From: Edgar M. Krentz (emkrentz@mcs.com)
Date: Wed Jul 31 1996 - 23:21:41 EDT
There was a discussion not long ago of reading Greek as a step in the
process of understanding. It took a bypath into the pronunciation of Greek
one should use. I want to take us back to the original discussion by citing
a prodess that Lee Pearcy cited on the classics list some time ago. It
dealt with the value of reading Greek as opposed to simply translating it.
The abbreviated post follows.
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Date: Thu, 1 Feb 96 19:00:24 EST
From: Lee Pearcy <pearcy@sjuphil.sju.edu>
Bill Owens has asked about strategies for teaching reading, by which I
think he means comprehension. I have had good success with what I call "The
Roger Allen 4-Step," after the professor of Arabic and Comparative
Literature at the University of Pennsylvania who suggested it to me.
1. Read the passage ALOUD, and state the GIST of the passage.
2. Read the passage ALOUD, and find the KEYWORDS.
3. Read the passage ALOUD, and SUMMARIZE the passage.
4. Read the passage ALOUD, sentence by sentence, and TRANSLATE.
Prof. Allen does not, I think, endorse or recommend the fourth step, but he
is concerned with living rather than dead languages.
I find that this method, in which the passage is read and heard four times,
is actually quicker, with an average group of 8th grade students, than the
traditional sentence-by-sentence method.
Sincerely,
Lee T. Pearcy
LTPearcy@ea.pvt.k12.pa.us
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I think this is an excellent procedure to follow from the very beginning of
teaching and learning Greek, not just to involve two senses in the process,
but to help people grasp from the beginning the process of reading the
language in the order native writers and speakers composed in.
Step 1 is highly significant, since it trains one to grasp meaning without
translating--a highly desirable goal! Step 2 teaches reading to locate the
terms that form the skeleton of the sentence and the paragraph. Step 3
encourages intelligent, educated "guessing" about the sense of a passage.
Step 4, where one finally translates, ratifies and corrects what one
concluded in the first three steps.
In graduate seminars, at least, I allow students to read the passage out
loud rather than translate, if they so choose. [That is what Prof. Thomas
Faus Gould did for me in a course in the Greek orators!] If one can read a
sentence with the right fise and fall of the voice, making pauses where the
sense dictates, then one really understands the sentence.
In fact, I would add that as a fifth step to the four above. After doing
step 4, then read the passage aloud in Greek with indications that you
understand it.
I discovered how much that meant when I recorded in Greek the entire book
of 1 Peter for students to listen to with an English translation in front
of them. Some really got to the point of reading it themselves.
Ist ja sinnful, nicht? So beherrscht man endlich diese schoene, alte
Sprache in der die Apostel unseres Herren das Evangelium gekuendigt haben.
[Once again, now and then, a sentence in the "Lutheran holy language."
Understandest thou what thou readest?
Edgar Krentz
Prof. of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
1100 East 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615
TEl.: Office: 312-256-0752; Home: 312-947-8105
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