What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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Victor
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by Victor »

daivid wrote:I don't see what relevance this has to a comparison of teaching methods?
I suspected you wouldn't; I'm afraid that until you understand the essential difference between learning a modern foreign language and learning a dead one you never will.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

Victor wrote:
daivid wrote:I don't see what relevance this has to a comparison of teaching methods?
I suspected you wouldn't; I'm afraid that until you understand the essential difference between learning a modern foreign language and learning a dead one you never will.
You gave two cases that bear no resemblance to how languages (modern or dead) are actually taught. In short you created a straw man. I don't dispute that actually going to a country where the target language is spoken is a big plus merely that most living language techniques do not rely on that.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by Hylander »

Does this contentious thread really need to be extended? Hasn't everything that could possibly be said about this issue already been said--and more than once? And is it even remotely possible that the proponents of either view will convince the others by further verbiage?

This is beginning to resemble the theological disputes that erupt from time to time in the Koine/New Testament Greek forum. I propose that this thread be permanently closed and any attempt to raise the issue again be deleted, and that we all go back to being friends again.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

Hylander wrote:
This is beginning to resemble the theological disputes that erupt from time to time in the Koine/New Testament Greek forum. I propose that this thread be permanently closed and any attempt to raise the issue again be deleted, and that we all go back to being friends again.
Had someone done so LSorenson would not have been able to provide two interesting links. I am now reading the Louis Kelly one and would recommend it.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by Hylander »

Daivid, since you don't want to close this thread, there's something more to be said.

Now, I don't mean to be arrogant or condescending, or to engage in a personal attack, and I hope my words won't come across as angry or combative, but you are still at a somewhat elementary stage in your acquisition of ancient Greek--judging from your recent question, you're still encountering difficulties with basic Greek idiom in what is a very easy Greek text. I don't think that at this stage you fully grasp the difficulties of acquiring correct habits of speech from literary texts that are distanced to a greater or lesser degree from everyday speech, to a greater or lesser degree infected with textual corruption, with divergent vocabulary and idioms in different authors even from the same periods and extreme cultural differences from our everyday environment, among other factors that have been mentioned.

I think you should withhold judgment about how best to acquire a reading competency in ancient Greek until you have a higher level of reading fluency and more experience with a much wider range of texts. Again, I don't want to engage in a personal attack, and I hope you won't take it that way, but I think you really need more experience and fluency before forming an opinion on this issue.

I'm not saying you should abandon what you're doing to learn Greek, but I just think you should wait until you have more Greek under your belt before you evaluate the methods under discussion.
Last edited by Hylander on Tue Feb 09, 2016 10:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

daivid wrote:I don't dispute that actually going to a country where the target language is spoken is a big plus merely that most living language techniques do not rely on that.
Living language methodology for learning Hebrew and Greek seems to have morphed over the decades. Used to be "come to Jerusalem ... but leave your armor and sword at home ... we will plunge you into intensive conversational exposure ... you will be reading unpointed hebrew newspaper before you leave" or something like that. Anyway, what it did not promise was "you will be reading Isaiah with no effort" before you leave.

Hylander is right of course. Isaiah and/or Aeschylus are levels that not too may living language students attain to.

RE: asking simple questions on this forum

It isn't always possible to gauge ones level of competence in the language by the questions being asked. Some of us are forgetting faster than we are learning. Some of us have forgotten basic issues while tackling advanced problems. People who teach greek 101, 201, 301, for fifty years become immersed in "basics" by repetition. People who are moving forward do not memorize everything in intro greek phase but progress to difficult texts and then more difficult texts. Also, review of simple questions is useful on this forum since we have some first year people here lurking. Right? So please lets not get down on people who raise basic questions.

Linguists by the way, challenge basic dogma on language as matter of course. Testing basic teaching from "traditional grammar" is what linguists do all the time. So replies like "this is basic" to question about syntax or semantics are indicative of a lack of understanding about the nature linguistic investigation. For example, some time ago, a senior linguist with SIL wrote her Phd dissertation on ἵνα clauses in which she challenged basic assumptions about ἵνα in "traditional grammar." The whole discussion was about what is being called here basic questions but it isn't a reflection of this SIL consultants ignorance of the language that she asks these questions. Linguists do that. All the time.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

Hylander wrote:Daivid, since you don't want to close this thread, there's something more to be said.

