Best Hebrew teaching grammar?
For the first time in a long time, I’ll be teaching first-year Hebrew in 2007–2008. To my colleagues who teach Hebrew regularly: Which of the various teaching gramamars do you prefer, and why?
14 comments Christopher Heard | Hebrew, teaching and learning
[...] Chris Heard at Higgaion asked what teaching grammars people prefer for Hebrew. I just finished a year long Hebrew course, I thought I would give my thoughts on Mark Furtato’s Beginning Biblical Hebrew. I have only taught Hebrew once, so this will not be a comparative review. Instead I will list what I found to be the pluses and minuses of this particular grammar. [...]
Chris,
I have used in the past the following grammars – Kelley, “An Introductory Grammar,” Weingreen, “A Practical Grammar,” Seow, “A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew,” and Ross, “Introducing Biblical Hebrew.” Of all of the above I dislike Seow the most. He has his own linguistic differences which the student has to learn as well as the grammar. I don’t like Weingreen because in my opinion it is dated and not user friendly. I have really liked Kelley because it has an answer book that can be purchased with the grammar that lets the student check his/her work. Ross is a better grammar in that it is better laid out for the student to interact with.
Since I am but a lowly student I cannot comment as a teacher. But I took introductory Hebrew using the Ross textbook and rather liked it. A perk for your smart students who have a Mac and use Accordance is that Ross comes as an Accordance module as well.
I looked a lot at the new Hebrew grammar at SBL by Fuller and Choi (http://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Biblical-Hebrew-Beginning-Theological/dp/0825426502/sr=8-1/qid=1167837321/ref=sr_1_1/002-5610705-6364821?ie=UTF8&s=books)
It seems to be layed out well, and I like that it has a workbook companion and a DVD companion. This means students can go over lessons they found hard or missed. Of course this could also lead to confusion if the DVD teacher presents things differently than you.
As an aside, this grammar is available for review on RBL.
Danny
I’m not a professional student. Neither am I a teacher of Hebrew. I’m a practicing pediatrician (though I teach in medical school in the Philippines), so I don’t know if my opinion holds water here. But I’ve spent a lot of my spare time for the past 8 months learning Biblical Hebrew on my own.
I have Ross’ grammar on Accordance but not in print. It is clear, straighforward and unexciting. I’ve had Kelley’s grammar for sometime though I never bothered to look at it till I became interested in learning Hebrew. It is cheap and contains a lot of information. I imagine it must be a good text if one had a teacher. But for a student self-learner the lessons are a bit too long.
The one grammar book that got me interested about learning the language was Kittel, Hoffer and Wright’s Biblical Hebrew. The method is inductive and I was soon reading passages of the Hebrew bible. I got Fuller and Choi’s grammar and Lambdin’s famous text as well from Amazon soon after. Fuller’s drills you on the words, but it’s tedious lesson after lesson – his method is a two-way process of going back to “proto-Hebrew” so you can know Biblical Hebrew. I appreciate his effort. It should probably work if Fuller was your teacher but it’s a luxury I cannot afford. I’ll just have to buy his DVD.
Finally, I got to Lambdin (after all, it was the most expensive). Lambdin’s seems the best follow-up to Kittel’s. It is well-paced, very clear, explains nuances and idioms early on, and has lots of exercises that don’t have a key. I fortunately could wade through them without the expensive Annotated Key by Williamson.
So what do I like as a non-pro student? Kittel probably as a start, but Lambdin’s is indispensable to me now, together with Jouon-Muraoka’s work. Caveat: In all likelihood, middle-aged self-learners like me (from a different culture at that) don’t have the same mind-set as your students.
Suggestion: since you write well in your blog, why not set up a section here for Hebrew learning? Codex Blogspot has suggestions for learning but only that. You can beat Tyler to it or you can both do it together.
Hey Chris,
I have used Kittel’s grammar for a number of years. I prefer an inductive approach, so it fits the bill. I also find that it is quite user friendly for undergrads; not too technical and gets them reading the text right away. You can see my discussion of Introductory Hebrew grammars here.
Has anyone had any experience with Learn Biblical Hebrew by Dobson? I am trying to choose a text for self-study and this one looks interesting, but I rarely see it mentioned.
I’m haven’t taught Hebrew either (just a lowly grad student), but my undergrad intro used Kelley’s grammar, which is excellent at times, but rather inconsistent.
This past summer I re-taught myself to prepare for a readings course (which used William’s syntax, which is wonderfully concise and easy to use), and found that Pratico/Van Pelt offers a nice balance to Kelley – filling in many of the gaps he leaves – but probably wouldn’t be as helpful by itself. Of the two, Kelley is probably the better teaching grammar, but neither is without problems.
I tried to teach myself Hebrew using Pratico/Van Pelt. It might have worked if I’d had a teacher, but I still have difficulty translating/reading without ‘cheating’ by looking at another translation.
[...] teaching grammars: update Quite some time back I asked my blog readers for advice about grammars for teaching biblical Hebrew. Those responses, and the [...]
I am looking into refreshing my biblical Hebrew which has been getting stale since seminary days.
I’ve ordered “The Hebrew Primer” by Simon, Resnikoff, and Motzkin…because it looks like a good way to refresh on the very basics as a starter. It’s hard to find any beginner text which is much good without a teacher and classroom, to clear up misunderstandings. There is also an inductive 2 year text by Charles D. Isbell, which I’ve ordered. Dr. Isbell claims a student can be reading the Hebrew Bible proficiently at the end of the course. We shall see.
Where can I find an answer key for Allen P. Ross’s, Introducing Biblical Hebrew.
How are exercises to be evaluated without an anaser key?
Reginald, I don’t know where to find an answer key for Ross’s text, since I haven’t used it. However, as to your second question, anybody teaching a Hebrew course should be able to evaluate the exercises without an answer key! That’s like asking how a math professor can grade papers if there’s no teacher’s edition with the answers printed inside!
There is an answer key for the Ross text at this site: http://biblicallanguages.wordpress.com/language-courses-i-teach/hebrew-grammar-i-first-year-course/answer-keys-to-ross-introducing-biblical-hebrew-ibh/.
I’m using both Ross and the Prattico and Van Pelt texts right now. I find that they complement each other nicely. I have the Ross on Accordance.