So you want to author some Greek stories?

 

This page explains the principles on how to write stories for this web site. I welcome anyone who wishes to contribute stories to this site. The task of creating a graded library for NT Greek is too large for one person alone. Some may wish to use different principles for writing their stories than what I have chosen to do - that is perfectly fine as well. All stories are welcome!

 

Story types

 

Stories can be written from a variety of perspectives and for different purposes.

1. Paradigmatic - to teach the paradigms; vocabulary would be selected by morphological criteria

2. Semantic - to teach vocabulary; vocabulary would be selected by semantic domain criteria, cognates, etc.

3. Grammatical - focus on parts of speech such as prepositions, question words, discourse markers, syntax variations, etc.

4. Other - specific genre: narrative, hortatory, procedural, etc.

Each of these types will utilize its own pedagogical strategy.

 

I have chosen to begin writing stories using the paradigmatic approach. What follows is my strategy to implement it.

 

Traditionally, professors use a cumulative approach to giving reading exercises for students. That is, successive reading exercises include vocabulary from previously studied lessons. This is a valid approach, especially for the print medium, but it entails some drawbacks. Namely, valuable lesson space and time is wasted by diluting the reading material with vocabulary which is not currently in focus. I suggest that using a stricter paradigmatic approach can be helpful by focusing the lesson to one paradigm at a time. Ideally, what is needed is sufficient reading material at each level to ensure that both the paradigm and vocabulary are absorbed. How much is sufficient will differ from student to student.

 

To my knowledge the method of writing stories using only nouns from a single declension type has not been applied rigorously in traditional textbooks. I hope that through this method the student will internalize the paradigms faster than if the story uses multiple declension types. At a more advanced level, once the student has become familiar with all the paradigms, this approach can obviously be discarded.

 

To begin writing stories, choose a paradigm you wish to cover. You can use the page with selected vocabulary to help you choose the words for your story. You can write the story in English or Greek. If you choose Greek, you will have to use unicode Greek characters. For now there is no automatic way to upload your story to the web so the best way is to send your story to me by email and I will integrate it into a webpage. I have developed a semi-automatic tagging script which processes a story, relieving the author of about 95% of the work of preparing a story for this site. The 5% that is left is tweaking in certain situations. Note that only Unicode text will work with this site. The resulting code which the tagging script produces needs to be integrated into html pages to become available on this site.

 

My goal for this site is to work toward covering 1st year NT Greek language material. I have used Mounce's classification system in identifying about 48 types of noun declensions. I want to offer stories in as many of these 48 types as possible. Some types, however, have limited numbers of words in them, so it might not be possible to write stories with nouns only from a single type.

 

For verbs I will initially focus on covering only the indicative voice and active tenses (no middles and passives). This means for verb tenses I hope to cover: present, imperfect, aorist, future and perfect indicative paradigms, in that order. I also will include the imperative voice to allow for more creative writing.

 

I am planning for possibly 3 different reading levels in which a story gets progressively more complex and richer in vocabulary and structure. Levels 2 and 3 will add additional parts of speech such as adjectives and prepositions, as well as more vocabulary from the declension type in focus. By re-writing a story into more complex forms I hope to limit the amount of new material a student must work through in order to keep motivation high while continuing exposure to more vocabulary from the same declension type and other parts of speech. I don’t know yet how much material is needed for the average student to be able to internalize a paradigm through stories, but providing lots of graded reading practice cannot be wrong when the goal is learning to read another language.

 

At an advanced level, stories can be written without being restricted to morphological criteria. This opens up the writing process to normal creative juices. Some genre suggestions: Stories can be realistic or fables (e.g. where animals speak), simple re-writes of Biblical material such as parables, or even fairy tales re-told in Koine Greek.

Story plots can also be recycled for the more advanced levels by adding more complex material such as adjectives, adverbs, questions, conditional statements, prepositions, etc. to the original story.

At an advanced stage stories can be written to teach things such as expressions and advanced grammatical features.

