Re: coding texts / morphology vs. syntax
Don Wilkins (dwilkins@ucrac1.ucr.edu)
Thu, 23 Jan 1997 19:13:59 -0500 (EST)
At 7:11 PM 1/22/97, Mark B. O'Brien wrote:
. . .
>Some of this discussion raises in my mind a question which I have been
>pondering a little for the last few after a conversation with a very
>experienced Greek professor. He commented that he saw a recent trend,
>especially with some of Mounce's materials, towards a focus on
>introducing beginning students to more morphology than syntax, whereas he
>thought that more emphasis on syntactical competence might be more
>beneficial for the beginner. I'm curious to see if any of you other
>experienced teachers out there have some comments on this.
My own approach at present is an approximately equal emphasis on morphology
and syntax, since the students really can't do much of the latter without
the former. Moreover, I think it is important to link the two as much as
possible (i.e. parsing leads directly to syntax). To spend more time on
these areas, I back off on vocabulary memorization, for which I concentrate
on showing them how to find suggested meanings in Perseus and hard-copy
lexicons.
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside