Welcome to my Greek lair! Sometimes people will ask me what I've been up to lately, or how I spend my time (since I don't work outside the home), and I usually just give them a general answer like, "oh you know, this and that, nothing real exciting". I normally don't tell them that my morning hours are usually spent bent over my Greek studies because either I feel weird telling them, or I just don't want the praising attention. So only a few select people know about this, but today I wanted to write about my routine because I am so excited about finally making it to the 10th book! (more about that later)
First, I do my flashcards.
I have a shelf lined with index card boxes, labeled with the days of the week (Mon-Fri). I don't know how well you can see it, but the days of the week are written in Greek, only for my own amusement. They are actually the words in modern Greek because the Koine Greek doesn't have any words for the days of the week that I know of. But what I thought was interesting was that the modern day words actually emphasize the point that Sunday is the first day of the week. For instance, the modern day Greek word for Monday literally means "2nd day". The modern day Greek work for Tuesday literally means "3rd day", and so on. The word for Sunday means "the Lord's day" and the word for Saturday closely resembles the word for "sabbath". I just thought that was very interesting. Anyhoo, today is Wednesday (the "fourth day") so I pulled out the box for Wednesday and this was my flashcard stack for today.
As you can see, I have them labeled "one week", "two weeks", "four weeks", "eight weeks", "16 weeks", and "32 weeks". I will explain my system to you: If I get the answer(s) right, the card goes from one week to two weeks, or from two weeks to four weeks, and so on. They keep moving up to "32 weeks", and if I can still get the answer(s) right after 32 weeks of not studying it, then I figured I have it mastered, and I can take it out of circulation (toss it in the trash). If I get the answer wrong, the card goes back into the daily pile and it has to start all over again ("educational punishment"). I know it sounds terribly redundant, but this is the best way that I know how to really learn Greek and MASTER it. Most preachers, when they are going to preacher school, are required to take a Greek class, and that's a really good thing!, however, I often question how much they really learn because I know that they are on a time schedule, so can only cover so much, so I think they cover the basics, take the tests, and then go on their way. Most of them forget what they learned after they leave school (unless they keep studying it on their own). Well, I don't want to learn it just to forget it. I want to learn it and keep using it because it is a very very very useful tool to have for studying the Bible. So the system that I came up with is to learn it, and then keep reviewing it, and keep spreading out the reviews longer and longer in order to prove to myself that I really did learn it. (I was going to add a "year" file, but decided that 32 weeks is long enough to prove that I mastered it). The flashcards can be very time consuming. Usually they take an hour or more, but there are some days when I don't have ALL of them to do, like I might not have anything in "eight weeks" or "32 weeks".
After I get those done, I go to my file folders.
These are also labeled with the weekdays. This is where I keep the quizzes and tests that come from the work books, and they are under the same system as the flashcards. As you can see, the next quiz in my Wednesday folder is scheduled for April 15.
And that means that I get to move forward into the next lesson in my workbook.
I was so excited because today I finally got to start Book 10, which is what prompted me to write this post. I started these books in the Fall of 2009, and it took me THIS long to finally start the last book. The reason it took so long is because I use the same system for these as I do for the flashcards. I could very easily just do the exercises in the book and move on, but I know if I did this, I would not actually LEARN the material. The best way to drill it into my head so I won't forget it, is to keep doing them over and over again until they are MASTERED. The only thing I do different with these book exercises as opposed to the flashcards is that I consider 90% or higher as "passing". If I score below 90% on any of these exercises, guess what?, it goes back into the "daily". I can't tell you how many times I've had a quiz make it all the way to 32 weeks, only to get sent back to the daily. Argh. I get kinda mad at myself when that happens, but hey, if ain't mastered, it ain't mastered and I ain't doing myself any favors by cheating. Sometimes I am what you'd call a "mean teacher", but I am my own student and my own teacher so I am allowed to be as mean (or as lenient) as I want to be. But I am not on any school schedule and have no deadlines, so I am free to take as long as I need to get it mastered, so yeah, it can get frustrating at times when I have to send papers back to the dailies, but really it's no big whoop. The time involved for this part of my routine varies. Sometimes I have LOTS of quizzes to do, and some days just one. Today I had none and there were no "dailies" to do, so I got to learn something new and add the new quiz into the circulation. BTW, this is a good curriculum, however, it is FULL of mistakes!! The answer key is full of corrections that I had to make. It is confusing enough to learn a new language, but to have wrong answers in the answer key is doubly confusing. A lot of them were obvious mistakes that I just knew were wrong, but there were others that I had to consult my "Greek mentor" friend at church to make sure it wasn't me who was getting the answer wrong. Most of the time he confirmed that the answer book was wrong. Whoever put this curriculum together did a terrible job proofreading it. But, I will say that the mistakes kept me on my toes, and the fact that I was able to spot them makes me feel good that I was mastering Greek enough to notice it.
