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  • From: James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
  • To: Barry <nebarry AT verizon.net>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] “First Year Lies” was Re: Ruth
  • Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 14:15:06 +0300

I haven't done much Hebrew teaching. Not many people seem to be interested
in reading the bible in translation let alone the original. But I used to be
the owner of a chain of English schools in Italy. Of all the learner types I
had by far the best were the non-academic olympic athletes that used to
frequent my courses. I had a few grammar boffinses who did great on paper
but had the communicative skills of a wingless gnat but the Olympic athlete
types were those who would sit and scratch their heads in complete what on
earth are you going on about style if you presented them with a formal
description of English but somehow managed to easily extract an internalised
representation of the language if you gave them enough examples in context.

My basic and most successful philosophy as a language teacher was that new
born babies are the best language learners in the universe. Stimulating
those innate language learning mechanisms we are born with is the best way
to learn and internalise a language. My lessons generally consisted of
turning adults into kids so that they could learn the language. My best ever
success story was a man called Alberto de Chiusole, a hotel owner over the
age of 70 who was a total grammar boffins when I met him. Watching him
trying to string a few words together in a communicative scenario was an
exercise in agony but give him a pen and paper and a few questions and he
was always top of the class. After two years of turning him back into a kid
it finally clicked and he learned not English but the important lesson of
how to learn English. Within a month of self teaching he was pretty much
fluent.

James Christian

On 21 May 2010 14:01, Barry <nebarry AT verizon.net> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "James Christian" <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
> To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
> Cc: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 6:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] “First Year Lies” was Re: Ruth
>
>
> Your story kind of reminds how I learned Italian. I did two semesters of
> intensive grammar at University. At the end of the 2 semesters I could pass
> grammar exams with flying colours but couldn't speak much Italian. Then I
> went to live in Italy for the Summer. When I came back I was fluent and
> knew
> that most of what I learned in 2 semesters at Uni was utter tripe.
>
> I also learned in this way that it is the language that defines the natural
> grammar not the textbook grammar that defines the natural language. This
> kind of reminds me of the discussion we had not long ago which centred on
> hair splitting between the construct and apposition. Grammar boffins tend
> to
> get hung up on precise definitions of forms. Those who have learned by
> immersion tend to think more functionally i.e. if it behaves like a
> construct but doesn't have the exact form then let's just call it a
> construct anyway because that's the function that is clearly being
> expressed.
>
> In the fields of computational linguistcs, pyscholinguists and cognitive
> linguistics things are changing. The age of empiricism is taking academics
> to an understanding that the data describes the rule system and not the
> other way around. It is the embracing of empirical evidence that is, at the
> moment, largely responsible for pretty much all major breakthroughs in
> these
> fields. e.g. machine learning of translation models and language models for
> statistical machine translation is data driven, data oriented parsing (DOP)
> is data driven, hidden markov models of language are data driven.
>
> However, we still have a lot of these theoretical linguists who just don't
> seem to be able to make friends with empiricism. They are largely behind
> theoretical linguistic frameworks such as lexical functional grammar (LFG)
> and head driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG). Their repeatedly poor
> attempts at defining wide coverage grammars that can compete with data
> driven methods can be summarised in their antipathy to empiricism. One
> particular paper had me laughing my socks off. It introduced the testing of
> examples from a theoretical linguistics textbook in an attempt to show
> competitive coverage of the system. Little did the authors seem to realise
> that their test proved only one thing. That their system was well trained
> to
> deal with examples of language from a theoretical linguistics textbook but
> not for examples of real natural unseen language. i.e. the two phenomena
> are
> completely different.
>
> James Christian
>
> As for which Hebrew text to begin with? I am tempted to have students just
> > start with Genesis within a few weeks of starting first year class,
> > starting
> > with the first chapter. Get the students used to reading the text,
> > teaching
> > the grammar along with the text. Even though I attended one year of
> > college
> > Hebrew, that is basically how I learned Hebrew. I mean, really learned
> > Hebrew, how it is really used instead of the way it was presented in
> > class.
> >
> > Karl W. Randolph.
> >
> > On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 8:00 PM, Barry <nebarry AT verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
> > > To: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> > > Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 7:34 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ruth
> > >
> > >
> > > > As for “first year lies” (a phrase I to which I was introduced on
> > > this list, I don’t remember who taught it to me), I was taught that
> > Hebrew
> > > followed certain grammar, syntax and spelling rules, and all the
> > > examples
> > in
> > > the text books followed those rules. Later, when I started reading
> > > Tanakh
> > > for myself, cover to cover, I was in for a shock—those rules were often
> > > violated. I had to learn a new set of rules to fit the data before my
> > eyes.
> > > >
> > > > My criticism in this particular example (not by any means for
> > > anything with which I disagree) was that you seem to insist that Hebrew
> > > follow those rules as taught in first year class, rather than how the
> > > language is actually used in Tanakh.
> > >
> > > Beginning grammars always present an ideal version of the languages for
> > > didactic purposes, usually using particular authors. For beginning
> > > Latin
> > > it's Caesar and Cicero with a dash of Vergil for flavor. For beginning
> > > (Classical) Greek it's usually Xenephon and Plato. What beginning
> > grammars
> > > can't communicate is the licence that individual authors use with the
> > > languages. But this freedom is usually stylistic, lexical selection,
> > > idiomatic phrases. You never see violation of basic grammar, such as
> > > subject verb agreement, and forth.
> > >
> > > So, what are the models for the ideal grammer of biblical hebrews.
> > >
> > > N.E. Barry Hofstetter
> > > Classics and Bible Instructor, TAA
> > > http://www.theamericanacademy.net
> > > (2010 Savatori Excellence in Education Winner)
> > > Mentor, TNARS
> > > http://www.tnars.net
> > >
> > > http://my.opera.com/barryhofstetter/blog
> > > http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
> >
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