In the last couple of emails, I've shared with you that there are 3 things every Greek student needs (a clear goal, a system and motivation), and 2 types of greek students (self-directed and tutored).

In this email, I'll share with you the 1 simple activity that makes a tremendous difference to every student who has engaged in it.

In reality, there is often just one simple activity that can make all the difference for each of these two groups.

It is really very simple - working together with others. There are 2 specific ways of working with others that are helpful. I'll share one in this email and another in the next email.

One of the things I really enjoyed in my 2nd year seminary exegesis classes was reading the text together. Not that I didn't enjoy reading alone, but the opportunity to hear how others translated, and their reasoning helped me to sharpen my own understanding of the text.

Not only that, but having the teacher weigh in with his own (far more advanced) understanding also challenged the way I thought about the text and how it expresses the intention of the author.

A few years ago when I started teaching biblical Greek in MNTG, almost from the beginning we started with this same approach. I produced videos and other learning helps which students worked with through the week, and then we met in a live call once per week to review progress.

Weekly live calls

We continue this approach today for all MNTG courses, but in addition, we have 2 other calls each week, called Office Hours.

One of these calls is designed for beginners and focuses on helping Beginning Greek students keep moving and to provide a place for discussion of concepts and difficulties they encounter as they work through Beginning Greek.

The other Office hours call is designed for those who have finished beginning Greek. Each month, we select a text from the New Testament, Septuagint or from the Apostolic Fathers and we read it together. As we read, we discuss our observations, difficult syntax or vocabulary, and talk about the implications of the text.

Both of these calls are lots of fun, serve to connect us with each other and with the text. But they also have important pedagogical benefits.

Benefits of live calls

  1. They build understanding. As we learn from each other, we gain insights that we didn't have previously, we learn of resources and discussions we didn't previously come across and we discover the riches built into the text.
  2. As we grow in understanding, these calls serve to build confidence, helping us to see that the mistakes we made (and we do make mistakes) are similar to others and can be overcome, and that our translations are fairly reliable.
  3. They are incredibly motivating. When we see that we are translating and interpreting the text in a manner that is consistent with how others do, and gain confidence, our desire to keep going is fuelled and we end up looking forward to continuing to work with the text and grow from it.
  4. Because you're more motivated, you are likely to spend more time in the Greek text during the week, helping make biblical Greek into a virtuous cycle.

The office hours calls are built into both the Community Membership and the Mastery Membership. The Mastery Membership adds the course material and the live calls related to those, which run throughout the year. 

This is why it is helpful to know which sort of learner you are. If you're a self-directed learner, you may find that the only thing you need is the Office Hours call in the Community Membership to keep making progress forward.

But it could be that you need more help in which case the Mastery Membership might suit you better.

Of course, you might already have people around you who you can meet with and discuss Greek. But in my experience, this is not very common. 

But what about you? Does meeting with others help you? Would it? Hit reply and let me know!

In Christ,
Darryl