After that phase is over, I get to move on to the best part where I apply what I learn and really test my skills. The Greek New Testament. This is my ultimate goal.
I am translating one verse at a time from Greek to English. You could even say that I am actually writing my own Bible translation, of course learning as I go. And I am getting better at this as I continue to learn and master the Koine Greek. So far I have translated the gospel according to John, all three of John's letters, and now I am translating the gospel according to Matthew. I copy the Greek text in a notebook word for word, and translate each word in it's literal sense, and then put it in the best English that I can without losing the Greek meaning. I can see now why it's a good idea to know how to look things up in the Greek cuz some of the phrases and words just cannot be translated into English with the exact same meaning as the Greek, unless you want your English translation to be really weird and not make any sense. The time it takes to translate a verse also varies. Some verses are very short and some verses I can translate with no problem without even looking any of the words up in the lexicon. But there are others that have words in them that I'm not familiar with, or I'm confused about the syntax and/or grammar, so I have to take the time to look stuff up. And then, there are times when the verse is very interesting and I just want to study the verse itself for it's theological content, or the verse will open my eyes to something new so I might excitedly look up other references to study it more. I can really get myself off track when this happens.
So by the time I get that done, depending on the load of flashcards and quizzes, how much time has already gone by - usually at least 2-1/2 hours by now. If I don't feel "burned out" by this time, or if I don't have other pressing things to do, I will move on to my supplemental material and do more.
...like make another flashcard from the lexicon.
Most people wouldn't think about using the introductory pages in a lexicon - they just use the lexicon to look up words (which is totally fine). But I have found that these pages contain a lot of extra information that is useful for my studies. A lot of it is stuff I've already learned, but it does have charts in there that are worth memorizing. Yes, I know that this is a very nerdy thing to do, but I find that it helps to reinforce those things that are hard to memorize and the lexicon often times has explanations in there about how to form conjugations and inflections, etc., that aren't explained in any of my other books.
Here are the other supplemental materials that I use:
I actually started the "Hey Andrew!..." books with my kids when I was homeschooling them. The kids eventually lost interest, but ..........not me. I am in the "Level 8" book now, and I gotta say that these books are EXCELLENT for supplemental exercises. I really wish that they would make more of these books (Level 8 is as high as they go). The book on the top is another one that I've actually been doing for years. I'm about halfway through it now. It's taking forever to get through it because, again, I want to MASTER the material, not just do the exercises and call it "good". The book in the middle is a relatively new one and I am slowly working through it. I know it's a lot of extra material, but I have found that it's really helpful to learn Greek from several resources because if I don't "get it" with one curriculum, I'll probably "get it" if it's explained a different way in another curriculum.
It'll take me awhile to get all ten of those workbooks done, but after I get those done, and the last "Hey Andrew" book done, that'll leave a little time window open to move on to these:
Yes, I am already excited about moving "beyond the basics" and have already started purchasing new workbooks to take me even further. Every once in a while I'll pull out one of these books if I'm really struggling with something in particular, but mostly they are just waiting for me to make them part of my regular routine. I'm guessing maybe another year or so.
So now you know how I spend my weekday mornings. I take a break from it on Saturdays and Sundays.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the Bible verses. Several months ago I started adding memorization verses to my flashcards, which makes the flashcard phase even longer, especially if several verses end up being on the same day (I put them through the same 1-2-4-8-16-32 week system integrated into my regular Greek flashcards).
At night when I do my casual Bible reading, I will often run across a verse that really sticks out and I think "that is a really cool verse, I should memorize that one". So I write it down and put it in my box that I keep in my nightstand. One by one they are getting added to my Greek routine. I just added a new one today:
Amos 4:13 - For behold, He Who forms mountains and creates the winds And declares to man what are His thoughts, He Who makes dawn into darkness And treads on the high places of the earth, The LORD GOD of hosts is His name.
In the first picture of this post, you can see how well I did with it so far....... still working on just the first phrase of it.
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