Reading Koine Greek: An Introduction and Integrated Workbook

[Slache]

Any opinions? Has anyone even heard of it? I keep bouncing back and forth on whether or not I need it. The PDF is $25 and 704 pages.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Koine-Greek-Introduction-Integrated/dp/0801039282

[winterbaby]

I never heard of it, but I am VERY impressed by the Amazon preview! Thanks for sharing!

[SarahW]

I checked it out of the library a few years ago. Looked at the Amazon preview to jog my memory....

 

Yes, from what I recall, the grammar explanations are really good and thorough. He really tries to explain how the grammar works right off the bat. Now, that may be overwhelming for a student, especially all the grammatical terms he uses, but for a student coming from a good formal study of grammar, or better, grammar-based Latin, it could really work.

 

The one problem I had with it was the exercises. There's not enough of them. Since he's going more inductive/whole-parts the idea is to NOT have a bunch of translation sentences, I know. But the exercises he sets could use a lot of beefing up. Inductive/whole-parts needs MORE MORE MORE  to work, and he just doesn't have that. Decker does try (much more than other Koine Greek programs) to include more than the NT, and that is appreciated, but I just don't understand why if he's working from a bigger corpus he can't find more things to ask the student to look at. 

 

Also, I don't recall, but does he give an answer key? I'm drawing a blank there. But for as thorough as his chapters are, it would be nice if he gave a thorough answer to the chapter exercises, going through and explaining why in that instance such is in that case, or so on. I have Decker's Koine Greek Reader, and one of the issues I have in that is that, while he gives a good gloss, he hardly ever brings up syntax points. Those are sorta the things that need to have to be reviewed, preferably with reading, so it is bothersome that he doesn't give any help there. So I worry that the same sort of thing is in this book, that the only helps for the exercises will be grammar cribs, and not actually walking the student through the syntax and style. Of course, a good teacher could fix that issue easily, but I'm supposing that you're intending this as an independent study?

 

Oh, I don't know anything about the videos. That's news to me. Does he go through the exercises in the videos? That would interest me.

 

My verdict, as it stands it's sort of like the Koine Greek version of English Grammar for Students of _____ . A helpful book to have around if your main text has you confused or stuck in a rut of plug-and-chug translation.

[Slache]

I checked it out of the library a few years ago. Looked at the Amazon preview to jog my memory....

 

Yes, from what I recall, the grammar explanations are really good and thorough. He really tries to explain how the grammar works right off the bat. Now, that may be overwhelming for a student, especially all the grammatical terms he uses, but for a student coming from a good formal study of grammar, or better, grammar-based Latin, it could really work.

 

The one problem I had with it was the exercises. There's not enough of them. Since he's going more inductive/whole-parts the idea is to NOT have a bunch of translation sentences, I know. But the exercises he sets could use a lot of beefing up. Inductive/whole-parts needs MORE MORE MORE to work, and he just doesn't have that. Decker does try (much more than other Koine Greek programs) to include more than the NT, and that is appreciated, but I just don't understand why if he's working from a bigger corpus he can't find more things to ask the student to look at.

 

Also, I don't recall, but does he give an answer key? I'm drawing a blank there. But for as thorough as his chapters are, it would be nice if he gave a thorough answer to the chapter exercises, going through and explaining why in that instance such is in that case, or so on. I have Decker's Koine Greek Reader, and one of the issues I have in that is that, while he gives a good gloss, he hardly ever brings up syntax points. Those are sorta the things that need to have to be reviewed, preferably with reading, so it is bothersome that he doesn't give any help there. So I worry that the same sort of thing is in this book, that the only helps for the exercises will be grammar cribs, and not actually walking the student through the syntax and style. Of course, a good teacher could fix that issue easily, but I'm supposing that you're intending this as an independent study?

 

Oh, I don't know anything about the videos. That's news to me. Does he go through the exercises in the videos? That would interest me.

 

My verdict, as it stands it's sort of like the Koine Greek version of English Grammar for Students of _____ . A helpful book to have around if your main text has you confused or stuck in a rut of plug-and-chug translation.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!