Category Archives: Pedagogy

Resources for Teaching Biblical Hebrew with Cantillation Marks

I’ve added the following two items to my Hebrew Resources page.

The British Foreign Bible Society has a terrific article, “The Masoretes and the Punctuation of Biblical Hebrew” which explains the cantillation marks and how they can be used to help identify syntax.

Naama Zahavi-Ely, who teaches at William & Mary, has a very helpful handout on cantillation marks, “Using cantillation marks to break Biblical verses into units for teaching purposes” (from her presentation at SBL).

(right-click on the titles to download the PDF documents)

I’ve used both of these resources in my classes and found them to be helpful. The first article is more than most beginning students are interested in (they are confused enough), but inquisitive students appreciate getting additional reading material to supplement the class lectures. I use Naama’s handout to point out the major teamim to all first semester students as a supplemental tool to help find clause boundaries in biblical texts more easily.

SLA Appetizer

It seems like everyone is throwing “SLA” into their conversations about learning Biblical Hebrew. But like most areas of study and research, SLA (Second Language Acquisition) is not monolithic. We cannot co-opt this research out of context. I am grateful to have a few colleagues in the field. They have been giving me some very helpful research to read and also some valuable direction for interpreting the “SLA” field and how it may contribute to understanding Biblical Hebrew language learning and as a result, what type of pedagogy should be considered. Their insights and cautions are invaluable as I begin to evaluate and critique some current trends in BH pedagogy (i.e. the COHELET Project). The more I read, the more I see that we must be much more careful about loosely claiming the SLA banner and tagging it onto our Biblical Hebrew methodologies in the hopes of finding some magic pill to solve our learning/teaching issues. While I continue to read, here’s a cautionary quote from an interview with Rod Ellis (2000):

“One of the main things that SLA has actually contributed to is the demise of the method construct, the notion that there is a method out there that will somehow enable learners to magically learn successfully in the minimal possible time. One of the major lessons in studying SLA is that learning a second language is hard work and takes a long time. There are no short cuts.” [emphasis mine]

New Biblical Hebrew Syllabus Challenge

This is not a hypothetical situation. A friend (and former student) of mine will be traveling to China this summer to teach Biblical Hebrew to a group of about 50 students (who are mostly pastors). The facts (as I know them):

1. Number of students: 50 adults
2. Time frame: 10 class days (2 weeks), 6-8 hours per day
3. Cover the material for a “typical” first semester course (we can talk about what that “should” include)
4. Language of students: Mandarin (so that means limited instructional material that is published)

They do have access to a Mandarin version of Weingreen. How would you use that?

What would you include, exclude, simplify or condense? What about quizzes, exams? How many, when? What about homework?

What would you want these students to leave the two weeks being able to do?

And …. how much of that could you do with a communicative method?

Go.

COHELET Workshop Report: Communicative Method for Biblical Hebrew

Chris Heard of Higgaion is attending the week-long workshop for the COHELET Project. He’s posted the first of what will hopefully be daily updates.

Read the comments for some discussion about when to teach the aleph-bet.

UPDATES:
Here is the link for Chris’s second post about his participation in the workshop.
Final summary from Chris about the workshop is here.

Let’s talk content

Daniel & Tonya have posted the first installment of their “hypothetical” syllabus for teaching Biblical Hebrew to a group of adults. They describe the class (and participants) this way:

This hypothetical Hebrew class is offered through and meets at a hypothetical, local Baptist church. All the hypothetical students are members or attenders of the church. They all have hypothetical jobs, hypothetical families, and many other hypothetical obligations. The class will meet for two hypothetical hours in the evening once per week for twenty weeks.

An overview of the entire syllabus is here. It’s actually not completely hypothetical. They did teach this course a few times and the only thing that is hypothetical is that they combined the experiences of all the sections taught into one description.

I’ll be interested to read why they choose to include (or exclude) certain material. I hope we can then move on to define a hypothetical seminary course (for a particular student population) and discuss the content for that course. Along the way, we’ll probably talk about resources and methodology to implement these courses.

UPDATES:
B&T continue with Syllabus – Vol. 2 here.

Communicative Method for Ancient Language Learning = Misplaced Priority

[I’m being a bit antagonistic on purpose with that title to get some reactions, but only a bit!]

Tonya & Daniel (bloggers at Hebrew & Greek Reader) asked me a question about communicative methodology in learning Hebrew when they interviewed me. After that, Seumas MacDonald wrote a four-piece essay (here, here, here, and here) on “Conversational” “Dead” languages which generated some good comments and led me to Daniel Streett’s work. Rather than bog down Seumas’ blog with a lengthy response, I’ve decided to bring my further comments here to my own blog. Mike Aubrey also has a lot to say (here and here) in response to Daniel & Tonya’s own posts on their blog (here and here) in response to Seumas. I know I’m missing some other contributors to this current discussion (but I’m not leaving them out intentionally)! I think we need a flow-chart to follow the conversations.

For those who may not be familiar with the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), you can read about the work of the Cohelet Project here. They have provided a very good summary of the goals and methodology of CLT. Paul Overland and his team have been working very hard to integrate SLA research into a program that is primarily driven by the communicative approach to language learning. Randall Buth has been running Biblical Hebrew ulpans for years (and is now also offering Greek ulpans). Randall is also part of the design team for the Cohelet Project.

Bottom line? Continue reading →