Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

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Yunus39
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Tue Oct 12, 2021 3:21 am

I'm about 20 hours in and enjoying it. I feel like I am learning a lot actually, picking up vocab, grammar, and increasing my ability to sound out words and read. That said, I only have the patience to "chunk" for about an hour a day. More than that I get bored and lose my focus. I am going to modify my plan. I will chunk one hour per day, but any time additional to that I will spend doing other things. Right now that probably means starting on Dobson's grammar.

Working on NT Greek and Bangla while in a coffee shop in Bangladesh, but there are two guys from Spain having a conversation in Spanish beside me.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby guyome » Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:53 am

Saw this and thought you might enjoy it at some point: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqmTXn ... wPA/videos.

Seumas Macdonald wrote:Today [October 4, 2021] I’m pleased to announce the launch of καθ’ ἡμέραν, a project in which I will provide (in theory 5 a week) verse by verse short videos (4~5 mins) explaining or discussing New Testament (and possibly LXX) verses in Koine Greek. You can find the youtube channel here, our twitter account here, and the first video is here. You can also subscribe to a podcast version of the videos (i.e., audio only), through Anchor.fm or (shortly) any good podcast app.

At this point, I plan to spend a long time working in John first of all, because I think it’s the most accessible NT text from a pedagogical standpoint.

(Source)
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:42 am

I am now 51 hours in. About 37 hours of that was chunking. The remaining hours were more extensive reading, watching grammar/alphabet videos, and working through Dobson's LEARN NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
I really love Dobson's book (though it's not perfect), and it really makes me feel like I'm learning a lot, whereas chunking is more about work beneath the surface and putting things into the bottom of the iceberg if you follow Greg Thompson's analogy. I'm about a quarter of the way through Dobson.
I may be at the point where I can benefit a lot from extensive reading methods, and I might take a break from chunking to try that out. It seems like if I read along with audio I could read the whole NT in 8-10 hrs. I'm so familiar with it in English, it would be interesting to see what the fruit of that would be at this level.
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Tue Feb 15, 2022 10:00 pm

Update on what I actually ended up doing.

NT Greek: First 100 Hours

0-50 Hours
I spent the first 25 or 50 hours learning the alphabet and script, practicing sounding out words and “chunking.” Chunking is taking a single verse and listening to it with the text 50-100 times. I did this by taking the “Daily Dose of Greek” videos and editing out the grammar discussion. This left a video with a single verse that the professor reads aloud, highlighting each word as he says it. Because it’s a single verse I could hold the meaning in my head while I went over the rest of the audio/video.

50-100 Hours
I began to get bored with “chunking” and felt I could get more out of more extensive reading and spending more time with the language in context. I started reading the Epistles of John and then the Gospel of John using the “Listening Reading Method”

Listening Reading Method
Step 0: Read the text in your native language if you are not already familiar with it.
Step 1: Read the text in your target language along with the audiobook.
Step 2: Listen to the audio book while referring to the text in your native language. If possible have both the target language book and native language book side by side (I used an interlinear)
Step 3: Repeat Step 2
Step 4: Repeat Step 2
Step 5: Read the text in the target language while listening to the audiobook again to check your understanding. You can also read aloud with the audio.

Anki
I went through the most frequent vocabulary in the Greek NT covering 80% of the words in the text. I used Anki for this and a pre-made deck that featured audio. I am now working on the remaining 20% and reviewing the vocabulary I know at Anki’s timed intervals. (This took 5-15 minutes per day)

I also read John Dobson’s Learn New Testament Greek. (This took 15-40 minutes per day)

This is the only “beginning grammar,” I’ve found that emphasizes learning functional Greek before learning grammar, and for that I give it five stars. As a language learner whose primary (or first in order) goal is to learn to read the Greek New Testament devotionally and who prefers modern approaches to language learning, I am not enamored with the grammar-translation pedagogy. This grammar was almost exactly what I wanted, keeping the first 35-40 of the 52 lessons focused on functional reading and inductive learning with little grammar instruction.

That said, the book is not perfect. There are numerous translation exercises, all of which have the answers in English right next to the Greek. Because of my preference for avoiding direct translation until much later, I focused on reading these passages and getting the “sense” of them rather than translating them into English. What’s more, I had a strict “thou shalt move on” policy, pushing myself to keep moving even though I hadn’t mastered the material. As a result I can read with some speed and comprehension; however, I know little grammar and struggle to conjugate or produce the language properly.


Moving Forward
I will now be moving on to auditing a more traditional New Testament Greek class and reading a more traditional grammar while continuing Anki. I will pursue the Listening-Reading Method for the rest of the NT and work on a New Testament Reader; however, I do not know how intensely I will be able to pursue this with my other goals and commitments. I do hope to do “something” in Greek everyday.

What I'm currently doing: I purchased the ParseGreek app, which has parsing quizzes keyed to the most popular grammars available. I'm watching lectures on Mounce and following them up with the quizzes on the app keyed to that chapter.
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Yunus39
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Re: Advice on Koine Greek Experiment

Postby Yunus39 » Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:25 am

Another update on how this is going and my progress and some free resources I used:

Next Steps 08/07/22
I worked through Mounce’s BASICS OF BIBLICAL GREEK with these lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtWjBsIVZMZqldIL9BImbPEkkU4PQFpYK

You can borrow the textbook from the digital library here: https://archive.org/details/basicsofbiblical0000moun_h2k8

I worked through a Memrise course keyed to Mounce from start to finish: https://app.memrise.com/course/239361/mounces-greek-verb-paradigms/

I got a shared Anki deck of the vocab for Mounce with audio and worked through it everyday until I had all of the vocab for the book.

I also input several of the paradigms into Anki as flash cards.

After finishing Mounce, I read COMPLETE NEW TESTAMENT GREEK by Gavin Betts. I entered his exercises into Anki, and am working through them as lexical chunks everyday.

I am now trying to finish my work with Mounce by making sure I can fill out this worksheet from memory. Essentially I am treating this worksheet as the final exam. The goal is to be able to pass a Mounce-based placement test for Greek I or II. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HV8mIWj8kZBFk6kvHgeao7-F0NbkPYqI/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106193934034388967890&rtpof=true&sd=true

My plan is to fill out one page of the worksheet everyday, cycling back around until I can do it perfectly from memory.

I also did some translation work, translating all of 1 John, and part of the Gospel of John. This was a lot of fun, but time-consuming, and I am not really advanced enough to do a good job. I replaced that practice with the Betts exercises.

The book REBOOT YOUR GREEK was on a kindle sale, and I picked it up. It has useful exercises and lessons broken up into days, and I will work through that as I am able.

I purchased the PARSEGREEK app, and plan to take one quiz per day. It’s keyed to several different grammars. I will start out with the quizzes keyed to Mounce.

Future Plans
My plan after finishing Mounce is to pick up Rodney Decker’s introductory grammar and work through it for fuller coverage.

I also plan to input all of the sentences from this Free Graded Reader into Anki and work through them as I did Betts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17pL12YHesAJtadEw5lN8Kbp2iLE3oelf/view?usp=sharing

I also hope to put the principle parts for the following verbs into Anki: https://www.motorera.com/greek/lessons/appendix1.html

After finishing this work, I will move on to intermediate Greek.
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Bangla Pages: 8382
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