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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ancient Language Acquisition
  • Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 18:39:02 -0500

Ken Penner wrote:
Is anyone willing to share comments on Paul Overland's article, "Can
Communicative Methods Enhance Ancient Language Acquisition," _Teaching
Theology and Religion_ 7:51-57 (supplemented by
www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/journal/overland.html) or "Benefits and
Strategies of Communicative Language
Learning" at
http://personal.ashland.edu/~poverlan/holes/comm-lang-lrng-ovrview.pdf?

After reading only the latter piece from the Web, I think I have a general idea of what he's getting at. (Let me know if there's something in the TT&R article that significantly alters the picture.) I've only ever taught using more traditional methods, and right now I'm not in the class room at all. I do have a certain attraction to this sort of thing, though. I've tried out some of Buth's materials on myself (not on others), and I can see some of the benefit. One significant problem with all of these methods, though, is that they require reconstruction of the language students are going to be monkeying with. Unlike with modern languages, where a native speaker or someone with near native speaker competence can evaluate the accuracy of students' independently constructed utterances, with ancient languages the check falls to the teacher's intuitive grasp of the language. Granted, some teachers will be better at this than others; but even the best of teachers will not have an absolute answer. (Or if so, the answer will by no means be agreed among other scholars.) You yourself should know better than most how much controversy surrounds the Hebrew verbal system, for instance, which can introduce some difficult questions into any effort to teach students how to construct their own sentences. Of course, the closer parallels we can find in the ancient evidence, the more confidence we can exercise, but even then there are questions of whether samples from the biblical corpus represent one or several dialects. It would seem counterproductive for students to internalize a conglomerate that is not really any one dialect.

Perhaps the benefits are worth the risks. I'm not sure they're not. I only point out what I consider to be the weightiest objection.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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