What You Can Do To Prepare For Your First Year Of Greek or Hebrew Study

I have taught introductory Greek for seven years now, and every year without fail I am asked via email at least once how a student can prepare beforehand. I thought it was about time I made the answer to that question a blog post so that I can point future students to my thoughts, and hopefully help many other students out there who may be asking the same question. So, without further ado, here are things you can do to prepare for your first year of Biblical Greek or Biblical Hebrew.

1. Get refreshed on English Grammar

Quite consistently the students who have the least amount of trouble with learning Greek grammar are students for whom English is a second language. This is because they have learned how English grammar works, so discussions about verbs, nouns, adjectives, dependent clauses, etc., is somewhat fresh in their minds. But native English speakers don't dissect their language as the speak and listen to it, they just do it. A lot of time in your introductory Greek and Hebrew courses will be spent referencing and comparing English grammar, and because grade school teaching of grammar is not up to par, new students are often relearning English grammar AND learning the new grammar of Greek or Hebrew at the same time. To reacquaint yourself with English grammar, I recommend a site like englishgrammar101.com.

If you are continuing to struggle with the grammar during your course, I also recommend some nice companion books. These books are short and connect Greek and Hebrew grammatical concepts with English grammar. The books are English Grammar to Ace New Testament Greek and English Grammar to Ace Biblical Hebrew.

2. Get an Overview of How Languages (particularly Biblical Languages) Work

Much like the previous point, students in grade school don't learn much about how languages actually work and why they work that way. Part of understanding how language works is learning some new terminology like "morphology," "phonology," "dialects," etc. Luckily, there is a great book for students who are preparing to study Hebrew and Greek called How Biblical Languages Work. I recommend picking this book up a month prior to starting your first course and read it through. This will be a heavy read for some students, but heavy reading will prepare you for the heavy work that is involved in learning these languages.

3. Get Your Textbook Early and Read (at least) the Introductory Chapters

Because introductory Greek and Hebrew courses have a lot of ground to cover, these courses hit the ground running. You will have assigned homework right in that first week. Too many students get hamstrung by not having the book when the class begins. Have it with you that first day and have at least the introductory chapter read. Even more ideal is reading the first chapter or two.

4. Get the Alphabet Down & Begin Pronouncing Words

Getting your feet wet prior to the course is a good idea, as the scary-factor that hits some students in that first class will be something that you are already passed if you took the time to learn the alphabet and started pronouncing words on your own. I of course recommend my YouTube videos for learning the Greek and Hebrew alphabet.

After that, start working on pronouncing some words. For this, I heartily recommend Logos Bible Software's modules for the Greek and Hebrew pronunciations. You can also practice reading along with some native readers. Again, Logos has a Greek audio Bible, or you can use a resource like Jonathan Pennington's Readings in the Greek New Testament. You can find readings of the Hebrew Bible here. (Would love to see a Hebrew audio Bible in Logos sometime Faithlife!)

5. App it Up!

While I confess that this is a shameless plug for my Greek apps FlashGreek and ParseGreek, I created these apps precisely because mobile devices are so prevalent and we spend so much time on them. FlashGreek will help you learn all that new vocabulary using a multimedia approach. There is no other app like it.  ParseGreek drills you on parsing, something you will be doing a lot of in Greek. And if you happen to not have a mobile device. I do have some other Flashcard options for Greek, and you can check out the desktop app Paradigms Master Pro.

For Hebrew, there is also several flashcard apps, though I confess that I am not familiar with them. As you check them out, make sure that they are compatible with the grammar you are using.

So there is my list! Do you teach Greek or Hebrew and answer this question too? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!

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How I Read, Take Notes, and Process Information from Books

A critical part of my job and career is to continue to educate myself in my field of expertise as well as cognate fields. This means reading a lot. Over time I have developed a fairly solid way of reading and processing the information from my readings that I want to share with readers.

I have not been blessed with a photographic, or near-photographic memory. I have had students who did. I have colleagues who are pretty close. I wish that was me, but it isn't. Chances are, that isn't you either. But we can do some things to try and help ourselves retain more of the information we read, and most importantly to have it at the ready to find when needed in the future. So here is how I read, take notes, and process information from books:

