Vocabulary Friends

A few days back, @alysonrwalker asked a question about vocabulary: "@McOxen how long does it take for a student to learn vocab? My boss asked & I thought you might know." Here's my answer, and the first post of what I hope will be many about language learning.

Currently, I'm of the mind that there's a moment when a word is learned.  Harnessing that moment and reproducing it is learning to learn. We have to harness the moment when we put a word in our head and have access to it there, rather than on paper. This takes complete concentration and attention.

Of course, learning can be forgotten––especially if we don't practice what we've learned. In this way, learning vocab is a lifelong process. We're always learning language––even English. We pick up words, learn new collocations, phrases, slang. This, I suppose is the bad answer to the question: "How long does it take to learn vocab?"   ≥ F O R E V E R

But this is also good news. Because of the way that we learn and learn vocab, it's important to USE what we've learned. By that, I mean that we need to learn words in context. For example, take (perhaps) the most common real life situation of learning vocab: meeting someone and learning their name. As the old trick says, use their name 3 times in that first conversation and you'll have it down. If you really want to remember the person, learn about them or, better yet, have a shared experience with them.

The same is true of vocab. Learn it in context. I've found that if I just can't get a word in my head, I look it up in a story that I know well and associate it to the story, or a verse that I already have memorized. In this way, I attach words to the stories that I try to read and re-read, the stories that are a part of The Story.  Just like learning someone's name, we need to learn vocabulary as it is connected to the word's story and, if we can, share a life-experience with the word.  

Take a word that I just learned today הרה = conceive or be pregnant.  I learned the word in context of Genesis 16, where Sarai is unable to become pregnant and gives her servant Hagar to Abram so that she may conceive.  The word shows up over and over in the context of the story––driving the story-line forward.  But I can also relate to the word myself through lives of friends who have had difficulty conceiving.  Indeed, the desperation and joy that I've experienced helps me to get to know Sarai, Abram, and Hagar as they pursue הרה.   

This leads me to a final tip of what not to do. Artificial mnemonics aren't all that effective for learning vocab. These mnemonics just take up extra hard drive space and just give you something else to forget. You really need to learn the word and how its used within the language. 

I hope to post more on vocabulary and vocabulary building in the future, but for now, check out these resources, which will keep your nose in texts––which is the best way to know your vocabulary friends.

English and Hebrew resources––take 'em to church with you. You'll still be able to read when called on, and you'll be able to follow in church:

The NET/NA27 (fantastic helps in the footnotes!) is down to $25!

JPS/MT is also a fantastic tool! 

Pentecost and Obedience

This year I have been surprised with how quickly Pentecost has come. 

. :  Resurrection  . . .  Ascension  . . .  Pentecost  : . 

It's come upon me quickly, but I've imagined that these few days must have felt very long to the disciples, huddled up, waiting. "Don't leave Jerusalem," Jesus had told them. 

And then, in their obedience, the Kingdom broke in. 

As "Holy Spirit Christians" obedience gets a bad rap. The thought goes: "We don't need the Law, we need the Spirit." The problem is that the Spirit guides us in keeping the Law (cf. Jer 33, Romans 8, etc.) Another more difficult problem is that the New Testament itself is chock-full of commands––many of these are directly connected to and quoted from the Old Testament Law (see 1 Cor 5-7). 

At Pentecost, we remember that the disciples obeyed Jesus' command. I'm convinced that obedience is the space of the Kingdom breaking into ordinary life. 

First we should clear something up. The disciples didn't obey in order to become part of the Kingdom. That doesn't work and never has––yes, never, not even in the Old Testament!  Rather we obey because our Lord, our master, our head tells us to do something. Sometimes it's, "Wait."  Sometimes it's, "build a fence around the roof of your houses (Deuteronomy 22:8)."   (We might need to think about this one before we go and buy fencing.) We don't obey to become God's children. We obey because we are God's children. 

When we obey, God does his work 

   in us, 

      among us, 

         through us. 

