First-look at a text
Posted: March 27th, 2012, 7:50 pm
I am now midway through my second semester of Greek and am still having trouble in finding a method to begin reading a text. I guess I will just tell you how I currently begin a text and if there is any advice out there for a better methodology I have open ears .
For example this past week our text was Mark 1:1-11. (FYI - For each week we have to translate all the verses and diagram 3-4 of them.) Before I look at the text I grab my "Reader's Lexicon of the Greek NT" by Burer and Miller and make notecards of all the words that I have not learned yet and then I learn them. I do this because then it does not get me hung up on vocabulary. I then print off the Greek text and translate underneath. For forms that I struggled with or could not figure out I first look the word in Mounce's morphology book and see if I can deduce what form it is by the change in the morphology. Finally, I go through and try to name all the syntax for the verses.
I feel like when I get done I have disassembled the text so much that I do not actually know what it is saying but could tell you how each word is functioning and connected to other words and phrases and so forth. I then try to read it as a whole to make more sense out of it. For the Mark passage this process took about 4 hours. It seems to me this is an extremely long time because if I just sit down to read it I can read it in my head in about 30 minutes.
Is it better to sit down and analyze the text in depth for the 4 hours or read it over and over to get the flow of it. If I just read it over and over I feel that I am missing the syntax (especially naming all the categories). I guess my other question would be (which may need a different thread) is what is the best way to learn syntax? I have been reading through Wallace's grammar throughout the semester but I am not sure if that is really helping all that much.
For example this past week our text was Mark 1:1-11. (FYI - For each week we have to translate all the verses and diagram 3-4 of them.) Before I look at the text I grab my "Reader's Lexicon of the Greek NT" by Burer and Miller and make notecards of all the words that I have not learned yet and then I learn them. I do this because then it does not get me hung up on vocabulary. I then print off the Greek text and translate underneath. For forms that I struggled with or could not figure out I first look the word in Mounce's morphology book and see if I can deduce what form it is by the change in the morphology. Finally, I go through and try to name all the syntax for the verses.
I feel like when I get done I have disassembled the text so much that I do not actually know what it is saying but could tell you how each word is functioning and connected to other words and phrases and so forth. I then try to read it as a whole to make more sense out of it. For the Mark passage this process took about 4 hours. It seems to me this is an extremely long time because if I just sit down to read it I can read it in my head in about 30 minutes.
Is it better to sit down and analyze the text in depth for the 4 hours or read it over and over to get the flow of it. If I just read it over and over I feel that I am missing the syntax (especially naming all the categories). I guess my other question would be (which may need a different thread) is what is the best way to learn syntax? I have been reading through Wallace's grammar throughout the semester but I am not sure if that is really helping all that much.