The Ransomed

As a second year student at the PTC, I’ve taken up learning Biblical Hebrew. I learnt Greek last year, and really let it get on top of me. I’ll make a few comments on what I’ve found helpful in language learning, and some of the things that I haven’t.

Things I’ve found helpful

• Look for a good lecturer. A good lecturer will always aim to make things as clear as possible, and make his/her line of thought clear for the whole class. It is easy for some lecturers to rush over thoughts or reasons for doing things the way that they do. While it is not always your choice who lectures you in languages, this should be very high on your list of priorities when you are choosing your class. If you are weighing up whether or not to take a language subject, check who is teaching it. It could make a big difference!
• Always read the relevant chapters through in your textbook before and after the class. The book will almost always put things straight in your head if you aren’t understanding something. Remember: the writer of the book is published. Your lecturer may not be! Even if your lecturer is the one who wrote the textbook, read it though anyway, and maybe check another textbook for reference.
• Flash cards for vocabulary and paradigms. And I’m talking physical flash cards here, not ones on your computer. Physical cards can be whipped out anytime; in front of the TV, on the train, at your desk. Lugging a laptop round and booting it up every time you want to revise your vocab is not advisable. I’ve spent some of my book bursary on these Greek cards, and on this Hebrew big boy. Although they don’t have the paradigms on the cards, they get you most of the way, even if you are lazy like me!
• Knuckle down, and don’t expect it to be easy. Greek is easy to begin, and gets much harder. Hebrew is the opposite. You have hard work ahead of you. Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. (Pro 16:3)

Things I haven’t found helpful

• Expecting to learn by osmisis. You won’t learn enough if you just turn up to class. Trust me. Pretty soon, you’ll be sitting there, stressed out of your brain, because they will be talking about perfective aspectual morpheme declensions, or something like that. It Won’t Work.
• Expecting to learn by translation. At the end of first year, I thought I had done quite well because I could translate Mark 1-5 quite well. I had no idea about grammar, I could just look at the passage and make an educated guess as to how the words interacted. I no longer think this. I am now in a Greek class with third year students who almost make me cry with terror every week. Learn your grammar, learn your paradigms. No matter how smart you are, you will fail somewhere down the line if you don’t.
• Getting frustrated when things don’t sink in. Go and get some tea. Have a relax. Read the Bible, in English for a while. Don’t expect more of yourself than you can do. Remember, you spent years learning English, and that was when you were saturated in it every day of the week. Calm down, and divide up your work into managable sections. It is very easy to be overwhelmed, I know. Work hard, but not too hard. The crazy smart guy in your class who knows everything still has to work hard too!

These are some of the things I’ve learnt over the last year and a bit. I hope they will bless some up and coming languages star. If I had this advice this time last year, things might have been very different!

How about you guys? Any thoughts on what helps you?