Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

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AndreiosDiscipulus
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Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by AndreiosDiscipulus »

I'm currently a Greek student at a school in Sydney, Australia and this year I'm taking the Classical Greek Accelerated (GKA) elective that my school offers and as you would expect there are only 4 of us in the entire class compared to around 10 in the regular Greek elective class (GK).

After around 12 hours of Greek in total, we're on 4α of Athenaze Book I. We mainly take turns reading a few sentences of Greek and then translating until the entire translation is done. Sometimes we also go through a few of the grammar exercises. This is very fast as we GKA students need to learn a three-year course in two years (a friend of mine who is in the GK class told me that at this time, his class was still learning the alphabet whereas my teacher went through the alphabet on the first lesson and we just started reading after that).

I always handwrite the entirety of the chapter passage and then translate it in preparation for the class but I've slacked off once or twice so far and the workload is intensifying. My rationale behind doing this is to learn the accents slowly but surely simply by a lot of association with them and also to improve my handwriting speed in Greek. Is this doable long term and is this benefitting me relative to the time I spend on it? I tend to spend a couple of hours on the whole thing either at lunchtime in the library, before school, or after school.

I'm also unsure if there is a better way to self-learn outside of the class. Should I get a tutor? I used to follow a blog right here on Textkit by someone called Malos but unfortunately, he got cancer and I have no idea if after surgeries he decided to quit Greek or if he sadly passed away after his fight with cancer. I actually have him to thank for my finding this forum and subsequently making an account, so if you see this, thank you Malos.

Kevin

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seneca2008
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by seneca2008 »

Hi Kevin

Its good to hear that there are so many of you learning Greek!

First of all you should be guided by what your teacher recommends as he or she has personal knowledge of you and the course requirements.

It's clearly a good idea in the early stages to copy out some Greek to ensure that you can accurately write Greek and also as a test of your reading the text. Students at the beginning can confuse some letters like upsilon and vu and ignore the breathings, among other mistakes. But after a while I think this brings diminishing returns. Keeping a vocabulary book can help with accents. Is your teacher actively teaching you accents?

I think that rather than writing out the text you would derive a lot of benefit from reading the text as many times as you can manage. Preferably out loud (probably not possible in the library :D ). Getting the sound of the language (whatever pronunciation you use) into your head is I think important. (there are some great videos on YouTube by Luke Ranieri) If you are spending a couple of hours copying I would have thought most of that time could be spent on reading, revising the vocabulary and understanding the grammar. Its probably a good idea to write a few sentences to keep your hand in but not whole passages. Have you looked again at earlier passages you have written, you might be surprised at the mistakes you now notice. Even the monks, who preserved the Greek texts we have, made copying mistakes, such as missing a line, reversing letters etc.

As to whether you need a tutor I would have thought at this stage probably not. You can always post questions here about things you don't understand I am sure you wouldn't ask us to do your homework but people will happily try to explain any problems with grammar or accentuation.

It is very sad about Malo he just disappeared and so I dont know whether he survived cancer. It seemed to be going well. Sadly Aetos who helped him a lot doesn't participate in the forum anymore. A great loss. (I am in touch with him from time to time and he is fine.)

It can be a lonely business learning a language so posting here about your progress would be a good way of connecting with others even if you don't have a specific question.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

paveln
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by paveln »

I think that copying texts is not very useful and translating them is not good either. Better than translating the text is trying to understand it directly in Greek. It is good to read the text several times until you start to understand it in Greek. And it is also excellent to listen to the text several times as an audio recording - you can do this while going to school, shopping, cleaning, etc. That's what my ancient Greek teacher does too - last week he listened to the Athenaze recording on the tram on the way home :-)

The Luke Ranieri does the same as I wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTWKpNy96EM

AndreiosDiscipulus
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by AndreiosDiscipulus »

seneca2008 wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 3:24 pm Hi Kevin

Its good to hear that there are so many of you learning Greek!

First of all you should be guided by what your teacher recommends as he or she has personal knowledge of you and the course requirements.

It's clearly a good idea in the early stages to copy out some Greek to ensure that you can accurately write Greek and also as a test of your reading the text. Students at the beginning can confuse some letters like upsilon and vu and ignore the breathings, among other mistakes. But after a while I think this brings diminishing returns. Keeping a vocabulary book can help with accents. Is your teacher actively teaching you accents?

