Greek Study Day 2008

I used to enjoy attending (and sometimes speaking at) these when I was in the UK. I encourage you to get to it if you can:

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7th Annual Greek Study Day, 15th September 2008
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge

Bookings now being taken! The Greek Study Day is aimed at those teaching New Testament Greek in universities and colleges. It provides an opportunity to hear about different methods and textbooks, to share experiences and to develop new ideas and approaches for teaching.

Full details and booking form (MS Word)

Fifth Greek Study Day for Teachers of Greek

This notice is from Jane McLarty:
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Helping Students over the Hurdles in Reading the New Testament in Greek
Fifth study day for teachers of Greek

Thursday 11th May 2006
10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.
Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge

Sessions will include: modern language/TEFL teaching methods – can they help with teaching Koine?; textual criticism for beginners; feedback on using Jeremy Duff’s Elements of NT Greek (the new Wenham).

This will be a practical day with presentations and discussions aimed both at those teaching beginners and also those teaching intermediate students. It is the fifth such day, and the previous days have been highly valued by participants.

Cost: £20, including lunch and morning and afternoon tea and coffee. For further information and a booking form, please contact:

Jane McLarty (Admissions Tutor, Lucy Cavendish College, Lady Margaret Road, Cambridge CB3 0BU; tel: 01223 332197; fax 01223 332178; email: jdm35@cam.ac.uk).

With thanks for the support of the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies.
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If I may add a personal note, I am sorry to be missing this day. I have very much enjoyed the previous Greek Study Days, the last three of which have been hosted at the University of Birmingham. But I am delighted to see that these are continuing and I would strongly encourage teachers of Greek to get to this day if you can -- it will be stimulating, interesting, educational and fun! For details of previous days, see the link here: Greek Study Days.

Greek Study Day

Yesterday was the fourth NT Greek Teachers' Study Day here in Birmingham, a most enjoyable day, with talks led by Glen Balfour, Peter Head, Geoffrey Williams, Steve Walton and me, with an excellent lunch, a pleasant and productive atmosphere, and twenty or so in attendance and everyone making a contribution. Report to follow later.

Greek Study Day materials

With the fourth Greek Study Day taking place later today, I have been updating the website with some materials sent to me by Steve Walton:

The John Workbook Project

The files you can download from this page have been developed as part of a project in British universities and theological colleges funded by the Learning and Teaching Support Network Classics section, aiming to help beginners 'bridge the gap' between learning Greek from an introductory grammar and starting to read the New Testament in Greek for themselves. There are lots of interesting materials here to give you a taste and more of the project, with more still to come.

As for this year's Greek Study Day, I will provide a report later on, I hope tonight. I have always very much enjoyed and benefited from these occasions, and this year's programme is looking good.

Greek Study Day Correction and Reminder

Thanks to Steve Walton for pointing out the minor correction necessary on the booking form for the Greek Study Day on 2 March at the University of Birmingham:

Helping Students Over the Hurdles in Reading NT Greek [RTF] [PDF]

The notice spoke throughout (rightly) of the 2 March, but the booking form had one reference to 9 March, which has now been corrected. The updated versions are above.

But let me take this opportunity to encourage you to come along to what looks like an excellent day. It is the fourth of the Greek Study Days and they are usually very rewarding and enjoyable occasions.

Greek Day 2005

I am happy to be able to announce the details of the fourth Greek Study Day to be hosted at the University of Birmingham on 2 March 2005. Thanks to Dr Steve Walton of the London School of Theology for sending these over. Click on the links below for more information and a booking form:
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Greek Study Day: Wednesday 2 March 2005, University of Birmingham [RTF] [PDF]

See the above links for details of this year's study day for those who teach Greek in universities and theological colleges - it promises to be an excellent practical day focused on helping students with participles, translation strategy, hearing from an introductory textbook author thinking aloud about how he planned his course, and considering how to introduce textual criticism to Greek students. Details and booking form are above. Please pass this on to others who may be interested in your university or college - it is open to all.

Steve Walton, Jane McLarty & Geoffrey Williams
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Note also the web page for the Greek Study Days that I host here on the NT Gateway:

Greek Study Days

This provides details of the current and previous Greek Study Days.

Greek Study Day

This message posted on behalf of Geoffrey Williams:

This is to give you advance notice of a proposed STUDY DAY for teachers of NT Greek in theological colleges and University departments of theology and religious studies.

It is to be held on WEDNESDAY 2 MARCH 2005 at the UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM, between 10.00 am and 4.00 pm.

It will be a practical day, and enable teachers to exchange ideas and develop the existing network which has been encouraged by the LTSN.

At least three themes will be considered during the day: how we enable students to develop strategies for translation when they are approaching NT texts; how we t4each participles to students at introductory and intermediate levels; and ho we organise and construct beginners' courses in Greek (the latter to be led by Glenn Balfour, who had just completed a new text-book)

The cost is likely to be of the order of £30.

