Are you an instructor struggling with pedagogy?
"How do I get my students to learn Biblical languages effectively?"
"How do I make this fun?"
"How can they preserve and develop their language skills?"
"How can they become habitual readers of Hebrew and Greek?"
When it comes to Koine Greek I belong to this second category, although I am now on a research leave and temporarily not much in the classroom.
Today I would like to promote the Biblical Language Center (BLC), founded and directed by no other than our co-blogger Randall Buth. I think the BLC holds the answer to the questions I just posed.
The whole idea behing the learning philosophy of BLC can be summarized as "language immersion." This is evidently the most effective way of learning a new language - it is the same way you learnt your mother tongue as a child. The idea is to not take a detour via another language, but to get as immersed as possible in the language you are learning:
We have found that a successful language learner already starts to think in and to understand a language before literacy. An effective audio and oral internalization of a language is necessary to enhance reading comprehension and speed, and to boost long-term retention. One cannot fluently read the Bible in its original languages, without those very languages living inside of them.
BLC's goal is for students to fluidly read the Bible with a natural and instant comprehension. Therefore, BLC immersion courses use living language methods in teaching Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek. This means that more than 90% of classroom time is filled with the spoken biblical language. The result is an internalization of the languages which speeds the pace of learning and improves the reading of the biblical text.
In order to achieve this immersion, varying techniques are used in the classroom. For example:
Total Physical Response (TPR) means that the students respond to commands that require physical movement. I remember doing a lot of this when I learnt English in primary school ("- Class, point to the blackboard with your right hand," etc). I think it is interesting that I actually remember this (I remember very little else from the textbooks).
Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) is another method used which builds language proficiency through reading and telling stories.
BLC has offered courses in Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek since 1996. They are held at Kibbutz Tzuba, 20 minutes from Jerusalem. If you are unable to attend a course you can still use the materials by yourself; they are self-explanatory, starting with a lot of pictures, and everything with MP3 recordings.
One of my Greek students studied the Living Koine Greek Introduction pt. 1 parallel with our seminary textbook and made significant progress in the course and has continued to develop his skills - he is way ahead of his fellow students. (I cannot deny that I am very glad for his interest also in Greek manuscripts. He has just completed his first thesis on a Greek manuscript, which we got registered as Greg.-Aland 2894.)