Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday James,

I was very interested in your thoughts about PBL. I learnt Latin (5 yrs),
Greek (2 yrs), and then Hebrew (4yrs) using mostly deductive methods
(Machen, Seow, Waltke, etc). Last September I began German at the Goethe
Institute. But after only 28 lessons in 8 months I feel more competent with
German than these three classical languages. They say that within another 44
lessons (about 12 months) we will have year 12 equivalent German (ZDF). And
this is with little homework (about 15 minutes/day, not always done mind
you) and only 3 hours/week of classtime.

I have wondered often about this. The differences in how we are taught
compared to how I learnt Hebrew etc are enourmous, and even though German is
a living language, there are still many techniques that I think could be
easily implemented into a Hebrew course. I have no linguistic training, but
your description of PBL is certainly one of the many methods we follow. In
fact, our teacher is fond of saying that language acquisition is 50%
guessing, which is why we are not allowed to learn the vocab for any
exercise until after we have attempted it. This is the opposite in Seow etc,
where the vocab is given before the exercise.

Just out of interest, these are some ideas I have gleaned from the
'Goethe'-method that I have translated (theoretically!) into teaching BH:
a) textbooks would use pictures on every page, relevent to the material
b) each lesson would be based around a theme, not a point of grammar. Some
examples could be family, farming, conversation, temple, war, YHWH,
geography of Israel, etc. Everything (approximately) revolves not just this
theme, but communicating meaningfully about this theme.
c) have no vocab lists at all in the text. In a separate book, have the
vocab for that chapter (with heaps of repeats from other chapters) explained
initially in English or pictures, but as soon as possible explain new vocab
using BH with the student having to guess the meaning (eg after 20 weeks,
the new word "shemen" would be explained as "yitten shemen `al-ro'sh-melek
lemeshiach 'oto". If this word occurs in a story from this definition and
the context of the story the student should work it out. Another example,
"chazah" means simply "ra'ah" or "ra'ah laken lenavi' ") Almost all modern
language courses place the vocab in a separate book. Students are forbidden
to memorise vocab for the week ahead, as learning by guessing increases
vocab-retention dramatically.
d) explain the syntax with colourful diagrams, tables, and examples, not
just point form
e) have as much speaking out loud as possible, even if your pronunciation is
poor (like mine!) since it activates the brain in helpful ways
f) make class time as pleasurable and fun as possible since memorisation is
improved when one feels "happy" (this has been proven scientifically). I
look forward to class every week, and students notice if anyone doesn't turn
up! There is never more than 1.5 hours without a break.
g) always have the students talk, read, and write in all three persons to
the teacher, other students, themselves etc, as much as possible, since this
gives the students a good feel fow the marked/unmarkededness of the verb
forms, and a good grasp of the verb.
h) have benchmarks/parties/rewards/certificates/whatever, just something
every 6-8 weeks. Students love to think they have reached a milestone.
i) have cassettes (like Mansoor) which the students can use every day. Or a
CD rom. These make a great difference.
j) every week is about %40 review, %40 activities which require knowledge of
the new syntax and vocab which will be introduced at the end of the lesson.
In other words, students are always exposed to syntax and vocab they do not
know and which is not explained, and then after bashing their way through,
there is a short lecture almost at the end (never the end, since that is
always a fun activity) for about 10-20 minutes on the syntax. This is back
to front to most Hebrew texts (LaSor's grammar is the closest I have seen in
BH).
k) (this is very important and should be near the top of the list!) It is
essential to teach as many question words as possible in the first 3 weeks
(like where? who? what? etc). This is because most activities involve the
forming and answering of questions by the students. For instance in week one
teach: miy attah or miy att "Who are you?" and each student answers: 'ani
Matthew, etc. Then they have to introduce them to the class. hu' Matthew;
hi' Helen etc. By using questions and answers the students are forced to
move constantly between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person; to adjust for male/female
forms; and to use the language to communicate meaningfully. In later
lessons, adfter reading a new unknown text (with pictures!), the next
activity usually involves answering questions about the text. The other
thing is that students must be taught how to make sentences from week 1,
like the above examples. Probably the order of increasing complxity would be
roughly: yes/no; simple complements; simple questions; imperatives;
adjectives; simple verbal sentences using participles. At this stage I think
it is better to move toward sentential complexity before morphological,
since this allows students to communicate more without learning a lot more.
I was so struck in German that we learnt the past tense last Thursday, after
43 lessons! It is much better to explore the full potential of the grammar
available before moving onto new forms. So I think for the next type of
sentence the student should be taught how to use prepositions, conjunctions,
infinitives and adverbs to form more complex sentences, rather than diving
into yiqtol/qatal, etc. So after learning "and, or, if, because, perhaps,
unless, when, while, after, before, etc" the student has the power to
communicate a huge amount just using participles, personal pronouns, etc
without any other verb forms. At this stage when introduced to qatal,
wayyiqtol etc the student can slot them straight into discourse once the
word order is understood and away we go. They would have already encountered
these in texts where they were not explained, so they will not be totally
unfamiliar.
l) rules of syntax are mostly worked out by the students. For example, hand
out these cards, and get the students work out the pattern: singular masc.
nouns with no ending with a picture (pciture of horse/sus); same noun in
plural (picture of 3 horses/susim). sing. feminine nouns (picture of young
girl/na`arah); same with plural (3 young girls/na`arot). Have a large number
of these, and students have to work out the masculine and feminine endings.
It won't take them long, but very few will forget these endings. Another
example is for qatal: Teacher picks a stative verb such as "I am old". The
teacher begins, zaqanti. He then points to a male student and says zaqantah.
Then to a female student and says zaqant. He then gets another student to do
what he did, making sure he gets the right form. Once everyone can do this,
he addresses a student, "Matthew, <points to self> zaqanti, <points to
Matthew> zaqantah, <looking at Matthew points to Bill>, zaqen, <points to
Mary>, zaqenah." etc. Students eventualy work out how to do singular, both
genders. Then repeat the exercise pointing to groups of students using
plural forms. Then demonstrate how the male forms can be used for females
but not vice versa (teaching markedness). Then use another verb like "I am
happy" and students have to choose between "I am old" "I am happy" and
everyone laughs and so the brain remembers it even better. By the end of one
class, every student can talk using all the morph forms of a normal qatal
qal verb. After this exercise, the students fill in the table of the verb
which is blank in the textbook, but can be found completed if they are
desparate at the back of the vocab book. etx etc

