During my fairly limited language education, I am rather glad that I had a good grasp of grammar as a result of being at school in the 50s and 60s.For my sins I have been formally exposed to the teaching of French, German, New Testament Greek, Biblical Hebrew and I have had cause to try and teach myself a little bit of Italian, Latin and Bahasa Indonesia.
It would seem to be fairly apparent that just to get into language you have to understand how you name things (nouns); how they act (verbs); and how they might be qualified (adjectives and adverbs); you probably need to know who owns what (possessives and genitives); and have some idea about what time it is (tense).
This is a fairly significant syllabus, even if it is fairly minimal.
I am not so convinced that you need to understand about gerunds, adverbial participles, the future perfect, and other ephemera...you do need to know about how to find out about this stuff...but hours of classroom time, that should also be involved in encouraging the appreciation of literature, developing the ability to evaluate written and spoken language...should not be being wasted (now that phrase/clause is a grammatical nightmare!) on rote learning only.
2 comments:
Matthew 22:1-14
Is this about an unforgiving God who will squash me like a cockroach if I don't toe the line and do what he tells me to do (or do what someone else tells me he is telling me to do)?
Or is there something a whole lot deeper here, about the God who let himself be nailed to a tree?
"What are we to make of this God who died?", as a speaker at my local church once asked.
(Sorry - I'm asking a lot of people this one - it's hard.)
Wow, I am replying to this years later
I think you have rather hit the nail on the head
My latest guru is the gentle Christian Wm Paul Young, author of Lies we believe about God & The Shack a deceptively beautiful novel about the healing nature of the Holy Trinity!
He says (paraphrasing wildly...read the books he says it better...contact me frstephenclark@gmail.com..if you need to discuss this) that the Cross is not about the punishment that God is intent on wreaking on the world. It rather says that where there is pain and suffering Adonai, our Lord God, is proclaiming I jump in there with you.
"What are we to make of this God who died?"
... this is THE question
There is nothing about you I do not love, and I am in there with you prepared to die!!
Makes more sense to me than the ridiculous Protestant anger and wrath
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