deficiencies, IMO, in Croy's grammar, which I/we will rectify during the course:
- Students are not taught enough vocabulary to be able to read much of the New Testament comfortably by the end of the course. There are about 311 words that occur 50x or more in the Greek New Testament, and 544 words (per my count of Trenchard's word lists) that occur 25x or more. Croy's vocabulary is about 380 words, but we will be learning every word that occurs 25x or more, either by adding to your vocabulary the appropriate words from the LXX and NT translation exercise lists at the end of each Lesson, or by adding some extra words every class or so to the list that is at the beginning of each Lesson. I've already compiled the list, with frequency numbers and the Lesson number in which the word will be introduced, and there is a link for this list on the class Webpage. Note: If you learn an additional 94 words (actually only 91, since you'll learn 3 of these words as part of the course), you'll learn every word that occurs 20x or more, and we will likely learn some of these, too.
- There are no parsing exercises. Parsing means to list the grammatical description of a word - e.g., if it's a verb, you list its tense, voice, mood, person and number, and if it's a noun or adjective, its gender, number and case, as well as the lexical (dictionary) form. I will be making parsing part of the translation exercises and/or quizzes.
- The translation exercises are of single sentences, and not lengthy blocks of text. We will correct for this by doing extensive readings of continuous texts (e.g., the paragraphs in the UBS4 Greek New Testament, or even whole chapters), and not just single sentences.
- Croy doesn't give much explanation of English grammar to compare it with Greek grammar. Since many people today are deficient in their knowledge of English grammar, it's usually helpful to have a review of this as part of the study of Greek grammar.
I will likely try to go "by the book" for the first part of each class (other than quiz times) so that we are sure to cover the necessary material each week before doing other things like New Testament readings and other exercises.
As I mentioned today, there are two things to be aware of: "the fog" (Bill Mounce's term) and "the slog."
After a few Lessons your mind will likely "fog up" and you'll wonder if you are absorbing all this information. You'll feel like you're lost in a morass of Greek words and strange grammatical concepts. Just keep on keeping on, and you'll find that the fog of earlier Lessons clears after you've done a couple more Lessons. E.g., though you may feel lost by Lesson 6, by the time you do Lesson 8 or 9, Lesson 6 will seem easy, and you will have integrated the contents into your learning; by the time you do Lesson 10, you will have integrated Lesson 7; etc.
The other thing is what I call "the slog." A lot of this is just plain old hard work, plodding through word memorization and translation exercises. If you work every day on memorizing your vocabulary and grammar - expect to spend 45 minutes to 1 hour each day, 5 days a week, once we get into the course - you will master the course. When the going seems dreary, look to your goal - i.e., in 8 or 9 months, you will have completed a first-year course in NT Greek and be able to interact with many parts of the Greek New Testament with a basic understanding of what's going on, and you'll even be able to say/read your prayers in Greek and follow along in some of the Greek text of the Liturgy.Which brings me to a point I forgot to mention in class:
Make sure you have memorized all your vocabulary and all the grammar information before you attempt the translation exercises. If while doing the translations (with the possible exception of the English-to-Greek exercises) you have to keep referring to the vocabulary lists at the beginning of each Lesson or in the back of the book, or to the Lesson's grammar content, you are not yet ready to do the translation exercises.
Note: You don't have to memorize the words in the LXX and NT Sentences lists at the end of each chapter (except for the specific words from that list that I tell you to memorize, since they're among the words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament).
