gingermilk
Depends on what your goal is regarding learning classical languages, I think it is fair to say that a heavy emphasis on grammar is overkill for those who learn these languages for the sole purpose of reading classical texts in their most original state, but maybe necessary for those who want to analyze classical languages from a more linguistic perspective and in this case practicability is not considered as much.
I studied biblical philology at university, so I don't mind the grammar per sé, but I do think it becomes an issue when it's given precedence over reading. And it's not just the grammar by itself, you are also given poor advice like to "start with the predicate" when reading, which turns the sentence into a crossword puzzle. I think that good reading skills are an important foundation for philology. For example, I think most people would be unimpressed by a Proust scholar who couldn't read In Search of Lost Time without having to consult a dictionary and an extensive grammar commentary every couple of words, but this is unfortunately the case with classical and especially biblical philology.
A lot of it just has to do with a declining interest in classics. Historically, Latin and Greek were taught more like living languages, but that's harder to justify today. The grammar-translation approach is also easier to organise a curriculum for and gives superficially quicker results. In my first Greek class we were "reading" the Bible within two months, which looks good on paper and everyone except me and another person were priest candidates who just needed some academic credits in Greek to get ordained, but really we were stumbling over every other word and needed to rely on extensive grammar commentaries to make sense of 1 John, which is supposed to be very simple. Of course, by using this approach they were able to constrain what really should have been a full semester to a half-semester class.
Woland
and without that grammar being better explained I can imagine you might end up with some pretty incorrect assumptions about things.
This is a good point. I also think it can feel a bit tedious at times if you already know what Ohrberg is trying to demonstrate. I think LLPSI mostly works because Latin has had such an enormous influence on European languages. I don't think an LLPSI for Sanskrit or even Greek would work, or at least they would be incredibly tedious to read.
