The Singing Grammarian by H. Daniel Zacharias
This new downloadable resource entitled The Singing Grammarian by H. Daniel Zacharias is a wonderful resource
for introductory Greek students and pastors.
The great benefit of this resource is in the multi-faceted functions
provided by the resource, combining music, visual aids, and rhymes to enhance
the learning. At times the songs were a
bit comical, which I think aided in the learning process because it doesn’t
really feel like your studying Greek grammar as you go through the process.
The Singing Grammarian
starts with the Greek Alphabet and then transitions into looking at
declensions, articles and then to verbal tenses. The great advantage of this program is that
you visually see the paradigms on the screen, are led by a song about the
endings of the verbal tenses, and witness the changes in the paradigms throughout
the whole form of the verb. While this
might not make much sense to those just coming to Greek, to those immersed in
rigorous summer or semester classes, you look for any way to get the memory
work done using all five senses. The
repetition of the songs and visual paradigms reinforces learning at a higher
rate than just coming to a workbook and verbally reciting paradigms. Although this is not a group program, I
believe that having a resource that allows you to interact using all five
senses is a great deal more effective than learning by yourself.
The only drawback I found from using The Singing Grammarian was at times the songs and voices recording
the songs were a bit off key and hard to listen to. I realize that these exercises were not
recorded by opera singers, but at times I had to stop the program and come back
later. Overall, The Singing Grammarian
is a great resource to aid your Greek learning, from an introductory
position. Secondly, this is a resource
that can be used time and time again because of its catchy songs that focus on
Greek paradigms. Making Koine Greek is
hard in the beginning, but The Singing
Grammarian makes it all the more
worthwhile.
Thanks to Kregel
Academic Publications for the review copy of this download in exchange for review.
Comments
Post a Comment