Daniel Streett wrote:Much of the discussion is problematic because of the following reasons:
1) Greek profs do not define what it means to 'learn' a vocab word. In most Greek classes it mean quite simply the ability to produce a one-word gloss for the word on a final exam. I hope we all realize that's not really a useful skill. SLA theorists mean much, much more when they speak about acquiring vocab. It entails ability to immediately recognize, to use fluently and correctly, to distinguish between it and closely related words, etc.
I suspect most of that comes with reading practice and understanding of grammar and picking up on the thought flow, wouldn't it?
2) Not all words are created equal when it comes to vocab acquisition. Acquiring a thing-word (βιβλιον) is fairly simple and a quick process. Acquiring δε is much more involved, as it entails learning when it is and is not appropriate to use it, word placement, etc.
When you look up a word in an English dictionary, there is usually an example or two that gives you the word in context so you can see how t's used. I often wish when I was learning Greek vocab in college that instead of getting a list in our textbook and then making flashcards for them that we would have some examples of the words in context, and exercises or some type of practice that allow you to learn how the word is used.
3) From my experience, some vocab can be learned in 'chunks' -- we learn collocations of words, opposites, semantic domains. Learning these words in groups has a synergistic effect. It's also much faster. Thus, my students can learn colors, numbers, foods much more quickly than they can more abstract words.
The practicality of this needs to be considered as well. For example, how often are colours, numbers, and foods mentioned in the Greek NT? Compared to abstract words such as "grace," "love," "peace," "truth," etc. they are very low. It might work for some words that are used more frequently, such as the words for family members: πατηρ, μητηρ, ὑιος, etc. So things like frequency of occurence in the NT need to be taken into consideration too.
So, before we can even have a fruitful discussion about vocab acquisition and comparing grammars, we need to be straightforward about what we mean by 'learning' a word. That's something I don't think many grammars have made explicit (though the one-word-English-gloss expectation is implicit in their approach and their exercises).
I often wonder if a more "holistic" approach is best. Meaning don't ditch the flashcards with the one word glosses, but include with pictures of objects (for nouns) or actions (verbs), examples of vocab words used in context, homework that involves creating a sentence using new vocab words . . . . . essentially just like how you learned English in your early elementary school years, where you had a variety of ways to learn words.