 

 

My principles for writing stories for this site:

• The most important principle in choosing story vocabulary is morphology not frequency. The reason for this is that the stories are primarily vehicles for learning the paradigms. For the nouns, therefore, choose vocabulary from within a single declension type.
• Write the story using singular subjects and objects (the script will produce the plurals).
• Use the nouns or proper names in all 4 or 5 cases. This does not mean that every noun must be in all 4 cases, but in each story, all cases must be represented. If possible, try to use at least 1 noun in all cases. This will ensure that the reader will encounter the complete paradigm in each story.
• It might be possible to re-use (recycle) some stories if we write them using only proper names (interaction between people). For such stories, we would only have to use different names and we get a new story for another declension type. Because the script allows for masculine and feminine controls, this is already built in at this point. (What about neuter nouns?) This needs to be carefully planned and explained to the reader so they know which forms they will encounter.
• As you move a story to the next level of difficulty the basic plot can remain the same, or you can write a new plot with additional words. Additional material such as adjectives, adverbs, questions, conditional statements, etc. can be added to provide new learning material. This strategy should not be discounted because such re-working of stories reduces the amount of new material a student has to learn and focuses the lesson on the new vocabulary and grammar.
• Possible genre of stories can include: simple made-up narratives, the parables in the Gospels, Biblical narratives, or even fables and fairy tales. Biblical material will have to be simplified for the lower reading levels.

 

Nouns

Criteria for noun selection is first morphology, then frequency. Write the story using only nouns from a single declension type. For those noun types which have too few nouns in them, I suggest to use nouns from the same declension class (eg. 1^st decl, 2^nd decl, or 3^rd decl.) to supplement.

 

Use all 4 or 5 cases in each story. It would also be good to have at least 1 noun per story which occurs in all 4 or 5 cases. This enables the student to encounter the complete paradigm of that noun type. Write the story using only the singular form. The script will produce the plural forms on demand.

 

Use only one main actor and one secondary actor (or object) in the beginning. Main actor should possess something (so you can use the genitive). The story should also include an inanimate object (so you can use the dative).

 

Greek Case System
English cases	Greek cases and uses	Question	Key word
Subjective (he)	NOMINATIVE a. Subject of the verb b. Predicate of 'is' VOCATIVE (direct address)	Who? What?	"O ..."
Possessive (his)	GENITIVE a. Possessive b. Object of Preposition c. Direct object d. Ablative (separation)	Whose?	"of" "from"
Objective (him)	DATIVE a.Indirect object b.Object of Preposition c. Direct object d. Instrumental (means) e. Locative (place)	to whom? to what? by what? where?	"to" / "for" "by" / "with" "in"
Objective (him)	ACCUSATIVE a. Direct object of the verb b. Object of preposition	whom? what?
from: Basics of Biblical Greek by W.D. Mounce

 

 

Verbs

Stick to a single verb tense within the story. No passives or middles in beginner level stories. For now I will use only indicative present active verbs forms for the stories. The only exception to this might be the use of imperatives to allow for more interaction between actors. At a later stage I will add support for changing verb tenses. Level 1 and 2 stories should stay within a single verb tense, voice and mood so that the student can become systematically acquainted with a verb paradigm. At more advanced stages this restriction must be removed, of course.

Choice of verbs should be based on ability to create stories. So each paradigm will probably need its own set of verbs due to the fact that each paradigm has a unique set of nouns with which to create stories.

 

 

Vocabulary Perspective on writing stories
Level	Goal	verbs	nouns	other vocab
1	learn a single paradigm at a time	whole story in one verb tense (present, active, indicative) up to 5 common concrete action verbs such as see, eat, go, come, say etc.	5-10 nouns from one declension type use all 5 cases use names where possible	no adjectives or adverbs. Few prepositions: at, under, from, to
2	learn additional vocabulary from the same paradigm	some verbs stay in a fixed tense, others can change up to 10 verbs	11-15 nouns from one declension type	adj: big, small, much, little adv: fast, slow more prepositions
3	learn vocabulary	use tenses in normal fashion	mixing of declension types	anything is permissible.
4?	Prepare for ancient literature	it’s a jungle out there!

 

 

Comments on the story controls

• Three of the four noun controls introduce vocabulary which does not necessarily relate to the noun paradigm in focus. These are the pronoun selectors, the person selectors, and the masculine/feminine selectors. They will introduce words which are not within same declension type. Their purpose is to expose the student to additional vocabulary within the context of the story. The singular/plural selector does stay within the same declension type.
• The pronoun and the first and second person selector vocabulary never changes from story to story, so that after a while, once the reader has learned them well, they can be ignored.

 

 

Some questions on the organization of site

• How should a user progress through the stories: explore all the paradigms at the same reading level, or stick to one paradigm and progress from beginner level to the advanced level? Should both options be offered?
• Should a user be allowed to jump to any part of the site and read stories in any order, or should the sequence be structured?