Helping Students Keep Up with Greek

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Here’s a great question for you Greek students to ask, and a helpful (I hope) answer for you Greek teachers to give. J.H. writes:

I am a second-year student in [a theological seminary] in Nigeria. I am presently taking Greek Grammar 1. My challenge after each lecture is forgetting the endings I learned previously as a result of the ones learnt anew. I would be grateful if you could provide some tips to enable me to keep up.

J.H.,

I’ll give three answers: theological, a practical, and a technical.

1. Theological Answer: Love and Self-Control

Love for something will motivate you in all your learning—love for pleasing your teacher, for besting your classroom nemesis, for impressing a potential mate, for good marks. You should be motivated by the highest and best loves: love of God and neighbor. (See the earth-shakingly good C.S. Lewis essay “The Weight of Glory,” which probes the issue of motivation better than anything I’ve ever read outside Scripture.) Pray for Spirit-filled love for God’s Word and love for the people you’ll serve with your education (Galatians 5:22). Pray also for Spirit-filled self-control in times of drudgery (Galatians 5:23). Interestingly, even the secular language-learning textbook I’ll reference in point 3 spent significant time discussing the “affective domain,” motivations for language learning. Christians, ideally, ought to have the best motivations.

2. Practical Answer: Language and Life

Pedagogical experts have observed that people have different learning styles. But everybody on earth initially learns language—and was designed by God to learn language—the same way: by listening to it being used in daily speech. No two-year-olds have ever successfully been made to learn language via parsing charts. The written form of an established language like English or Koine Greek is going to be somewhat different from the spoken form (we write things we would never say, and vice versa), but don’t let the death of Koine as a spoken language sever the link between Greek and real life. In other words, try to read real-life Koine Greek as soon as possible, to see how it gets used in the New Testament and other Koine literature, even if you have to look up every single word. It will help if you are reading something like the Apostolic Fathers in Greek, which comes with English translation.
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3. Technical Answer: How to Learn a Second Language

I am by no means an expert in the process of learning languages, but having acquired a few of them at varying levels of proficiency over the years, I have some reflections. I also did some digging in one of the most recent textbooks on SLA (Second Language Acquisition)—the rigorous Teacher’s Handbook, Contextualized Language Instruction. I could go into a lot of detail, but the upshot dovetails quite nicely with my previous paragraph: language acquisition is “socio-cultural,” requiring a range of competencies that go far beyond memorization of paradigms and declensions. Here’s a line from the book that shows a little of what I mean: “Neither the knowledge of [a grammar] rule, nor the use of the rule when consciously constructing sentences, directly contributes to [language] acquisition—only the repeated use of the resulting utterances serves as the input from which linguistic competence is implicitly abstracted.” (21) Koine Greek is no longer a spoken language (though there are some very interesting attempts to resurrect it as one). But if you can work with a study group, pronounce words out loud, and even try to form sentences of your own, research shows that you’ll come out ahead.

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Mark Ward

Christian, husband, father, writer, ultimate frisbee player when possible.

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22 comments
  • I tell my students to learn the article until it is second nature. Almost all of the endings for nominals can be traced back to the endings on the article. If you know the article and remember how whatever you are trying to learn differs from it, it will make your life much easier.

    Dr. SamLam
    Knox Seminary

  • Greetings, Brother!

    I learned New Testament Greek utilizing J. Gresham Machen’s “New Testament Greek for Beginners.” One of the learning aids that really assisted me was to tranlate the English sentences in the exercises into Greek by first reciting the Greek sentence, out loud, and then writing the Greek sentence on paper. I utilize this level of immersion in all my language studies and it has helped my retention immensely.

    Xaris kai Eirēnē,

    Louis

  • I have found that I have to learn vocabulary and declensions three or four times. Each time I relearn it more quickly and retain it longer. And I’ve also found it helpful to memorize a short passage in Hebrew or Greek with relevant vocabulary, declensions, or verb conjugations. This helps me memorize God’s Word and learn the language at the same time. It takes effort.

