B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

Hi!

My name is Matt Bradley. I teach Greek at the undergraduate level at a small liberal arts college in Franklin, TN (New College Franklin). I received my ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary where I studied Greek under Dr. Wallace and other excellent scholars. I've been teaching Greek in my current role for about three years. I'm glad to find this forum where I can get some occasional help and perhaps be of some help at times.

Thanks!

Matt

Welcome, Matt, good to have you aboard, and we look forward to your questions and contributions.

Great to have you here! Don't be shy about asking questions.

Thanks guys! Glad to have found the resource.

Matt

Hi, Matt. Welcome to B-Greek. Just so that we don't lose your name in the future, could you throw "Matt Bradley" into the signature of your profile? It's just an issue of conformity to the community policy.

Looking forward to your participation on the forum.

Which curriculum do you use with your students? At what levels do you teach? Got any online stuff to share?!

Welcome aboard!

Done. Thanks.

I'm teaching undergraduate Greek. Our students take four semesters. I primarily rely on Mounce. There are several things about Mounce that I don't appreciate, but Zondervan has provided so many tools to support it that I stay with it. It's also the text that I used as a student, and so the one with which I'm most familiar. I'm half-way through my first time teaching the second year. I'm learning a ton about the pedagogy of teaching Greek and trying to stay flexible at this point to implement the lessons I'm learning.

Thanks again for the welcome!

Mr. Bradley wrote: ↑November 21st, 2019, 6:52 pm I'm learning a ton about the pedagogy of teaching Greek

I'm always learning, too. Tell us what your latest insights have been.

χαῖρε, Matt! I have been off B-Greek for a while. Just got back on and saw your greeting. Hope you are doing great. Still teaching?

Mr. Bradley wrote: ↑November 19th, 2019, 10:28 pm Hi!

My name is Matt Bradley. I teach Greek at the undergraduate level at a small liberal arts college in Franklin, TN (New College Franklin). I received my ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary where I studied Greek under Dr. Wallace and other excellent scholars. I've been teaching Greek in my current role for about three years. I'm glad to find this forum where I can get some occasional help and perhaps be of some help at times.

Thanks!

Matt

Hi, Matt
One of the impediments to learning a language as an adult is the fear of "saying it wrong" - mispronunciation and/or using the wrong words. Students are generally unwilling to open their mouths and speak it. I try to get over that by starting each (face2face class) with reading and speaking aloud - using the Lord's prayer. I build it up slowly, starting with day 1, even before writing out the alphabet, I start with a little spiel on the lines of "Well, this class is supposed to be about learning Greek - "Oo it's going to be so difficult - it has all these funny letters - I don't know if we can do it - I think we'd better just quit now and find another class - it's so difficult - I don't think we can do it. Well, anyhow, let's give it a try". Then I write πατερ in large letters on the board, sounding out the letters as I write. I say it again, then point to the class to get them to say it (usually a fairly hesitant response), tell them I can't hear, and tell them to speak up. Then I write "father" under the πατερ, and talk a bit about each of the letters - one they know from maths, 3 are much the same as English, one is related. "Oo, it's so difficult. I don't think we're going to make it. I think we'd better quit. All these funny letters. Well, maybe let's give it another try." So we go through saying πατερ a couple of times, then I tell them it's what we say if we want to say "Hey, Dad, HELP!", so we'd better holler it. I shout it a few times and encourage them to shout along with me - loud enough for students in the hallway to hear. Loud enough for the class in the next room to hear - until they are having fun shouting πατερ. After that I get on with the substance of the class - an intro to the alphabet and its history. The next session I add the ἡμῶν, have them say πατερ ἡμῶν aloud a couple of times, then I talk about the ἡμῶν as meaning "of us" or "our" but without mentioning cases just yet. We start each day of the rest of the first week with just "πατερ ἡμῶν". The next week I add the "ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς" and we start each class period saying the whole thing right through several times. By adding a phrase each week, by about mid-terms we have the whole prayer, and the students are happy about speaking aloud and most of them have it by memory, which is a good way of starting to internalize the language.
Rather a long response, but my own intro to Greek was much more formal and scared the whole lot of us ("here is the alphabet, learn it, there'll be a test tomorrow") and we hardly ever read actual Scripture texts aloud in class.