I think that rather than writing out the text you would derive a lot of benefit from reading the text as many times as you can manage. Preferably out loud (probably not possible in the library :D ). Getting the sound of the language (whatever pronunciation you use) into your head is I think important. (there are some great videos on YouTube by Luke Ranieri) If you are spending a couple of hours copying I would have thought most of that time could be spent on reading, revising the vocabulary and understanding the grammar. Its probably a good idea to write a few sentences to keep your hand in but not whole passages. Have you looked again at earlier passages you have written, you might be surprised at the mistakes you now notice. Even the monks, who preserved the Greek texts we have, made copying mistakes, such as missing a line, reversing letters etc.

As to whether you need a tutor I would have thought at this stage probably not. You can always post questions here about things you don't understand I am sure you wouldn't ask us to do your homework but people will happily try to explain any problems with grammar or accentuation.

It is very sad about Malo he just disappeared and so I dont know whether he survived cancer. It seemed to be going well. Sadly Aetos who helped him a lot doesn't participate in the forum anymore. A great loss. (I am in touch with him from time to time and he is fine.)

It can be a lonely business learning a language so posting here about your progress would be a good way of connecting with others even if you don't have a specific question.
Hey Seneca,
My Greek teacher is in fact actively going through accents but most of it just goes over my head and the only accents I’m familiar with so far are the ones on Δικαιοπολις and some other common words. Should I start writing down all the vocab in a book? I feel like the vocab at the back suits the same purpose but perhaps it’s better to categorise by chapter?

My teacher gets us to read it out loud in class before we translate a particular sentence. Regarding the time that I spend on the passages, I do currently use Anki to memorise the vocab. Should I do anything else in order to familiarise myself with the vocab and passges besides what you’ve already mentioned?

Kevin

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seneca2008
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by seneca2008 »

Hi Kevin
AndreiosDiscipulus wrote:My Greek teacher is in fact actively going through accents but most of it just goes over my head
If you re-read some text and there is a word you cant remember make a note of it, that way you will build up a list of words you cant remember. Each time you cant remember that word put a cross or a dot by it. This should give you some idea of what words you find difficult. I guess an Anki deck works in a similar way. The problem with flash cards is that they give you words out of context. It's always much easier to learn words in context. we all learn in different ways and so what works for one might not for you, but I think making your own vocabulary book means you are actively engaging with the text.

I wouldn't worry about accents going over your head, although there is nothing wrong with asking your teacher to explain them again. It takes time to absorb the rules and there are so many other things to learn at the same time. Assuming you are using the third edition they are outlined in the introduction. On page 10 there is an explanation about how words with an acute accent on the last syllable change the accent to grave when immediately followed by another word without any punctuation between them. It also explains that if the word that follows is enclitic it loses its accent and the first word does not change its acute accent to grave. It has some examples and an exercise to try it out for yourself. Chapter 2 has something on recessive accents of verbs p. 25. There is more in chapter 3 on p 39 I am sure you can find all these for yourself! Just keep rereading the explanations until it makes sense. Doing the exercises helps!

I wouldn't worry at all if accents make no sense to you. It's not the end of the world if you cant get it at first. Look at it as a longer term project. Learning the declensions the -case ending of nouns and adjectives- and the conjugation of verbs is more important at the beginning. As well as acquiring vocabulary.

Having patience is difficult for most of us but particularly hard when you are young. Learning Greek is more a marathon than a sprint.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Hortensius
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by Hortensius »

Does anyone know whether there exists an Anki-deck for Athenaze? Alternatively digital vocabulary lists for copying into Anki.

I am slowly making my own deck, but if there are some ressources that could increase the pace, it would be nice!
Corrige quod corrigendum est, quaeso!

paveln
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by paveln »

Hortensius wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2023 8:08 am Does anyone know whether there exists an Anki-deck for Athenaze? Alternatively digital vocabulary lists for copying into Anki.

I am slowly making my own deck, but if there are some ressources that could increase the pace, it would be nice!
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/athenaze

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Hortensius
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Re: Best way to move through Athenaze Book I

Post by Hortensius »

perfect!
Corrige quod corrigendum est, quaeso!

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