These are the main points I can think of. In terms of exercises and in-class
exercises there are hundreds of ideas to be gleaned from modern methods.
Your one with Jonah 1.1-4 is exactly the sort of thing we do in class. In a
three-hour class (they are never called lectures since this creates negative
expectations for the students) there is at most 30 minutes presentation by
the teacher, and only about 15 minutes at one time, usually 3x10 minutes
spread around. The rest is activity. We work in everything from alone,
pairs, threes, to the whole class of 12. We have quizzes, games, interviews,
problem-solving, drama, videos, etc. Homework also involves all sorts of
activites, but the most important is always an original written work by the
student to be handed in. It canbe on anything, and it is never translation.
The student must simply communicate something. At first just two sentences
will be used. Research shows (we were told) that this sort of exercise gives
the highest learning retention of any form of learning. Reading a text and
translating it is about half as effective.

The only course I know of that seeks to teach BH along these lines is
Randall Buth's in Jerusalem. He posted something about in the last few days.
I have seen the first edition of his course, which begins with dozens of
lovely pictures of big and little men and women with the students saying
"gadol ish" "gedolah ishshah" etc in the first class. (Correct me Randy if
my memory is failing!). It was talking with him at SBL that helped me in
part formulate the thoughts in this post. I had only done about 10 weeks of
German then so I have had more ideas since then.

Others on the list may have other ideas, or comments about what I have
written. I have only taught Hebrew to two people and I realise that to
implement all of the above would take a lot of work, but if Hebrew retention
for students could be increased---the point is surely retention not
"competence-at-university", since it is in the many years after the learning
that BH is gained or lost. We all know that many lose it---then I think the
MT will be better and more often appropriated in the life of faith
communities it is nourishing.

With regards,
Matthew Anstey