Further details, including a registration form, will be sent out as soon as they are available, and will also appear on the New Testament Gateway website.

Jane McLarty (Cambridge University) jdm35@cam.ac.uk

Steve Walton (London School of Theology) s.walton@lst.ac.uk

Geoffrey Williams (Spurgeons College) geoffrey@gaw117.fsnet.co.uk

Greek Study Day

Today I've attended the Greek Study Day sponsored by the LTSN: Classics Centre. You can see the programme here. This was the third of these days; like the last one it was hosted by the University of Birmingham over in Staff House, who put on an excellent spread for lunch. About 25 attended, mostly from Theological Colleges and Bible Colleges in the UK though there were a handful of us from Universities. It was run by Geoffrey Williams (Spurgeons College), Steve Walton (London Bible College) and Jane McLarty (University of Cambridge) and the theme was "Helping Students Study the Greek New Testament". The day was most enjoyable -- lots of enthusiasm, lots of sharing of good ideas, lots of examples of good practice and so on. These days have a very congenial spirit -- they are all about helping one another in our task of teaching Greek. Attendance at the last one has actually affected the way I teach and assess Greek, and the same will definitely be true of this one. If you are a Greek teacher living in the UK, I strongly encourage you to come to the next one -- it will be very well worth your while. In particular, I'd like to see some more of my colleages from Theology departments in the universities who are teaching Greek.

After Philip Seddon from the Dept of Theology here in Birmingham welcomed everyone to the event, the first session was a presentation by Steve Walton and Jane McLarty on the "John for Beginners" project. This project emerged directly out of the previous Greek Study day and addresses the need for students beginning to work with Biblical texts to have some guidance on how to navigate their way through. This has been an LTSN funded research project in which materials were produced by Jane, Steve and Geoffrey Williams and then test run on "focus groups", i.e. groups of students at the relevant stages of learning. This was essentially the same report that Steve and Jane presented at the BNTC in September and it was as positively received here as there. The plans are to publish the results on the web and perhaps too in a book.

The next session was entitled "Back to first principles or defending the space? Why is learning Greek important for students of theology?" and began with Philip Seddon (Birmingham) and Paul Woodbridge (Oak Hill College, London) each giving their perspectives on why they think it is important for Theology students to learn Greek. Philip mentioned several factors including the role it plays in a department like ours where different religions are taught and where students of Islam, for example, learn Arabic; it would clearly be a disgrace if there was no Hebrew or Greek in such a setting. Paul focused more on the ministerial training side of things and mentioned, for example, that appealing to students' desire to get closer to the words of Jesus could be a factor in persuading them to take Greek, something I have some concerns about -- but that's why I'm more comfortable teaching in a university setting. There was an excellent discussion after Philip and Paul spoke, as with each session during the day.

After coffee there was a discussion about Memorisation: How Much is Really Necessary? This was led by Geoffrey Williams (who began with tales from Wallace and Gromit) and Ian MacNair. MacNair used to teach Greek at London Bible College and has written an introductory grammar that many still use, though I've not looked at it myself. Again it was a good discussion on how one aids the process of memorisation and on how much is necessary. The inductive / non-inductive debate reared its head here, not least because John Dobson was present, the author of an introductory text book that goes the inductive route. Dobson sat on the front row and was pretty vocal and kept a copy of his book close to hand throughout the day. I've no doubt that Baker publishers would be delighted to see how vigorously he champions the book in contexts like this.

One of the values of this session was the sharing of experience of different examinations, some advocating having grammars available as well as lexicons in intermediate Greek examinations and most advocating a strongly text and context based examination rather than too much out of context parsing and word testing. This began to raise the question over the usefulness of a central depository for different syllabi, examinations and so on. I think this would be a good idea for comparing notes and encouraging good practice and have offered the NT Gateway as a place for doing this should others be willing.

After lunch, it seemed that the general feeling was that it would be preferable to roll both of the planned simultaneous workshops into one. So first up was Jonathan Pennington and Ian MacNair on Teaching Beginners: Sharing Good Practice. This continued the discussion about what those present have found useful in practice. Jonathan, a PhD student teaching at St Andrews at the moment, but who comes from America, talked a bit about the Mounce grammar which he used in America but which is hardly known here at all. He talked briefly about the Jeremy Duff replacement of Wenham, which is due out next year, and which is being used in various places in the UK already as a test-run.

Unfortunately I had to leave early to pick up the kids from school so missed the last session on Intermediate Students led by Jane McLarty and John Proctor. If anyone present would like to add their comments on this or any of the rest of the day, feel free and I will publish them here.

A fine and productive day. I'd encourage anyone who is able to make it to the next one (assuming that there will be a next one) to do so.