I am in the process of reading C. S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy on the strong recommendation from a friend and mentor. In the section describing his transition to study with a new tutor called “the Knock” in preparation for university, he makes some comments that sound a lot like discussions to be found on the B-Greek email list. My added comments are indicated by brackets, and paragraphing has been added to segment the text.
“I arrived at Gaston’s (so the Knock’s house was called) on a Saturday, and he announced that we would begin Homer on Monday. I explained that I had never read a word in any dialect but the Attic, assuming that when he knew this he would approach Homer through some preliminary lessons on the Epic language. He replied merely with a sound very frequent in his conversation which I can only spell “Huh.” I found this rather disquieting; and I woke on Monday saying to myself, “Now for Homer. Golly!” The name struck awe into my soul.
At nine o’clock we sat down in the little upstairs study which soon became so familiar to me. (snip) We opened our books at Iliad, Book I. Without a word of introduction Knock read aloud the first twenty lines or so in the “new” pronunciation, which I had never heard before. Like Smewgy [his former tutor in Greek], he was a chanter; less mellow in voice, yet full gutturals and rolling r’s and more varied vowels seemed to suit the Bronze Age epic as well as Smewgy’s honey tongue suited Horace. For Kirk [i.e. Knock], even after years of residence in England, spoke the purest Ulster.
He then translated, with a few, a very few explanations, about a hundred lines. I had never seen a classical author taken in such large gulps before. When he had finished he handed me over Crusius’ Lexicon and, having told me to go through again as much as I could of what he had done, left the room. It seems an odd method of teaching, but it worked.
At first I could travel only a very short way along the trail he had blazed, but every day I could travel further. Presently I could travel the whole way. Then I could go a line or two beyond the furthest North. Then it became something of a game to see how far beyond. He appeared at this stage to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The great gain was that I very soon became able to understand a great deal without (even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek.
That is the real Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not reading Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very formula, “Naus means a ship,” is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, and behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding” (Surprised by Joy, pp. 140-141).
I believe Lewis’ description here of reading versus solving a puzzle captures well the sentiment conveyed by Carl Conrad and others on the list. The time in the room with the Knock was not 50 minutes Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a few semesters, rather is was the next logical extension of a course of study begun under Lewis’ father at the age of 10 or so. Crossing the Rubicon is a hard-won prize which must be earned, hence a colleague’s slogan: “Opera philologorum non effeminatis sunt.” Tools can help, grammars can help, tutors can help, but reading that is not simply recoding just requires time voraciously reading.
Of all that things that I wish for, time is probably the most elusive to obtain. About the time I think I have time, I seem lose it to some other demand. Becoming proficient at Greek can be aided by a number of things, but time reading remains an inflexible, compulsory ingredient. Finding or making time requires saying “No” to competing things. So you have to ask yourself one question: How badly do you want it?
And yet Kirk’s method is more grammar-translation than anything else, because his measure of understanding is the ability to translate. Lewis eventually began to think in Greek, yes, but that happened in spite of the methodology and not because of it. When grammar-translation succeeds in producing internalization, it’s usually because students have a high aptitude for learning languages. Modern language pedagogy produces internalization much more efficiently than grammar-translation. The good points of Kirk’s version, as opposed to grammar-translation as used by most Biblical Greek teachers today, is that he read the text aloud and required Lewis to read large portions at once, rather than a few disconnected sentences.
I think there can be a tendency to confuse the teaching of morphology and vocabulary with the development of competency in the language. The one necessary presupposes the other, but does not necessarily lead to the other. Modern language pedagogy provides a more natural way of learning the former, one that more naturally builds toward the latter. I do not get the sense that developing a polished translation was their objective. Translation was simply the medium of discussing what one had read, how one expressed his understanding of it. We have little other recourse today, short of conversing in Greek. Even then, one is simply restating in different words what was understood. Such restatement can be done in translation, but the ability to translate does not mean that understanding has been achieved. My comments have less to do about what should happen in class than with what should happen outside of class.