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The Singing Grammarian





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.
http://store.kregel.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=2580

Thanks to Kregel  Academic Publications for the review copy  of this download in exchange for review.

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