1. READ WITH A PENCIL IN HAND. A big mistake for many is stopping too frequently when reading a book (non-fiction specifically). The starting and stopping really slows down reading time. Now there are, of course, times when this is perfectly acceptable (like when you're working on an essay or assignment). But when you are reading a book to learn, don't let anything distract you from continuing to read. The pencil that I hold in my hand is for 2 main things: to keep my eye moving along the page (this will effectively double your reading speed btw) and to make a little dot, bracket, or occasionally an underline. I try to stick to the dot, as it is the quickest, but I may put a bracket around a section if the relevant content spans a larger section on the page. After I make that dot or bracket, I keep reading.
2. WRITE A CHAPTER SUMMARY. For most books, I write a chapter summary immediately after finishing the chapter. Only on occasions when a book is a little bit shorter will I wait until the end before writing the chapter summaries.  Abstracting chapters this way helps me to process immediately what I read  and, as I will keep this on hand, it will be helpful later. I place these chapter summaries in my reference manager (for more on reference managers see my related posts)
3. PROCESS THE DOTS.  If you are reading a book for information extraction, the worst thing you can do if you are someone like me is to close the book and put it back on the shelf when you are done. I am too forgetful to do that. This step in my reading process can at times take just as long as reading the book itself, though thankfully that does not happen too often. What has helped significantly is the use of dictation software. If you are a Mac user, invoking Siri for dictation is free. Siri wasn't as reliable as I wanted her to be, so I use Dragon for dictation (PC and Mac). If you want to speed up your workflow, Dragon might be just the thing you need.
   I begin to go through the book page by page. I stop at every dot or bracket which I made while reading. These dots and brackets now move into one of 3 places:
   • In my reference manager. If it is a juicy quote, I include the direct quotation, along with page number, and create a note for it in my reference manager. If it is good information, but not necessarily a quote that I want to keep, I make a brief note and attach the page number.
   • Into a Logos Commentary-type note file. If the information is something directly tied to a Scripture verse or passage, I place the information within a Logos note file, and directly attach it to that Scripture verse. I am, and have been for awhile, creating a Logos note file which is like my own commentary on the scripture (If you do not know how to attach a note like this in Logos, I recommend taking my Logos video course)
   •  I have another Logos file which holds relatively random bits of information that I nonetheless want to have in Logos. If there was a particular table, chart, etc., in the book, this is the place where I keep that. I will replicate the information in this file. If it is too complicated of a chart or table, I will instead keep it in my reference manager, as I can take a picture of it with my phone, and attach the resulting picture to my reference manager.
   • Occasionally some of the dots or brackets I decide are not worth keeping long-term.
4. FLASHCARD IT. I don't do this as often, but if I am learning some new terms, or there are particular dates or events that I really want to remember permanently, I will create a flashcard for them in my flashcard program. I currently use Mental Case, but I also like Brainscape.
5. TAG IT. The last thing I do before sticking the book back on the shelf is adding any necessary tags into my reference manager. This is important, because it provides more words that in the future will help me to find any relevant information in the book that I have just read. I want to make it as easy as possible to find this information in the future.

 The process described above has several advantages to it. First, it keeps me reading and moving forward. As I mentioned above, using a pencil to keep your eyes going will speed up your reading significantly. Second, writing the chapter summaries and then later processing the dots forces you to revisit and review the information you found. This review will make it more likely that you will retain it so that you can recall it again later, or at least remember where you read it. Finally, adding the notes (and tags) to places where it is easily retrievable and viewable when you are studying (i.e. my reference manager and Logos) means that the information which you found has become that much more usable and useful to you in the future.

So, this is how I do it. What about you? If you have any good tips or tricks, tell us about it in the comments! I'm always looking for ways to improve the acquisition of knowledge.

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Let Me Teach You Some Practical Study Skills With My New Online Course

If you've visited my website before you know that I have two published eBooks devoted to helping students. Surviving and Thriving in Seminary is aimed at seminary students, while Crush It at College (co-authored by Bryan Tinlin) is aimed more generally at college and university students.

I'm happy to announce today that I am working hard on video courses aimed at these same groups using my go-to platform Udemy. Just last week, the first of these courses went live. It is called Practical Study Skills: Set Yourself Up For Success. This course is aimed at the general college and university student. My next course, tentatively titled Seminary Bootcamp, will go live sometime in the next few months.

Now, I have some good news and some bad news for my blog readers. First, the bad news (for some of you). You may or may not know that I have an email list (you can sign up for it on the front page of my website). Last week, the people on my email list received this new course FOR FREE. And I plan on giving these types of perks to people on my email list in the future, so you really should sign up.

But I still have much love and affection for my blog readers. So the good news is that you (or anyone you give the link to) can enroll in this new course for just $5 by using this link. This coupon is good only until the end of the month, so don't waste time.

One last thing, when you enroll for the course, I would be most grateful if you could take a minute to leave an honest rating and review in Udemy. This really helps me with promotion.