Vols. 1, 2, and 3 and the hypothetical class.
Of course, we start with review of last week. Fill in the holes. Answer questions. Go over a bit of homework. Make sure they caught the dual inflections and can recognize it. Moving on…
Most of today’s info is lexical (vocab). This means the bulk of the “learning/memorizing” done by students will be done outside of class. The gist of today’s lesson will be introduction to new, relevant lexical items (prepositions and adjectives… duh). The new “grammatical” info is simple- some prepositions are affixed to their object, some are maqeffed, some are independent morphemes. The newest grammar info about prepositions they’ll learn is to identify determinedness difference between a-type vowels or vocal shevas under the affixed prepositions- ב and ל and כ. The BBH textbook does a quick and clean job of explaining this. Once more, its not so important that the students learn all this info right now. They need to hear it and know where to find the information in their textbook. It will sink in with time as they work on their own and with classmates. It will not sink in by you repeating it over and over.
The adjective info is easy. If you learned nouns, you know adjectives. The new grammar info to learn is the basic three ways adjectives modify nouns (simple description, predication, and substantive adjectives) and how the definite article ה fits in. Won’t take long. Introduce the info. Do some examples together. Then turn em loose on the workbook. The translation exercises are most relevant.
By next week, they should be able to translate and identify parts-of-speech in a phrase like הַמֶלֶך וְהָעַם בַּעִיר.
Now’s a good time to give them a speech on vocab and offer tools. The best tool, in our experience, is modern Hebrew. It is the fastest and cleanest way to get Hebrew vocab in your head with respect to the polysemous nuances that activate Hebrew morphemes. But, there are many words in the Bible that you need to know that aren’t in modern Hebrew. Other helpful tools for biblical Hebrew vocab are everywhere. Talk to your students and ask what suits them best. Some do well with digital help. Some just want audio help. Some want it all and will ask how to get in on doing some modern Hebrew. There’s not a right way to do vocab (yet, perhaps ever) so its best for each student to do what works for them. Whatever they do, they need to do it.
Next time- pronouns and pronominal suffices.
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