It worries me that the delay in introducing verbs also really restricts the
examples that the workbook can use for exercises. Having three-word
phrases to translate seems to negate all the good of using "real Greek"
from the NT at an early stage, since the phrases are so short that the
student doesn't get the most important benefit of reading real Greek:
seeing the natural meaning of words in context.
It doesn't surprise me to hear that students who don't begin the verb until
late never learn the verbs as well as they should.
I wonder whether another solution would be to supplement Mounce's exercises
significantly with exercises that *do* accustom the student to handling
simple verbs. Athenaze (for classical Greek) is a good example of how
verbs can often be introduced, using glosses, before the student has
actually studied their morphology. Then, when they have to memorize the
paradigms, the forms seem more familiar and the meaning more intuitively
obvious.
Will be dealing with this myself in the fall,
Sara
Sara R. Johnson
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Religion and Classics
University of Rochester
srjo@uhura.cc.rochester.edu