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Contra_Mundum · #2 (**permalink**) 05-03-2008, 10:16 AM

Something I wish I had received, but did not--

Instead of spending any time, during an introductory lecture (which will be forgotten soon anyway) on why this is important, write a paper on the mechanics of what this study will entail over the next (however long the curriculum goes), all the way out to the end. This would be especially helpful to those going on to MDiv.

What I mean is this:
1) learning a language primarily to read and study it is not the same as many of us recall learning English.

2) In the first year I learned all the basics

3) In my second year, we moved on to grammar. It was not until maybe the middle of the second semester that I really comprehended what we were doing.

4) Here's how I explained it to MYSELF. In the first year, we got all the building materials: bricks, mortar, hammers, nails, lumber, etc. And we learned how some of those things went together--lay bricks overlapping; measure twice, cut once, yada yada. We learned a few rules, memorized words and paradigms, and practiced translating.

5) We did NOT start building a house the next course.
We studied architecture. Foreign architecture.

I am not laying this at my professor's feet, like it was his fault. I had a hard time with fractions too, in grade school. And one day it clicked. We used a premier grammar (or what I consider an excellent one), Wallace. The professor certainly knew Greek forwards and backwards, and his own Introductory Grammar, first year, was an excellent tool. I still go back and look at things in it on occasion.

I just don't remember getting the lecture that said: this is a different sort of animal; this is analytic; the fork is branched here; we are going forensic; this is architecture, not construction. And a PAPER which can be referred to over and over is better than the lecture which was forgotten after two weeks of paradigms and vocab.