[B-Greek] Fwd: The new Polis Greek method

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Jun 1 11:14:24 EDT 2009


The following message was sent me this morning by Christophe Rico; as  
you will note, it offers his own accounting of what his method is, the  
teaching experience on which it is based, the nature of the textbook,  
the prospects of an English-language version in the offing -- and,  
especially welcome, I think, an assurance that the textbook, albeit  
titled and rubricked 'en français' to some extent, is nevertheless  
almost wholly composed in Koine Greek, to the extent of having Koine  
Greek answers to exercises in an appendix, should be accessible even  
to those who have, to paraphrase the bard of Stratford, "little Greek  
and less French."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
===
Begin forwarded message:

> From: Christophe Rico <ricochristophe at gmail.com>
> Date: June 1, 2009 8:44:59 AM EDT
> To: cwconrad2 at mac.com
> Subject: The new Polis Greek method
>
> Sir,
>
> My name is Christophe Rico, I am a friend of Randall Booth. I am the  
> author
> of the new *Polis *Greek method. Following the suggestion of Daniel  
> Street,
> I decicded to write to you to give more information about this book.  
> If you
> find it useful, you can spread this information to all the people  
> who might
> be interested by it.
>    The method was published in February 2009 at *Editions du Cerf*.  
> It is
> now available at amazon.fr or at fnac.com You will find it there  
> under the
> heading "Polis". It also available at amazon.ca but only under the  
> heading
> of the subtitle of the book (*Parler le grec ancien comme une langue
> ancienne*).
>    The contents of the book have been tested during for the last 10  
> years,
> teaching Greek language as a living language. It is focused on the  
> Koine
> dialect of the first Century AD (New Testament, Plutarch, etc.). It  
> includes
> a CD with the recordings of all the dialogs of the book.
>    The method is a *method of living Greek*, rather than a *living  
> method
> of Greek*. That means that the characters of the book (six students  
> and
> their teacher, among others) are set in a 21st Century environment,  
> even if
> they talk Koine Greek. I have had to coin (or rather, to borrow fro  
> Modern
> Greek) two or three words in order to refer to modern realities as the
> phone, for instance. But those are exceptions that are always marked  
> with an
> asterisk in the vocabulary of the book.
>    The illustrations were made by an artist from Catalonia (Pau  
> Morales)
> and I can say that they have been prepared with a lot of care. The  
> artist
> got first an idea of the personality of each character and then he  
> created
> their drawings.
>    The stress in this method is rather on grammatical skills,  
> following the
> pace of natural language acquisition. So we start with the  
> imperatives, both
> aorist and present, because this is the first thing that a Greek boy  
> or girl
> will learn.
>    I am already preparing an English edition, but I have first to  
> finish
> volumes 2 and 3. That means that the English edition will be available
> within at least 3 years. But anyway, there is very little French in  
> the
> book, so it can be used also by someone who has a poor knowledge of  
> French.
> All the solutions to the exercices are at the end of the volume, in  
> Greek
> (there are no translation exercises).
>    My experience as a teacher is that the average student eventually
> manages to read (without need of translating) the narrative texts of  
> the New
> Testament, after two years of study (3 hours of teaching per week +  
> personal
> study).
> I am ready to answer to more questions. Any person interested can  
> visit the
> site poliskoine.com and write to me through that site.
> Thank you very much for your kind interest in this method.
>
> Christophe Rico







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