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# Writing and Speaking for comprehension, some ideas.
- URL: https://thepatrologist.com/writing-and-speaking-for-comprehension-some-ideas/
- Published: 2015-05-25T09:01:58.000Z
- Updated: 2015-05-25T09:01:58.000Z
- Author: Seumas Macdonald
- Tags: Pedagogy, #Migrated-1784156034836, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 22:54

Here are some ideas I was tossing around with some students last week. Let me list the exercises first.

1. Read a passage, 10 or so verses or more, at a measured pace. No analysis, just ask yourself, “what percentage of that did I understand?"
2. Read a passage and translate meaning word for word without analysing forms or trying to put into English word order.
3. Listen to someone else read a passage aloud that you’re unfamiliar with.
4. Listen to someone else read a passage aloud that you are familiar with.
5. *Transcribe* out a passage by sight.
6. *Transcribe* out a passage by dictation.

I think of no.1 as a kind of gauging exercise. It gives you a sense of where your language is at in relation to a text/author. Generally I think you want to do free reading at around the 90% and more range, with some work in the 90%-80% range. Below 80% the amount of comprehension drops significantly that it's hard work and not as rewarding, below 70% and you begin to miss too much to be really worthwhile for free reading. If it's 100% then, on the one hand 'Great!', but on the other hand you are not really stretching yourself to acquire new input, though you are reinforcing and solidifying your current competency.

I like to do no.2 with students sometimes because it forces them to stop parsing, analysing, and especially *second-guessing*. I want them to blurt out what they are thinking, and move on. If we get to the end of the sentence/passage and it's all a mess, then we can say, "okay, let's back up, let's see where this language train de-railed."

3 and 4 are really challenging, especially if you're working in a language that you primarily focus on text-based work (Greek, Latin, etc..). If you're the listener, you are doing something you're not really used to, and that's giving you input in a different way to reading. The use of familiar passages is going to give you better comprehension and so it's going to work at a different level. Meanwhile, working with similar but unfamiliar texts (Apostolic Fathers, narrative portions of the Greek OT translations, etc..) is going to put you in a familiar field, but out of your comfort zone. On the reading side, students have a tendency (I think), to subvocalise, but not to vocalise, and there's a big difference! The reader gains benefits in being forced to read aloud *for someone else's hearing*. As this kind of exercise developed, you would work more on phrasing, emphasis, diction, discourse and rhetorical analyses.

5 and 6 are things I'm experimenting with. On 5, I have recently started an ambitious project to transcribe my own copy of the Greek NT. I think it will take about forever, but copying out a text is again a different kind of practise. It's input, because you are getting the language, and it's a kind of highly structured output, since you are reproducing it. Having written out ...δὲ ἐγέννησεν more than a few times in Matthew 1, I have the written form of that particular verb inflection really solid! I suspect the pay-off of a lot of transcription would be much better composition and probably speech.

I haven't done 6, but I suspect it would be a nice and very challenging combination or 3-5\. In fact, I would assign exercises 5 and 6 to those parts of NT/Greek courses that deal with textual criticism. There's no better way to experience the kind of errors scribes make than to face the challenges of scribing oneself. Give them a copy of a majuscule manuscript and ask them to transcribe it, perhaps even to put it into miniscule with accents, or whatever, you could have a lot of fun and variation on this.