Reflections on Teaching Greek as a Living Language 2: The Prequel

I have been dreaming about a more effective way to teach the biblical languages since the late 1990’s when I watched classmates complete their seminary language requirements without acquiring a lasting ability to read the Bible in Greek or Hebrew. I already knew by experience how valuable it is to be able to read the New Testament in Greek, but I could see that the traditional approach to teaching the biblical languages was not serving the majority of students well.

Around this time I first encountered Randall Buth making what was then an unusual proposal: Why not draw on best practices in second language acquisition and teach the biblical languages by immersion, as modern languages are taught? I had grown up in Africa in a multilingual environment and had observed my missionary parents teaching English to speakers of other languages, so on one level the idea made a lot of sense. But I had my doubts about applying living methods to so-called “dead” languages. A few years later I was in Jerusalem studying modern Hebrew by immersion when I noticed a dramatic improvement in my ability to read biblical Hebrew. From that point, I was sold on the concept. An immersive method clearly produces deeper, longer-lasting results. The problem was I did not know Greek well enough to apply it.

In the summer of 2012, with several years of traditional grammar-translation Greek teaching under my belt, I participated in a Biblical Language Center Greek Fluency Workshop designed both to help Greek instructors develop proficiency in spoken Koine Greek and to demonstrate how to teach ancient Greek as a living language. During the workshop, I posted a sort of personal manifesto on my blog:

I am … persuaded that the languages are worth learning well, that Bible software “power tools” are no substitute, and that—in theory—it should be reasonable for pastors to acquire a reading knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and maintain the languages while they are in ministry. I am also committed to doing whatever I can to create a better long-term success rate for my students. This means helping students learn deeper with greater retention, and helping them see the payoff and have fun in the process so that they are motivated to continue learning once required classes are done. I am convinced the church needs pastors in general—not just a select few pastor scholars—who read the Bible in its original languages. Perhaps one of the most important ways I can serve the church is to teach the biblical languages effectively, working to turn theory into reality.

That fall, in a first attempt to switch to an immersive approach, I went half-way, trying to merge traditional and living-language methods in my Introductory Greek course. I was pleased with the results of this preliminary experiment, but class scheduling demands, a sabbatical, and a trip to England, meant that a second chance to teach introductory Greek never materialized. I did sometimes wonder why—if teaching the languages was so important to me—I wasn’t doing more to develop my own competence in Greek and Hebrew. But in the years that followed I turned my attention to the conventional things an academic is supposed to do, and I began to fear that the effort I had put into developing any sort of active facility in the language would be wasted.

Meanwhile, back in the Greek-language classroom, my colleague, Wes Olmstead, made the switch to a living language approach to teaching ancient Greek. When Wes proposed the idea for an “Intensive Semester” of immersive Greek, I jumped at the opportunity to be involved—both to support the experience in any way I could and to learn Greek more deeply in the process.

I wrote up some initial reflections on the fall semester at the beginning of January, which you can read here. Then came the winter semester and the challenge of attempting to teach through the Greek text of 1 Corinthians in Greek. (Εἰ θέλεις μανθάνειν τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν γλῶσσαν, δίδαξον αὐτήν!) Now that the dust has settled, I hope to return to a sequel that gives a little more detail on what we did last fall, our influences and the resources we used. Stay tuned.

This is the second post in a 3-part series. Click on these links for Part 1 and Part 3.