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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Karl's lexicon
  • Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:38:13 -0400

James,

I pity your students. You teach them Hebrew as though it was an Indo- European language of meaningless patterns. Will they ever get to see its inner logic and beauty?

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Aug 28, 2007, at 12:29 PM, JAMES CHRISTIAN READ wrote:

thrrf - he went
ghtrf - he came
sdfrf - he gave
wsdrf - he took

By process of generalisation can you figure out which
affix indicates the 3rd masculine singular in the
verbs above?

KWR: But if he doesn't know that he is to look for a 3rd masc. s. suffix,
will he notice it?

JCR: Good question. I should have given an example like
the following:

thrsf - she went
ghtsf - she came
sdfsf - she gave
wsdsf - she took

What generalisation can you make about the above
translated examples? We are given no questions about
grammar as we grow and acquire language but we figure
it out on our own by process of making generalisations.

This process of over-generalisation causes us to make
errors of the type 'Yesterday I goed...' but we get
there in the end.

I'm not saying don't teach grammar at all. One method
of teaching grammar used by works such as Athenazde,
for teaching classical Greek, is to provide a text with
several of the new forms included e.g. 3rd person
verbs, and then after reading the text (this gives the
student the chance to work it our for themselves) the
grammar is presented (just in case they didn't figure
it out or as a confirmation that their conclusions
were correct).

My Hebrew classes largely consisted of verb
conjugations that are not even attested in the Tanakh
just for the sake of learning complete conjugations.
Exams consisted of producing conjugations of verbs or
recognising the syntactical form of an already
conjugated verb or transforming a noun into its plural
and vice versa.
The fast majority of verbs in the Tanakh are 3rd
person, a natural consequence of any narrative. Perhaps
the course would have given me a better preparation for
reading Hebrew if it had concentrated on accumulating
a vocabulary of verbal forms that actually are attested and frequently occur. As it stands, all the course
prepared me for was to pass a Hebrew grammar exam.

I guess what I'm saying is that teaching can be
function oriented rather than grammar oriented. A
student can be taught that word X means 'he went'. They
don't really need to know the grammar behind it, unless
of course they really want to, in order to understand
it.

Generally people learn what they are stimulated to
learn. It's like the difference between placing a cup
of water on a table in the reach of a person and
throwing a bucket of water over their head without
their request. They will drink more water when they are thirsty and decide to pick up the cup of water than in
the scenario of having the water thrown over their
head. Likewise, a student is more likely to gain a
permanent understanding of grammar in the moment they
demand it. After seeing , reading and understanding a
few 3rd person verbs in context and in that moment
where they are trying to figure out what is going on,
that is the moment when they are most likely to learn.

In TEFL courses we refer to this kind of learning as
the discovery approach. An example exercise would be
to present an object and name it. Present a few of the
same object and name them. Repeat this for a few
different objects so that they get to hear the
similarities between a few examples and then ask them
questions which lead them to the answer of how to
recognise a plural.

Of course, different learners learn in different ways
and an ideal course would give learners multiple
learning routes to follow so that the learner can take
charge of their own learning and follow the direction
that works best for themselves.

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James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew - thesis1: concept driven machine translation using the Aleppo codex
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc - thesis2: language acquisition simulation
http://www.lamie.org/ngelta

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n learning and follow the direction
that works best for themselves.

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