Hello All,
I have been giving serious thought about offering a Biblical Hebrew class at my church. I have a few reservations about this project, but I also think this could be a great experience for me and for those involved.
I would like to use an inductive grammar (Bonnie Kittel’s Biblical Hebrew: Text and Workbook. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press 2005.). However, this grammar is a bit pricey (the entire 3 piece set is $80 new on Amazon). I have yet to find a better inductive grammar that gets students into scripture as quickly (or as effectively as Bonnie). This may be an issue for some who will take my class, because the church does not have the budget to even subsudize these books. There are excellent free grammars available (Putnam’s and Cook and Holmstedt’s Grammars), but this is not the pedagogical approach to language aquisition that I am looking to employ. Also it is easier to walk away from a class that you are not financially invested in. Does anyone have any suggestions (besides using Lambdin, Pratico & Van Pelt, etc)?
Also, there are some people who are interested in taking this class that have major test anxieties; however, I don’t know of any other ways to find out where I need to help my students other than testing them on the material covered. Does anyone have some creative strategies for this issue?
Also do you have any games that we could play that would aid in their aquisition of BH? I have been giving some thought to a Win, Lose, or Draw game. In this game we would use vocabulary words from 3 or more chapters and play a game of pictionary. The team with the most right answers (or the fastest to work through all of their words) win.
Please feel free to share your thoughts and/or anticdotes, especially those who have taught Hebrew in this setting (that means Daniel, Tonya, and Mandy).
