Some time last year, I won a giveaway from Shaun Tabbat who blogs at Bible Geek Gone Wild. Along with a couple of other books, Shaun sent to me Kenneth Berding's Sing and Learn New Testament Greek. I didn't realize how effective this sing-along method would be. The up-beat tempo of the music and the familiarity of all of the tunes was a hit with my children, even though they didn't have much of a clue about what they were singing.
Well, this evening we were in the minivan headed to the first meeting of the missions conference at church when I mentioned that our speaker is from Greece and that he might say some things in Greek. Out of the blue, my son, Asa, said that he knew the Greek alphabet and he proceeded to sing the tune we learned months ago when we last listened to this CD. That was months ago, if you didn't catch that, and he remembered it nearly perfectly. I was amazed! I wish that I had used a tool like this way back when I was studying Greek.
Well, I definitely need to brush up on my Greek. When we got home, Asa found the CD and we have been listening to it again. Maybe listening to this with the kids will help me re-learn the declension tables.
Great stuff!
View this short video introduction by Kenneth Berding (or watch it on the Zondervan web page).
Listen to the Alphabet here.
The Amazon page provides a link for you to be able to purchase and download this from Audible.com.
Jason, I was pretty disappointed with this CD. I could not get past the style of music and my kids scolded me for listening to it when I first turned it on. "What are you listening to, Dad?!?" We have pretty conservative music standards in our home and so this didn't work for me. I wish he could have produced a similar CD with just a simple piano tune.
ReplyDeleteAndy
Sorry it doesn't work for you, Andy. I understand you're perspective. I'm sure someone has a lighter version, somewhere.
ReplyDeleteOne of my pastors commented via email and said that "a Hebrew professor at RTS (years ago) taught Hebrew songs which we recited each day in class. He said that he wanted to use music so we could get 'an ear for the language.'
When I visited Gordon-Conwell (Charlotte) a couple of years ago, they talked a good bit about using music as a learning device in their language classes. Using music is far more effective than cramming it in the plain, mechanical way I did. I think that this is an excellent idea and I wish that I had made use of it years ago.