Every student’s journey into the languages places them in one of these four levels: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, or Expert. The lists below give more details on what each of those achievements look like for both Greek and Hebrew and will help you navigate the content and studies published by Binguist. Don’t be surprised if you can’t seem to fit exclusively into one category, though. Language learning is fluid, and everyone will wander up and down the levels throughout life depending on how familiar we keep ourselves with the language at a given time.
Greek Basic
- Student of approximately 0-1 college semesters, no experience needed.
- Vocab Familiarity: Presumably none, perhaps nouns and verbs occurring 201+ times in New Testament.
- Has achieved: Handwriting, pronunciation familiarity.
- Has working knowledge of: English grammar and sentence structure, the concept of verb inflection.
- Needs introduction for most concepts.
- Focuses on learning: Prepositions, Nouns and Pronouns, the Article, Adjectives, Active Indicative verbs.
- Recommended resources: A Greek bible, an introductory textbook, its appendix and dictionary, vocabulary aids.
Hebrew Basic
- Student of approximately 0-1 college semesters, no experience needed.
- Vocab Familiarity: Presumably none, perhaps nouns and verbs occurring 200+ in Old Testament.
- Has achieved: Handwriting, pronunciation familiarity.
- Has working knowledge of: Alphabet and vowels, English grammar and sentence structure, the concept of verb inflection.
- Needs introduction for most concepts.
- Focuses on learning: nouns, prepositions, adjectives, Qal Verbs.
- Recommended resources: A Hebrew Bible, a language textbook, its appendix and dictionary, vocabulary aids.
Greek Intermediate
- Student of approximately 1-3 college semesters.
- Vocab Familiarity: 50+ occurrences.
- Has achieved: Pronunciation fluency, use of Active Indicative verbs, 1st and 2nd declension nouns.
- Has working knowledge of: the concept of tense, voice, and mood; identifying parts of speech.
- Focuses on learning: Other moods, tenses, and voice besides Active Indicative; 3rd declension nouns; contract and liquid verbs; -μι verbs.
- Recommended resources: A Greek bible, an introductory textbook, its appendix and dictionary, other dictionaries, vocabulary aids.
Hebrew Intermediate
- Student of approximately 1-3 college semesters.
- Vocab Familiarity: 70+ occurrences.
- Has achieved: Pronunciation fluency, use of article, nouns, adjectives, and Qal Perfect verbs.
- Has working knowledge of: the Qal stem, strong and weak verbs, identifying prefixes, suffixes, construct chains, and parts of speech.
- Focuses on learning: Other verb stem paradigms.
- Recommended resources: A Hebrew bible, a language textbook, its appendix and dictionary, other dictionaries, vocabulary aids, a lexicon.
Greek Advanced
- Student of approximately 3-4 college semesters.
- Vocab Familiarity: 25+ occurrences.
- Has achieved: Reading familiarity, probably completed an entire introductory textbook.
- Has working knowledge of: the entire Greek verbal system and parts of speech.
- Focuses on: Expanding knowledge of grammar and complex topics, expanding vocab, introduction to textual criticism, and application through translation.
- Recommended resources: Greek bible with critical apparatus, a grammar textbook, translation commentaries and exegetical guides, BDAG and/or other lexicons.
Hebrew Advanced
- Student of approximately 3-4 college semesters.
- Vocab Familiarity: 50+ occurrences.
- Has achieved: Reading familiarity, probably completed an entire introductory textbook.
- Has working knowledge of: the entire Hebrew verbal system and parts of speech.
- Focuses on learning: Expanding knowledge of grammar and complex topics, expanding vocab, introduction to textual criticism, and application through translation.
- Recommended resources: A Hebrew bible with critical apparatus, a grammar textbook, translation commentaries and exegetical guides, a lexicon.
Greek Expert
- Student of approximately 4+ semesters.
- Vocab Familiarity: 10+ occurrences.
- Has achieved: Reading Fluency
- Has extensive experience in reading and translation.
- Focuses on: Translation, teaching, and producing resources.
Hebrew Expert
- Student of approximately 4+ semesters.
- Vocab Familiarity: 10+ occurrences.
- Has achieved: Reading Fluency
- Has extensive experience in reading and translation.
- Focuses on: Translation, teaching, and producing resources.