Now, I don't mean to be arrogant or condescending, or to engage in a personal attack, and I hope my words won't come across as angry or combative, but you are still at a somewhat elementary stage in your acquisition of ancient Greek--judging from your recent question, you're still encountering difficulties with basic Greek idiom in what is a very easy Greek text. I don't think that at this stage you fully grasp the difficulties of acquiring correct habits of speech from literary texts that are distanced to a greater or lesser degree from everyday speech, to a greater or lesser degree infected with textual corruption, with divergent vocabulary and idioms in different authors even from the same periods and extreme cultural differences from our everyday environment, among other factors that have been mentioned.

I think you should withhold judgment about how best to acquire a reading competency in ancient Greek until you have a higher level of reading fluency and more experience with a much wider range of texts. Again, I don't want to engage in a personal attack, and I hope you won't take it that way, but I think you really need more experience and fluency before forming an opinion on this issue.

I'm not saying you should abandon what you're doing to learn Greek, but I just think you should wait until you have more Greek under your belt before you evaluate the methods under discussion.
I started this thread with a question because I am agnostic on the divide. I usually end taking the living language side of things because I want to believe there is something better out there. The fact is that what I do every day ( and I always devote several hours a day to studying Greek isn't working. And what I am doing really amounts to Grammar-Translation because that is what most textbooks are ( I have completed the Polis book). The courses available to me in London are all from what I can see are all traditional Grammar-Translation and so see any advantage over home study - that was my experience when I tried. Living Language methods however require a teacher I just wish that option was available in Britain in Ancient Greek.

The question I posed on Xenophon 1.3.18-19 was indeed elementary. My problem was that because it was part of a very long and complicated sentence I couldn't see the wood for the trees. That is typical of me. I know perfectly well that καὶ can have the meaning it did in that sentence but didn't see it in that instance. The reason I have a problem is that I only read a few sentences of Greek a day. This is because reading Greek is a long and laborious struggle of decoding. This is because I read too little. And so on.

That living language methods can be much more effective in getting the basic grammar to be internalized I am convinced because I have learnt that method as a way of teaching English. That these techniques are applicable to Ancient Greek should be obvious from looking at Christophe Rico video. And it is quite true that we can't know how Ancient Greeks spoke but so what. The aim of speaking Greek is get close up and personal with the Greek grammar and vocabulary we encounter in the extant texts.

I just don't understand why you are so people are so ready to dismiss it the living language alternative(s) without them being first tried.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by seneca2008 »

If I might make a few points as a newcomer here. I do not intend to be critical of anyone here.

I thought daivid's question on Xenophon was a reasonable one to ask. It sprung I thought from trying to over complicate matters. Its always as well to remember that Xenophon is usually straightforward (and I dont mean he is always very easy). I dont think anyone should be discouraged from asking from help or made to feel bad about their questions. From what I have seen of Hylander he always answers questions in a very helpful way.

I agree with Hylander's amusing post that this topic seems to attract a lot of passion. What i dont understand about the proposition that we should all speak ancient Greek is that I dont know where that "Greek" is going to come from. I spend most of my time reading Tragedy which is about as far as you can get from any possible Greek that might have been spoken in fifth century Athens. That for me is the whole problem. Virtually all the texts we have are written in the highest possible literary register. Commentaries delight in pointing out phrases that might be proverbial or colloquial. Aristophanes is certainly full of expressions which may reflect how (some?) Athenians spoke. Perhaps there is a rich vein of spoken classical Greek of which I am entirely ignorant?

There is much that can be gained by following some of the ideas of modern language tuition. Reading aloud and composition are great aids. But I think they always have been used.

Making the jump from reading adapted Greek in textbooks to real Greek is hard. Lysias and Xenophon are helpful texts. Thucydides, Aeschylus and Sophocles are always going to be hard to read however much you have studied.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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As a postscript if anyone here lives in or near London they might be interested in the King's College Greek Play which opens tomorrow. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cla ... index.aspx

The play is done with surtitles and is usually enjoyable. Last year's Clouds was probably a happier experience for me than reading the play.

Enough! I have 400 lines more of Alcestis to read before Friday.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by jeidsath »

I tried to talk my wife into taking a flight out to London for it, but I don't think she took me very seriously.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote:
I agree with Hylander's amusing post that this topic seems to attract a lot of passion. What i dont understand about the proposition that we should all speak ancient Greek is that I dont know where that "Greek" is going to come from. I spend most of my time reading Tragedy which is about as far as you can get from any possible Greek that might have been spoken in fifth century Athens. That for me is the whole problem. Virtually all the texts we have are written in the highest possible literary register. Commentaries delight in pointing out phrases that might be proverbial or colloquial. Aristophanes is certainly full of expressions which may reflect how (some?) Athenians spoke. Perhaps there is a rich vein of spoken classical Greek of which I am entirely ignorant?
This would be a serious objection were the aim of using living language techniques to speak the form of Greek actually spoken in fifth century Athens or for that matter any time in history.

