[B-Greek] Teaching and Learning Tools + Ancient Greek Grammar war?
Chet A. Creider
creider at uwo.ca
Tue Feb 28 08:34:38 EST 2006
Dear Andrew--
Please excuse this late reply to your query. I have not used the texts
you ask about myself, but I met an MA student in English a few years
ago who had used Balme and Lawall, _Athenaze_ as an undergrad and had
just purchased Hardy and Quin, _Greek: An Intensive Course_. I looked
both books over quite carefully. The former would be an excellent book
to start Greek with and the latter to follow it up with, although there
are alternatives that are similar and probably just as good. For
example, the JACT, _Reading Greek_ series followed by Mastronarde's
_Introduction to Attic Greek_. Both Athenaze and Reading Greek start
out with connected narrative and dialogue (it would be nice if someone
would write an introduction to NT Greek along similar lines). The
follow-up books are very difficult, not because they are not
well-organized and executed, but because they lack readings with a
common thread.
My own paths to Greek, a language I came to rather late in life, may be
relevant. I first studied, in a regular university course, Groton's
Alpha and Omega. The book was only so-so, but the instructor helped a
great deal. Then I worked through _The First Greek Book_ by John
Williams White. Originally written in 1896, I used a revision made in
1937 which I was fortunate to be able to purchase used. The book's
main attractive feature is that it works from Lesson 13 through 80
through the first 8 chapters of Xenophon's _Anabasis_ (initially
simplified, later much less so). This is a very exciting story and
the continuous narrative really held my interest. Then I worked through
Mastronarde, an experience I found quite painful as the reading excerpts
are not long enough, although a few are continued from one lesson to
the next. The book's presentation of Greek grammar, however, is excellent.
After that I studied NT Greek, but that is off-topic for your
question. A year or two ago, along with Bert DeHaan of this list, I
worked through Pharr's Homeric Greek textbook on an online Textkit
group where three experts corrected the work the students submitted. I
thoroughly enjoyed this and since the "connected narrative" was Book 1
of the Iliad, there was no probably sustaining interest. (I should
note, however, that I had read quite a bit of Homer, and Hesiod, before
doing this -- not that that helped prevent my making many silly
mistakes in my assignments :-( .) I believe that there are Textkit
groups working through White's _The First Greek Book_ from time to
time, and I would recommend this highly.
Although I'm familiar with it by title only, I wish that there were a
book for Greek like John Trauptman's _Conversational Latin for Oral
Proficiency_. Randall Buth's NT Greek course comes close, but lacks
structured drills (I still recommend it, however). I don't know of
anything comparable for Classical Greek. [I would only recommend
Trauptman's book or one like it for Greek to accompany a traditional
text, however.]
To summarize this overlong reply: in my own study of Greek I have found
traditional texts which combined systematic presentation of grammar
with reading and dialogue selections which were sustained over most the
book best. And as Carl has written, after learning the grammar of Greek,
one simply reads and reads and reads some more (and is never bored).
This two-step process (first learning the grammar and then doing a lot
of sustained reading) is what I have followed with other languages I have
studied. The only difference with Greek is that whereas one can learn
the grammars of, e.g. Spanish, German, French in a year and become quite
comfortable reading the languages after two or three more years of
intensive work, learning Greek grammar takes at least two years and
reading Greek with any degree of fluency quite a few more.
Chet Creider
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