GK101 Introduction to Biblical Greek John D. Schwandt

Thanks for the question about how this program (Mobile Ed course and textbook) compares with Zondervan’s video lectures and books for Greek.  It is difficult for me to compare them too deeply since there isn’t much information on the Zondervan course description pages and a number of elements in the Mobile Ed course and text are still in development.  However, I do own a copy of Mounce’s text and can use that in this initial comparison.

Various points for comparison:

Package-

1. The Mobile Ed Certificate Program has everything included
2. It is difficult to tell if you have to purchase both the text book and the workbook separately in the Zondervan program.  I would love for someone to verify this for me.  If it is included how is it included?  Is it an e-book, or a hardcopy?  Does the student own it or rent it?

Access-

1. You can own Mobile Ed courses and have them always available for reference and refreshers.
2. The Zondervan courses are only available on subscription (currently 12 months).

Content (amount of grammar covered)-

1. Both grammars and courses cover the standard amount of material expected in a typical seminary or university Greek course.
2. There may be slight differences in terms of emphasis or treatment of some parts of the the grammar.  Typically, the parts of grammar that are introduced early in a textbook get more explanation than those at the end of a text since the later content can build upon the earlier teaching.
3. The Mobile Ed Program and textbook provides a more comprehensive treatment of third declension forms.  This is the tradition of older school approaches like Machen and Nunn.
4. Mounce probably has a longer treatment on perfect stem forms.  From a couple decades of use, he also added supplemental content such as exegetical insights from contributors. 

Approach-

1. Both grammars use a diachronic approach with the aim to reduce rote memorization.  This is one of the many reasons Bill and I get along. J
2. Mounce limits the aim for his text to teach only how to translate into English (one directional understanding.)  His text doesn’t have regular composition exercises.
3. The Mobile Ed course and text aims to teach both how to translate into English and how to compose in Greek (bidirectional understanding.)  Students or teachers can choose to ignore the composition exercises and memorizing vocabulary in both directions, but the course and text provide this type of instruction for students who want to take their understanding to that depth.
4. Mounce’s book is structured more on a reference grammar model and the Mobile Ed course follows Nunn’s classroom primer model.  The difference is that reference grammar models tend to provide everything they are going to say about an area of grammar and then move on to the next related area of grammar.  That is why Mounce doesn’t introduce verbs until nearly halfway through his program.  Another marker of this reference book approach is the topic numbering of paragraphs.
5. The classroom primer approach works in waves through a varied amount of grammatical topics.  So the Mobile Ed course presents a basic treatment of verbs in the third lesson and then moves onto some noun forms.  Then goes back and adds more detail and depth as new topics are covered.  This allows students to start using the language faster and is similar to an approach for learning modern languages.

Length-

1. The Mobile Ed course has a total of 15 hours of video but far more individual video segments (well over 100) than the Zondervan course.  So the video content is concise and focused on the content of nearly every lesson in the textbook.  The textbook isn’t published yet so I can’t compare its length to Mounce’s.  Another aspect that can’t be compared yet is the amount of content in links to other books in the Logos library system.  This is really what makes Mobile Ed different than all other programs.  The course isn’t tied to just one book or author’s opinion.  It is connected to library.  Mounce’s text hardly has any footnotes or references to classic works form other authors.  Also I’m looking forward to the Faihtlife Group integration with this course where I can interact with conversations within the transcript using community notes.  Those conversations will accessible to anyone working through the course and will grow with future students.  So the length of the content of this course will be somewhat dynamic.
2. The Zondervan course is two separate 16 hour programs where Mounce covers material from groups of lessons in each one-hour unit.  I haven’t purchased it so I can’t comment on how concise and focused the lectures are.

I believe we are still on track for shipping it this year.  Last chance messaging for people to get the pre-order discount should be going out. [:)]