This becoming and being is something I'm learning from my three year old. He doesn't have to obey in order to become my son. He just is my son. No amount of obedience or disobedience changes that. But in his obedience, especially in his continued and ordinary obedience, he'll become the kind of person that Terese and I are forming him into. (And hopefully, we're obeying and being formed by our Father as we guide him.) 

But as my three year old is learning, obedience isn't hard to understand, it's hard to do. In Deuteronomy 30 Moses asks,

   Are these expectations too high or difficult for us?  

         No!  

   The commands are among us. 

      They're do-able. 

         They're livable.

One example is Deuteronomy's frequent refrain of caring for the widow, fatherless, and foreigner among us. This call to care for people among us is something we do as we live––like eating or sleeping or bathing. Caring for others is part of our everyday lives. We care for those we live with by preparing meals and sharing our table, changing diapers, laughing, talking about our day, or having difficult conversations. There may be times when we care for others in extraordinary ways or circumstances––like tragedies or opening our home indefinitely to someone who needs a safe place––but this extraordinary obedience flows from ordinary obedience. Pentecost proclamation follows post-ascension waiting. 

Obedience isn't difficult to understand, it's difficult to do. At Pentecost we celebrate the gift of empowerment: as the people of God we are now empowered to obey. Pentecost reminds us that ours is to faithfully obey. (Notice the importance of faith here: faithfully obey.) We empty ourselves so that we are in a position to do what's expected of us:  Love God. Love people.

The disciples provide us with a great example waiting in Jerusalem. Like them, when we obey the Kingdom breaks in among us. 

On the Birthdays of Hobbits

In the opening pages of Lord of the Rings (LotR), Tolkien recounts the story of the "Long Expected Party."  In it he makes the point that Hobbits give gifts on their birthdays. In fact, they seldom go more than a week without receiving a gift from someone whom they know. This detail has always intrigued me. And tonight, I'm intrigued anew.

In the next chapter, we're told the story of Gollum––who he is, how he came to possess (or be possessed by) the Ring. We learn that Smeagol's people were very like Hobbits, short in stature, etc. But more than this, they were also made of sterner stuff, much like Hobbits. Gandalf muses that Gollum's ability to resist the pull of the Ring would surprise those even wiser than himself. Even before the Ring, his interest is under roots and under hills, and the Ring couldn't coax Gollum into power. Gollum only looked down (a reference to Augustine's looking in on ourselves, perhaps?). He cannot look up, and the Ring, if it was ever to get out of the caves, must leave him. 

But I suspect that Tolkien is hinting at something in the way that he tells Gollum's story in the second chapter. Hidden in one of Gollum and Bilbo's many similarities is a significant contrast: the birthday. Gollum acquires the Ring on his birthday––his birthday present, so went the lie he told himself. Smeagol (that is Gollum) told Deagol, his friend who actually found the Ring, to give it to him "because it's my birthday."  Deagol refused, so Smeagol killed him. Smeagol wanted a gift on his birthday. And in the end, he got one. 

But Hobbits give gifts on their birthday. Since I spend a lot of my time thinking about what kind of culture was formed by the OT Law, what struck me tonight is the culture that is created by giving gifts on one's birthday. This little piece of culture does something to Hobbits. Like a crooked sapling  pulled by the constant force of a wire, it grows them straighter. It forms them. And in the end, they are hardened, upright, and strong. At least in the fantasy world of The Shire, giving gifts allows Bilbo to do what no living creature before him was able to do: to give the Ring away. Of course, it took some coaxing by Gandalf, but in Bilbo's own words, he threw the Long Expected Party––giving gifts to everyone in the Shire on his birthday––so that it would be easier to part with the Ring.

I venture that celebrating others is one of those things that might form a person into selflessness. Celebrating others pulls on us constantly, forming and hardening us upright and strong. In the end I suspect that it might make it possible to relinquish the thing(s) that is most precious to us. A lesson we in the West desperately need to learn.

Hobbits give gifts on their birthday. I'm going to make it a point to celebrate others, too.