  • I took two years of Greek grammar as a college freshman 47 years ago. I learned the endings while speaking, writing, looking and listening over and over and over until they were set in my mind like a poem. On long trips, I had them written out on 3×5 cards so I could practice and check my accuracy. There is no short cut. After each lecture, devour the new material and add it to the old. Otherwise, in just a couple of days, you will be so lost you can’t keep up. Study. And then study some more.
    A basic working knowledge of Greek has served me well over 45 years of preaching ministry.
    I leave you from my memory –
    w, eis, e, omev, ete, ousi

  • This is great, guys! Good feedback for J.H.—and good fodder for Greek teachers to use when their students ask similar questions.

  • When learning a language, I always remember my teacher’s words from many years ago – ‘Never leave a passage until you thoroughly understand every word, every case, every detail of the grammar’. This has become so ingrained I do it to this day. It’s how I’m learning NT Greek. It may not be best for everybody but it’s the only way that seems to work for me. It’s almost like wringing everything out of a passage and then moving on. I certainly remember.

    • Yes, I find that really digging into a passage for the purpose of teaching it is the best help to learning it—and that applies beyond Greek to the theology of the passage. Good!

      • Hi Mark, thank you for your response. Regarding the theology of the passage one is looking at linguistically, I find that it comes out really beautifully at times. You’re reading and something connects in your mind, so that the theology is really ever-present. A recent example: I was slowly working my way through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and at chapter 2:12, while focusing on ‘without’ and ‘having no hope’ my mind went back to Gen 1:2 – without form and void. Then God created light. Before we come into covenant relationship with God, we have no light, no hope – our life is ‘void’. This kind of discovery really excites me, and I just wonder what other marvellous discoveries lie ahead! So you’re absolutely right – the language study is inseparable from the theology of God’s Word.
        With all good wishes
        Barry

        • Sorry, Mark, I forgot something. Following on from my earlier reply, I was fairly recently studying the Gospel chapters that deal with the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. Again, the very focused approach on the language, tied into theology, took my mind back to Genesis again. ‘And the evening and the morning were the first day’. Hmm. Matt 27:45 records that there was darkness over all the land; In Matt 28:1 we read that Mary Magdalene came to the sepulchre ‘as it began to dawn’. The evening and the morning. Genesis is a brilliant book, and time and time again my mind returns to it, not forcing myself to see something that isn’t there, but realising that there IS something there, that God recorded for our learning from the very beginning.
          These are the rewards of the hard work that language-learning involves, and I do pray that the other people who have posted on here will all experience the same profound, spiritual thrill – and you too of course.
          Best wishes
          Barry

  • After over 30 years of teaching Greek I completely agree that “only the repeated use” will prevent loss of that which we work so hard to gain. The need is to get the greatest amount of text before us in the shortest amount of time in a format that enables us to see it functioning as text. One of the better ways (once a basic working knowledge is attained) is to have a friend (or spouse) read familiar New Testament passages to us while we follow along in the Greek text, not parsing every word or even understanding how every phrase is translated, but simply immersing ourselves in the text.

    • Yes, yes! I have most certainly done this. I always whip out my Logos app when preachers read texts of Scripture in church, too. And Logos has an audio version of the ESV that you can listen to as you follow along in Greek (or Hebrew, of course).

  • Good comments already. Here’s some more. Use as many learning methods as you can. HISIWISIMI = Hear it, See it, Write it, Say it, Memorize it. (To hear it you’ll need an mp3 of someone reading Greek.)
    Don’t just focus on grammar. See the words in a real context in the Greek New Testament and get those phrases fixed in your mind. See my Vocbuild file at https://sites.google.com/site/ianmacnair/Home/gntwft/into-the-greek-new-testament-data .
    Our subconscious memory is working even when our conscious memory is elsewhere. A good tip is to read over the material you want to learn last thing at night before you go to sleep. Don’t try to learn – just read it. You’ll be amazed how much has ‘stuck’ the next day.

    • I’ve read that a good night of sleep right after study does help. Maybe I should try that myself… I never seemed to be able to be that intentional while in school.

