Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

yosef tucker katav:
>What I would like is some guidance on what is the most important thing to 
>get across, as well as, any other pedagogical ideas.

Most important: 
The system worked and little kids grew up and absorbed it by MAPPING real
life experiences to it. The mapping is psychologically real, no one goes
through complex analysis when using any language fluently. 

[[Analysis is done from outside a system. It is never finished, always in
flux. Function and use take place inside a language system. That is why it
works and communicates. Which means a little kid might use a suffix tense
to refer to something that happened the day before, would think the signals
sufficiently clear, and wouldn't understand a discussion about whether that
was time or aspect or both. 
Personally, I can't see that Hebrew  structurally distinguished time from
aspect, or aspect from time in its verb. (It's Greek and English that split
them. In fact Greek systematized aspect throughout in ways that are
dizzying from a Hebrew perspective. So Mishnaic Hebrew, after significant
contact with Greek, had to develop the 'heve noten' imperative form "be
giving".) ]]

Second:
I think you might be better off using something like Christo van der
Merwe's new reference grammar, it is more digestible for the student, has a
better grasp on the fluidity of language than WO, and refuses to fully
split hairs that shouldn't be split.  

Pedagogical:
Use of a language is the best way to learn a language. In the future, you
might learn something of TPR, "total physical response". It is very
efficient in language teaching.
By day three or four you can hand a pomegranate to a student and say, "ten
et ha-rimon el ha-baHur ha-ze". After the transaction you can point to the
new person and with balancing handmotions say "hu natan lexa et ha-rimon
vaata laqaHta oto. Then turn to a third student and ask "me `asiti?" or "me
`asa ha-baHur ha-rishon?"  etc. etc. etc. As you see, it doesn't matter
whether it is a tense, an aspect or both or neither. It communicates. And
communication doesn't exclude the possibility of additional ways of
communicating in the same situation. (Of course, you will need hundreds of
situations and correct Biblical Hebrew for them. No one said there is no
homework for the teacher. In Greek you will need to be even more careful so
that you DOS instead of DIDOU above.) 
   Analysis comes later, is good, and in fact TPR can be fit into more than
one analysis in any language, so proponents of different external theories
need not fear. All analysis and metalanguage should be labelled as such. 
Words like "approximately" should liberally preface definitions and
analyses in another language. That keeps a student open to the possibility
that they will run into more and different kinds of examples and words and
collocations. And they end up comfortable with quite abit of biblical
Hebrew and open to learning more. 

Anyway, the above is a facet I see in successful language learning. 

bivraxot
Randall Buth
Jerusalem