Here Christophe Rico explains his aim which is to enable students to at the end to be able to read the texts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN6KVK4hj4A.

To do that he had to teach himself to speak a fluent form of Ancient Greek that was a reflection of those texts but was not the aim but merely a means to the end of ensuring that the extant Greek texts could be read.
Hylander wrote:Does this contentious thread really need to be extended? Hasn't everything that could possibly be said about this issue already been said--and more than once? And is it even remotely possible that the proponents of either view will convince the others by further verbiage?
.
You are right of course. Debates on the internet do not usually change anyone's mind. It is quite achievable however for the two sides to understand each others point of view - it doesn't seem to me we have got even that far yet but I don't see why we shouldn't try and do at least that much.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by tomroper »

seneca2008 wrote:As a postscript if anyone here lives in or near London they might be interested in the King's College Greek Play which opens tomorrow. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cla ... index.aspx

The play is done with surtitles and is usually enjoyable. Last year's Clouds was probably a happier experience for me than reading the play.

Enough! I have 400 lines more of Alcestis to read before Friday.
And if you can't get to London this week, try Cambridge in the autumn for a double bill of Antigone and Lysistrata: http://www.cambridgegreekplay.com/plays ... lysistrata.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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I have now watched the video and read an interview here http://jeltzz.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/in ... greek.html

I suppose if your aim is to become fluent in Koine then this is a good system. But my guess is that anyone can make quite a bit of progress using any method if they devote a year of their life to study. Perhaps the method is less important than coupling the desire to make progress with the discipline necessary to achieve it. As a violinist I meet many people who are full of the desire to play but lack the determination to take the necessary small steps with regular practise. There is no way round the fact that when you learn music or a language there is a substantial amount of memory work. Talent gets you only so far its mostly all hard work.

There still remains the gap between reading Koine texts and classical attic which seems to me to be enormous.

I am sorry if this has all been said before.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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@tomroper I am looking forward to Antigone and Lysistrata!
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote:I have now watched the video and read an interview here http://jeltzz.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/in ... greek.html

I suppose if your aim is to become fluent in Koine then this is a good system. But my guess is that anyone can make quite a bit of progress using any method if they devote a year of their life to study. Perhaps the method is less important than coupling the desire to make progress with the discipline necessary to achieve it. As a violinist I meet many people who are full of the desire to play but lack the determination to take the necessary small steps with regular practise. There is no way round the fact that when you learn music or a language there is a substantial amount of memory work. Talent gets you only so far its mostly all hard work.
I have been doing at least some Greek study for pretty much every day for four years. For a majority of those days the time devoted has been several hours. Either I am incapable of learning Ancient Greek or method does indeed matter.
seneca2008 wrote: There still remains the gap between reading Koine texts and classical attic which seems to me to be enormous.

I am sorry if this has all been said before.
If someone were to offer Attic classes using Ricco's method in Britain I would much prefer it. But the choice on offer is Koine in Rome or Jerusalem or struggle on with Xenophon and the traditional textbooks I have to hand.

And thanks for following up the links,
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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Have you tried any courses at city lit or Birkbeck?
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote:Have you tried any courses at city lit or Birkbeck?
They use the JACT Reading Greek textbook which I hate. Even were it a traditional type textbook that I liked I don't see what gain there would be in studying in class.

I did try a summer school that had us going though a Greek text and it did give the illusion of reading but when I again looked at the texts a few days later it was just as hard as before so I don't think I learnt anything at all. city lit seems to use the same method for the intermediate/advanced classes.

If you know about course based on Paula Saffire's Ancient Greek Alive I would be interested (unlike Polis, it is an Attic course). I am seriously considering going to Rome this summer for the 2 week Polis course but the hotel bills and travel expense are quite a problem.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by seneca2008 »

I have been doing at least some Greek study for pretty much every day for four years. For a majority of those days the time devoted has been several hours.
I am sure method does matter. Teaching yourself is very hard and it is important that you find a textbook you like. I would recommend Athenaze. I think Lysias 1 is a very good text for intermediate students plus parts of say Hecuba or Medea. Xenophon is good if it interests you. (I am sure you have had your fill of other people's recommendations so apologies again if you have heard all this before).

