Second Language Acquisition for Biblical Studies with Jennifer Noonan

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Jennifer Noonan about her book "A Handbook of Second Language Acquisition for Biblical Studies." She talks about the relationship between explicit and implicit language knowledge, the raw materials of language acquisition, the importance of reading fluency, and the nature of vocabulary acquisition.
Jennifer Noonan grew up on a small farm in northern Ohio. She completed her BA at Malone College (Canton, OH) and MA at Ashland Theological Seminary (Ashland, OH). She received her PhD in Old Testament and Semitic Languages from Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati, OH), which is where she met her husband, who teaches Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew for the Columbia Bible Seminary of CIU. They have an 11-year-old daughter, who is the extrovert of the family. In addition to teaching Hebrew and Old Testament part-time for CIU, Jennifer also leads a Bible study for the CIU seminary women, gives piano lessons, and teaches online courses for Liberty University. Jennifer also enjoys cooking, photography, needlework, and traveling.
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[@vusumzingceke6518]

This has been a very fruitful conversation. Thank you

[@user-tb2vc3gd5w]

Re: vocab. But this is why reading editions are so valuable. If a student of so-called New Testament Greek learns every word that occurs 5 times or more (e.g., using Van Voorst), in their first or second year, and then takes the reader GNT and memorizes the words on the page not known (it won't be much) and read 1-2 chapters 2-3x in a sitting this way.

[@GandalfTheWise0002]

My experience is in strong agreement with this. I now typically run about 80%/90% implicit practice versus 10%/20% explicit. About 15 years ago, I tried to figure out why after 30 odd years of working on Greek that I could only painfully translate a sentence or so per evening. I almost gave up because at that rate, I wasn't going to finish the NT, let alone start the LXX, in my lifetime. In a last ditch effort to salvage anything, I serendipitously ran across an online community of self-taught polyglots. I spent a couple years reading their articles, videos, etc. which led into the world of academic research on SLA. I've since read the GNT a handful of times with increasing comprehension. I'm on my third time through the LXX. I started learning Spanish and am now on my 3rd time through the NVI. I've started Hebrew and can comprehend (via listening and reading) the first chapters in Genesis and a few Psalms. I've basically been putting into practice principles similar to those Dr. Noonan described for about the past decade or so.
One of the huge gaps in SLA research and applied education is that the worlds of academia and K-12 education do not acknowledge the existence of successful independent polyglots and their practices. (The real ones who learn and use several languages for the sheer joy of it; not the "learn a language in 30 days" hucksters.) They are a bunch of disorganized mavericks, but in many ways, much innovation in language learning is coming from them. They individually experiment, talk about their experiences, others try it, and discussions/debates arise. I've frankly found a wider range of SLA research links from them than much academic research which specializes into niches. Much of the common lore and wisdom of polyglots came to similar conclusions that modern SLA research has confirmed. Polyglots by and large don't waste time on things that don't work well so they naturally converge toward practices that produce results. Unfortunately, their materials have yet to be edited and redacted into a useful form. You have to go wading through a lot of chaff to find the wheat. Interestingly, the old French company Assimil has been making self-study language courses for close to a century that balance implicit and explicit learning. The Assimil materials are also flexible enough to use different methods and practices with them.
I spent a career in R&D and analytics (via a Physics PhD) and have a BS in education and a teacher's license. As I read through the independent polyglot's work and conversations, I saw two common characteristics. 1. Each polyglot had figured out methods and materials that they actually enjoyed using. It was not drudgery for them. This was not an issue of toiling until they loved it, but rather they gravitated toward the sustainable practice of doing something daily that was not stressful and frustrating but rather satisfying and exciting. 2. Each polyglot figured out what materials and methods worked best at various stages of progress. In other words, they became efficient. Liking what you are doing keeps you coming back day after day; being efficient helps you make true gains day after day. This is what jumped me from painfully translating one NT verse per evening with help of grammar book and lexicon to being able to read increasing amounts of text with increasing comprehension and enjoyment.
Polyglots have become polyglots because each language they worked on taught them lessons about the skill of language learning itself. Because of this background, polyglots are a fountain of possible options for materials and methods to use at various stages of progress. A running joke in this community is: What is the hardest language to learn? The first one you try because you have no clue what you are doing. One of my regrets in life is that I did not discover this when I was in my teens and 20s rather than my 50s.
I personally find (YMMV, your mileage may vary) that a combination of audio and an interlinear are a great starting point as my first implicit activity. I repetitively listen, follow along w/L1 or L2, read L2, chorus the audio w/ and w/o looking at L2 text, etc. In other words, I use various combinations of methods until a passage goes from gibberish until it starts to become familiar as I listen or read it. My interest is most in reading so I tend to neglect the English to L2 direction in this practice though translating back by looking at L1 to produce L2 is something I probable should add to my routine. I usually don't use explicit methods to analyze a passage until it already "feels" comfortable and familiar. I've found (probably my physics and analytics background) that explicit work easily overpowers my brain to where I do too much processing in English in my head w/grammar and lexicon entries. It's only after a passage is familiar to me that I can use explicit material to polish my comprehension.
Anyway, my experiences. My sense of what I've seen in research and the polyglot world is that individual differences in their capabilities of using working memory, declarative memory, and procedural memory will influence how well particular methods work for each individual. This seems to be an area of active research of how to measure the "IQ" so to speak of individual's three types of memory. Also, the difference in personal interests and tastes will influence what materials and methods are enjoyable and which are stressful (where any amount of stress generates cortisol which changes body chemistry and hinders learning). Monitoring my stress level while studying has been a helpful practice which I've heard very little about.

[@SDsc0rch]

fascinating!

[@alejandroortiz9889]

Hi, thanks for sharing your experience, brother. I was very much struck by your conclusions. I am Alejandro, a 24 year old theology student, with emphasis in biblical languages here in Medellin Colombia, I am studying English at the moment with the input comprehensible method, if you want we can practice languages (I speak native Spanish) and talk a little bit about biblical languages too.

[@user-tb2vc3gd5w]

But what do we think when someone says "I'm an Egyptologist" and we say "so you know Hieroglyphs?" and they say "yes." We don't expect that they speak Egyptian; we expect that they can read Hieroglyphs. This could be something of an analogy for people who say "I'm a classical scholar" or "I know ancient Greek."
Also, I'm always curious about what different people say in Greek when they say "I know Greek." I know what *I* say--I recite the first 3, 5, 7, lines of the Iliad. Or I recite the beginning of the prologue of John's Gospel.
But this has to do with *using* spoken Greek in a way altogether different than you advocate. Suppose I recite these, and then indicate that I journal in ancient Greek. Would that suffice? Or is it the very basic small talk that can be learned on a one-pager?
I believe it is entirely reasonable, and sufficient for someone to say they "know" ancient Greek who could do the above, and then indicate that they read the texts (and if handed an ancient Gk text, they could read it aloud with a good pronunciation and explain what it means--all things considered [this is so hard; but someone studying koine should be able to do this with many koine texts; someone studying Attic, with attic authors; someone who specializes in Homer, with Homer).
What's the alternative?
If language fluency involves usage in, reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Classical language fluency should do all these with a heavy emphasis on this hierarchy: reading (aloud), writing (and reading the writing aloud), and then speaking (and only then, in using real Greek to speak). Listening is a corollary skill with the above.
When I say using real Greek, I mean using dialogues based on real Greek (like Z's), or other phase books (like Auden's).