John 1:1-9

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Jonathan Robie
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Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:3. Gender: prepositions, articles, and nouns (need a volunteer to prepare this):

αὐτός: ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπος
αὐτή: ἡ ἀρχή, ἡ ζωή, ἡ σκοτία
αὐτό: τὸ φῶς
This is probably one of the three most important skills that need to be developed. To be able to point at anything and say the correct gender, would help every learner's fluency greatly.
When using the language, we rarely point to something and say the correct gender in a modern language like German or French, we are more likely to match it with a pronoun. I have met plenty of people who can point to a noun and say the correct gender, but have difficulty finding the antecedent for a pronoun. So I like to use pronouns as a proxy for a bunch of metalanguage. αὐτός matches ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπο, but not ἡ ἀρχή, ἡ ζωή, ἡ σκοτία or τὸ φῶς. αὐτή matches ἡ ἀρχή, ἡ ζωή, ἡ σκοτία but not ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπος or τὸ φῶς.
Stephen Hughes wrote:None of the examples that you have listed except ἄνθρωπος are particularly photogenic. So, it is probably a skill that could be learnt in the context of the wider language, and then the skill brought back to the text.
A lot of the most common words in the Greek New Testament are not particularly photogenic. But are pictures important for this skill? I suspect not. If students are reading, writing, speaking, and listening from the beginning, we can use written words for this and don't need pictures.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:3. Genαὐτόςer: prepositions, articles, and nouns (need a volunteer to prepare this):

αὐτός: ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπος
αὐτή: ἡ ἀρχή, ἡ ζωή, ἡ σκοτία
αὐτό: τὸ φῶς
This is probably one of the three most important skills that need to be developed. To be able to point at anything and say the correct gender, would help every learner's fluency greatly.
When using the language, we rarely point to something and say the correct gender in a modern language like German or French, we are more likely to match it with a pronoun. I have met plenty of people who can point to a noun and say the correct gender, but have difficulty finding the antecedent for a pronoun. So I like to use pronouns as a proxy for a bunch of metalanguage. αὐτός matches ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπος, but not ἡ ἀρχή, ἡ ζωή, ἡ σκοτία or τὸ φῶς. αὐτή matches ἡ ἀρχή, ἡ ζωή, ἡ σκοτία but not ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπος or τὸ φῶς.
Okay

I see. Let me misunderstand you in a similar way....

I'm not suggesting that we should use French or German when we teach Greek. :o

Seriously though, we are not in disagreement. "Say the correct gender" meant "Say αὐτός as a reflex when you think of a word like ὁ λόγος, ὁ θεός, ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Say αὐτή ... etc."

I'm suggesting that saying the pronoun in the correct gender as a substitute to saying the correct grammar (ὁ ...-ος) of the word would be a good skill to have.

The other stepping stone to fluency here might be the addition of the copula, "ἐστιν ὁ λόγος".
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Taxonomic hierarchies expressed by inclusion or non inclusion of the article.
I don't think the Greek article expresses taxonomic hierarchies. I'd suggest starting another thread for this topic if you do and want to discuss it.
These ideas are for your teaching, you will probably only really be comfortable teaching your own interpretation of the language and of the text you teach.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Emma Ehrhardt
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Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Emma Ehrhardt »

I created some worksheets to help with objectives #3 (Gender) and #4 (Prepositions & Case). I'm not necessarily advocating students need to complete ALL of them, since a few are just variations on a theme.

Types of worksheets here:
  1. Identify the gender (or case) of each specified nominal. Some worksheets include or omit the article, and some use the text form while others use the dictionary form of the words.
  2. Match each preposition with its object (all instances are drawn directly from the text).
  3. Fill in words or phrases missing from the original text (with a word bank).
All these worksheets require students to write the word/phrase to complete the exercise, rather than drawing lines between matches, for example. This will help with our multi-modal approach to language exposure. They're getting writing experience (and some reading), and can add some rudimentary speaking/pronouncing if they want to as they complete the worksheets.

I think early on, it's good to keep homework/worksheets to a level that feels extremely simple, to help give students confidence. If they haven't seen enough data to adequately generalize on their own (i.e. if they've only seen words/forms/constructions a few times or even just once), then I think it makes sense to primarily constrain exercises to those which reuse the exact pieces of the text, not request novel constructions or forms.

The "complete the original text" worksheets are probably fine as stand-alone worksheets, but the gender/case ones would work better as a supplement to someone else's teaching material.
Attachments
bGreek-John-1_1-9_Worksheets.pdf
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Emma Ehrhardt
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Very nice, Emma! I think I also need to add a little material to "connect the dots" between the instruction and the worksheets. This is beginning to look like one lesson introducing the passage followed by several lessons catching up with grammar.

Could you also do worksheets on asking / answering the questions I asked for this passage?

These exercises could be computerized, which has advantages and disadvantages. I do think writing it out is good for learning.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Emma Ehrhardt
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Joined: December 23rd, 2014, 10:28 am
Location: IN
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Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Emma Ehrhardt »

Do you mean something like these? (Worksheets with just the questions for students to answer)

I think that since the questions are so directly derived from the text, it makes sense to provide the original text and just ask for answers. A later review of more text might reuse these same questions, and provide a word-bank of answers to match to the correct question. But for now, the text itself is a sufficient word-bank, I think.

* The originals were made in LibreOffice, I'm happy to share if anyone else wants. I would post them here, but .odt extension is not permitted.
Attachments
bGreek_John-1_1-9_ContentQuestions.pdf
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Emma Ehrhardt
Computational Linguist
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
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Re: John 1:1-9

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Emma Ehrhardt wrote:Do you mean something like these? (Worksheets with just the questions for students to answer)
Not quite, though that could be useful too. That's pretty similar to what I have in the OP, and my students just scrawl answers next to the questions.

I was thinking of exercises to teach what each of these forms of the question mean, and to practice asking and answering questions. I think I know what I have in mind, let me give it a shot.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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