Language Learning Strategies

Down yonder, a reader writes:

Jimmy, you write that one only needs to learn to read a Biblical language.

I’m inclined to differ, I would have learned Greek far better, had I
learned to -speak- it, likewise with Hebrew, save that far less of it
stuck. Most of my classmates had been engineers, and the learning was
directed toward purely left-brained, list-learning thinkers.

But that isn’t how humans learn and use language. I tend to suspect
– strongly? that we’d understand the Bible better if we could actually
speak it, read it aloud and understand it, and thereby better catch
nuances and emphases that grammatical commentaries – such as the blue
one from the Vatican, as helpful as they can be – can enable us to do.

Treating the text as computer code may, I am inclined to think,
cause us to misinterpret from time to time. Think of Shakespeare, or
Donne.

What think you?

I agree that a person will learn a langauge better if he learns how to speak it (meaning "knows how to generate his own sentences in it") rather than just understand it (meaning "knowing what a person or a text is saying").

I think it’s a very good thing for students to learn to speak a language as well as understand it, and as they progress in their knowledge of the language, they should learn to do so.

In my article, though, I was concerned with encouraging students who are just beginning in a language. When one is at this stage, most people are so intimidated that they simply quit trying to learn the language. It is imperative, therefore, to do everything possible to make the process less intimidating until the student gains the sense that he really does have the ability to master a language.

One way of doing that is not demanding that beginning students immediately learn sentence generation. The ability to generate sentences is not the goal of biblical language studies; the understanding of biblical texts is. The quicker the students get the satisfaction of understanding texts, the more they will be motivated to continue their studies.

Learning sentence generation is of benefit to students, but in my judgment it’s better not to tax beginners with this.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

12 thoughts on “Language Learning Strategies”

  1. This is right on. The one little twist I’d throw in would be that sentence construction for beginners is useful if the construction exercises are essentially word-substitution drills. EG: When a student can translate the given “Pater in casa est.” congratulate him, and then say, “Now, give me: Mother is in the house.” It keeps it simple, still focuses on reading skills, and (by making it seem like a game a student can win) allows for increased confidence–an underrated aspect of foreign language learning.

  5. Frater non est in casa quoniam soror in casa est. Frater timidus est. Soror potentiam magnam habet, praecipue in brachiis, et frater scit quod Timor sororis initium sapientiae est. Nonne?

  6. Non. Timor Domini initium sapientiae est. Timor sororis sapientia sera est, contra bracchium validum ejus. Bracchium ejus aeque validum atque bracchium Dei non est.

  8. Consentio tibi, si loqueris “in mundi fine”, sed hic et nunc, soror potest (et vult!) vulnum dare. Deus noster Deus patientiae est, et raro dat iustitiam in temporibus nostris. Certe, habet rationes, sed admonitio mea remanet: Cave sororem!

  9. (Permitte me dare tibi tempus durum ;-).
    “Deus noster Deus patientiae est.” Quantum similis I.C.E.L. vel Prelo Catholico Oregonio hic sonat!
    “Et raro dat iustitiam in temporibus nostris.” Neque similis Vetero Testamento ille sonat.
    Vere, Jesus dicit: “Stulte! Hac nocte animam tuam repetunt a te!”
    Etsi Psalmi dicunt: “Miserator et misericors Dominus, longanimis et multae misericordiae,” et tamen soror timeatur. 🙂

  10. Vere: in historia, nonne quaestio fundamentalis vel profundis est: Si Deus sit Deus justitiae (et amoris!), cur non dat justitiam vel protectionem hominibus bonis in diebus nostris, cur, ponant multa, videtur morori? Respondeo quod Deus est Deus, et soror mea est soror mea. Dixi.

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