UCL are running a five day intensive course in Homer from beginners to advanced 27 June 1 July. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/events/s ... oolinhomer

You might be able to ask there about hiring a tutor which would be less expensive than a trip to Rome.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote: I am sure method does matter. Teaching yourself is very hard and it is important that you find a textbook you like.
Doing on your own is certainly hard. I don't see how it can be any less hard doing it in a class if a conventional method is used. It is true that if you attend a class those hours will be devoted to Greek but managing to find time to do Greek and sticking with it is the single problem I don't have
seneca2008 wrote:I would recommend Athenaze. I think Lysias 1 is a very good text for intermediate students plus parts of say Hecuba or Medea. Xenophon is good if it interests you. (I am sure you have had your fill of other people's recommendations so apologies again if you have heard all this before).
Athenaze is very good but I have already been through it. Lysias is a good recommendation but I am sticking with Xenophon. The target of getting through book 1 of Anabasis has become a key motivation and Lysias certainly is not any easier so I will stick with Xenophon.
seneca2008 wrote:
UCL are running a five day intensive course in Homer from beginners to advanced 27 June 1 July. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/events/s ... oolinhomer
The use a textbook by Frank Beetham. I tried his Learning Greek With Plato and hated it it. He also has a very conventional approach which doesn't seem to me to gain from being taught in a classroom. But thanks for the thought.
seneca2008 wrote:You might be able to ask there about hiring a tutor which would be less expensive than a trip to Rome.
Studying with a tutor might work better a class. It is however a much more serious commitment. With a class it is easy enough to just drop out if it is proving helpful to you.
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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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I don't see how it can be any less hard doing it in a class if a conventional method is used
The advantage of a class is that you can ask for explanations and reading doesn't become an end in itself as you can discuss what the text means. I think also you can get encouragement and see how you are doing compared with your fellow students. Stuck on your own its easy to get despondent about how you are doing.

As you have read both volumes of Athenaze you should be well placed to read Xenophon. Do you use Geoffrey Steadman's edition?

I enjoy reading your weather posts so perhaps you should do more prose composition? North and Hillard?
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

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I have only further to state, with regard to the use of this little primer in the hands of a teacher, that I have no desire that he should bind himself slavishly to the text. The scraps of talk that are given under each lesson are meant to lend him a helping hand in the use of a new organ; and, to enable both teacher and learner to furnish themselves with a living vocabulary of Greek words in direct connection with their daily surroundings, I have added an alphabetical list of the names of the most familiar objects that belong to the field of life in town or country where the learner may happen to be. When the young Hellenist has stamped its Greek designation directly on every object that meets his eyes, and connected it with some single verb that belongs to its significance in familiar life, I would then suggest that the teacher, besides the daily repetition of certain forms of common conversation, should give a vivâ voce description of pictures hung on the wall two or three times a week, which the learner shall be called on to repeat without any written notes; the principle of the method being always to maintain the direct action of the mind on the object, through the instrumentality of the new sound, without the intervention of the mother tongue. As to when, and how far, and in what kind the usual furniture of elementary books of grammar, reading, and exercises should go parallel with colloquial practice, this I leave altogether in the hands of the practised teacher, being well assured that easy reading and accurate writing, so far from being inconsistent with, are the natural blossom and the ripe fruit of the root of living utterance from which I start.

--John Stuart Blackie, Preface to his Greek Primer
It strikes me that a useful exercise would be to go through each one of Blackie's appendices to his primer, pick out familiar nouns, and connect each them with a verb for an impromptu sentence. Develop a dialogue that you have at your command about the topics at hand. Then move on to the next appendix. As you run into new phrases and words in reading, find ways to fit them into the existing dialogues that you have in your head.

For concrete nouns and verbs, this sort of familiarization can't lead you far wrong. ῥόδον τὶ ἐστι ῥόδον τὶ ἐστι ῥόδον τι.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: What is the Grammar-Translation method?

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote:
The advantage of a class is that you can ask for explanations and reading doesn't become an end in itself as you can discuss what the text means. I think also you can get encouragement and see how you are doing compared with your fellow students. Stuck on your own its easy to get despondent about how you are doing.
Motivation isn't my problem. Most of the time I have short term goals that I am happy sticking at them day after day. It's just that when I take stock my lack of progress in the longer term is quite alarming
seneca2008 wrote:As you have read both volumes of Athenaze you should be well placed to read Xenophon. Do you use Geoffrey Steadman's edition?
He is good but for me something that gave even more help would be helpful.
seneca2008 wrote: I enjoy reading your weather posts so perhaps you should do more prose composition? North and Hillard?
I keep meaning to write more but I always end up getting to the end of the day without getting round to it.

If nothing else this thread has been helpful to me in getting me to rethink what I do but I see that you have already read where I explain that in the Agora http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... =2&t=62680
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