  • I used to tell my students, ” Learning Greek requires involment of every part of your body.” I meant to say that they need to use any thing they can to memorize and understand the meaning clearly. Therefore, I will suggest that you use your pen and write down Greek endings hundreds of time. The same time mark few endings that donot follow the general rules, also, endings that are identical. Example, Pres. Act. Indic. Third person plural of archo – I rule is identical with Dat. plu. of archon, o, a ruler and Pres. Part. Act, Dat. plu. Mas. of archon, ruling.
    Above all, allow your hands, ears and brain work together so that all problems that you mentioned concerning endings will be greatly minimid. Thank you.

  • Forty years in a teaching environment has taught me that learning starts with motivation and advances with daily commitment. Every little block helps to build the wall. I studied Koine Greek 30 years ago and until recent times could not read a Greek sentence convincingly. One day I said to myself, ” Real people wrote read and spoke this language and that is how I will learn it.” Secondly, I put away my old grammar books and gave up trying to remember the irregular aorist subjunctive verbal constructions and joined the 21st century. The world wide web has made access to knowledge immediate so I now use the fantastic resources that leading scholars have generously prepared to help me master Koine Greek. I access P46 (online)daily and I am learning to read Uncial codicies. Every day I think, “Wow, I am learning to think like the apostle Paul did nearly 2000 years ago.” Even when I encounter difficulties I keep going and slowly but certainly I am engaging with a language that is coming ‘alive’ and I am experiencing, anew, the wonder and joy of the Gospel message.
    Blessings to you all

  • After going through two years of Greek, finishing last semester, the only way is to practice, practice, and practice. It’s all memorization, there’s no getting around that fact. It’s difficult and tedious, and I was in the “fog” for most of the 2 years. Mounce does a great job of breaking everything down, and you just have to follow his advice. Read everything on all the pages even the advanced things that you don’t need yet, but will need later on. And of course, don’t quit. Keep showing up our brains learn things even if we can’t fully explain what we know. So make it out of the fog, and you will all of a sudden understand things better.

    To summarize in passing Greek, Show up, and memorize!!

  • Anki is an incredible tool. Familiarize yourself with it and you will find that it’s customizability is unmatched and its help is immense.

  • J. H.,
    All of the comments are good with much helpful advice. Casey probably spoke to your heart when speaking of the “fog”. I could relate to that too. You had better get a grasp on Casey’s comment, “It’s all memorization, there’s no getting around that fact.” I would have to say that my experience in learning Greek has revealed to me that the reason for learning Greek in the first place is a great determiner in where you end up. If Greek is just a “requirement” that has to be endured, then you may learn Greek and possibly get straight A’s but will you retain it? Probably not. I think that is just a waste of time.

    Vocabulary I believe is the most important aspect of learning Greek. You probably won’t continue your Greek after seminary without it. My suggestion is to start looking at simple Greek sentences from John’s writings. He has the simplest vocabulary and you will benefit immensely from the confidence in translating biblical text. Remember, vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary. Conjugations and declensions will be fixed in your mind as you translate. Greek is worthy of your time. I hear many that have never learned Greek say that it is unnecessary and not worth the time. I have never heard anyone who has actually learned Greek and said that they wish they had not learned it.

    Lastly, remember as a Christian you have indwelling in you the Holy Spirit that has promised to teach you all things, John 14:26. I think Greek is probably in there somewhere. God bless.

    • I hear many that have never learned Greek say that it is unnecessary and not worth the time. I have never heard anyone who has actually learned Greek and said that they wish they had not learned it.

      Excellent.

  • Great post Mark and the comments have been very helpful also. After completing 1.5yrs in 2014 of Greek, during my BTh, I realised how much there was still to learn and that if I was ever going to retain my Greek I needed to do something each day. This resulted in me beginning a weekly blog called Keep Your Greek (inspired by Con Campbell’s book of the same name) that some of the readers here may also be interested in following. I don’t aim to teach anything new, but rather to recap what many of us already have learnt via verb paradigm quizzes and a weekly ten verse reading through John’s Gospel. I also use Jerry Seinfeld’s method—Don’t Break the Chain—on my smartphone to check off my daily study and keep me progressing in my Greek. It feels slow, but I know that if I hadn’t taken these initiatives that I would have lost virtually all of what had taken a great deal of effort to learn in the first instance. https://keepyourgreek.wordpress.com

  • Been enjoying your posts, Mark.

