From: Eric Weiss (eweiss@acf.dhhs.gov)
Date: Fri Sep 15 1995 - 04:13:55 EDT
A few months ago, someone (Carl Conrad?) recommended to me Robert Funk's now
out-of-print Beginning-Intermediate Grammar as a good one for 1st year Greek
(I am attempting to teach 1st year Greek to a few church members using
Mounce's book, the one I used when I took 1st year Greek last year, while I
take 2nd year Greek, and I've found it helpful to read other grammars on
various points).
I found a set (it's 3 volumes, spiral-bound) in a used bookstore, and it
appears that 22 years ago when Funk wrote it he was taking his approach
because he found that those who learned the grammar, i.e., paradigms, etc.,
often couldn't read Greek very well after 1 year, while those who learned
using a more linguistic approach, which his Grammar I guess is supposed to
do, without knowing all the rules of grammar could actually do quite well in
reading the Greek New Testament, even if they did poorly when tested on
grammatical knowledge. With all this, I have a couple questions some of you
might be able to help me answer:
1) Funk mentions an Exercise book based on his selected texts that goes with
this Grammar. Is that a 4th volume that I need to try to locate if I want to
use his Grammar or parts of it? If so, does anyone know where I can get a
copy? Since Funk says the teacher may after a while want to make up his own
exercises, can someone give me an idea what this Exercise volume (if that's
what it is) consists of?
2) To those of you who teach Greek, what is your opinion of Funk's book(s)?
20 years after he wrote it, grammars (like Mounce) still seem to be taking a
grammatical approach for 1st year Greek. Is Funk's grammar good to use for
or good to incorporate into a 1st year Greek course? The fact that it's out
of print makes me think that his idea didn't catch on. Why is that?
3) What is your opinion of LaSor's 2-volume inductive grammar based on the
text of Acts? Besides the typeface being very hard to get used to, I found
it confusing to read. But someone on this board, I believe, recently said
that though LaSor was not good as a reference grammar, he was able to learn
verb morphology in just one week using it. That impressed me.
Thanks!
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