    I’ve been thinking about this one specifically for awhile. I’m in an interesting confluence of teaching Greek right now to students using a second language (Tagalog) I acquired last year. So thoughts about language learning are on the forefront right now. Two things that come to mind:

    1) Very honestly, last year I was a little stunned how rule based and “mathematical” learning Tagalog turned out to be. We use something not unlike a case system with a healthy amount of infixes / reduplication. Even in the middle of a conversation or preaching (I think I speak reasonably fluidly now…), I am still making flash decisions based on rule-type principles I learned. I very much resonate hugely with the idea of “just go use it and make tons of mistakes” and that was equally critical for me. But I’m also 100% confident that I would still be stumbling around if I hadn’t also had access to some great Tagalog grammar resources. I thought Psycholinguistics by Dan Steinberg gave a great balanced view on this. We have different learning styles, but as adults we will tilt more towards rule based thinking. I simply can’t move in with two adult Filipinos and spend 3 years doing nothing but playing (how I learned English).

    2) On the Greek pedagogy side, it’s tons of fun to pull grammatical examples or comparisons from either of two languages (my students are also bilingual). But I’ve pondered how it would be possible to build up a speaking community. I don’t think it’s realistically happening in most settings. By definition socio-cultural learning is tied in with every aspect of life. How would you tell someone you need the CR in Greek? How to apologize for being late? Say you have a headache? We could run some of this stuff down I’m sure (though not all—how to say “can you call or text me” or “can you buy me a banana”), but then are those skills even useful for NT reading—the task we actually care about? And that leads to the bigger concern. In the absence of a living Greek speaker and the reality of how humans work with language, I think an artificial speaking community threatens to inadvertently create their own linguistic reality. In other words, they would tend to naturally map words around their own first language closest equivalents and destroy some original semantic domains in the process. Now those wrongly mapped semantic domains would become part of the information they bring back to the text.

    I think the meaning of socio-cultural learning is the puzzled expression of the lady at the market place when you do something wrong. It’s the embarrassment of a failed conversation and constantly seeing that what you just did obviously did not work at all, or that people’s response is completely different from what you thought you said. But that isn’t going to happen with a koine Greek speaker because they’re dead. The closest thing we have to a live one is the text. Which brings me to the best advice I can give my students—as soon as they can, they should read the text as much as possible. Read through the entire NT in Greek, using an English audio Bible for backup if they have to. And given human learning, we do most quickly pick up the tasks we’re spending time doing. Reading the text will naturally lead to more understanding of the text; tracking down how to ask where the bathroom is… not so much.

    Thoughts?

    • Joel, you learned English by moving in with two adult Filipinos and playing all day?! =)

      Good commenters like you are the reason I keep wavering on this issue. This is precisely it:

      I think an artificial speaking community threatens to inadvertently create their own linguistic reality. In other words, they would tend to naturally map words around their own first language closest equivalents and destroy some original semantic domains in the process. Now those wrongly mapped semantic domains would become part of the information they bring back to the text.

      So the impulse to speak Κοινή Greek as it was spoken is, obviously, a good one. Do we need to resign ourselves to the providential situation we have, or will the tension between the “Grammar-translation” method and the “living-language” method always be helpful for us?

      As someone who has never taught a single hour of Greek (except sort of that one time I spoke to your class about Bible software…), I’m perhaps not the most reliable source. My main angle—my main concern—derives from abuses of the grammar-translation method, abuses described well in Barr, Silva, and Carson. I can’t shake the feeling that the living language method may be the answer, or part of it. I myself have focused a great deal in my writing on teaching people about linguistics in general as a way of hopefully sensitizing them to those abuses.

      I’ve invited some contributors to talk about this issue on the blog in coming weeks. Can’t wait to see what we get.

Written by Mark Ward
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