Hello:
I’m in Greek 101 and am currently using Athenaze (the assigned textbook) and Donald Mastronarde’s Introduction to Attic Greek. The class is very poorly taught (learning and using accents is optional; pronounce and stress as you see fit) and I’ve more or less gone the self-teaching route, using the class as a review session and a pace-setter. The plan was one chapter of Athenaze per week, so I’ve been doing just that, although I’m currently a chapter ahead because the others hit a few snags along the way so the work was reduced to a half-chapter for those two weeks. Athenaze has its problems (I guess all books do) – it gives you forms and grammar piece by piece, which can be confusing; its definitions are often overly broad; it gives one accent rule per chapter; the vocabulary is selected for its relevence to the story that runs throughout and often includes frivolous words; the piecemeal grammar is unorganized and all thrown at you at once, with a general theme but with many smaller bits – so I decided to spring for the Mastronade after looking at Amazon and seeing that it was the best-reviewed of the Greek texts available. That one’s also got its problems (horribly dull exercises, dry presentation, lots of vocab. memorization without any reading context, etc.) but it works. All in all, the two books complement each other beautifully: Mastronarde for the meat ‘n’ potatoes, reinforcing (if sadistic) drills, clear and concise grammar, explanation of accents, a truly enlightening chapter on prepositions (the hardest part of any language), and for the wonderful dictionary in the back (he gets the general concept of a word far better than Balme and Lawall). Athenaze is for relaxation: there are reading passages from the beginning, lots of examples, and more entertaining and involved exercises and the articles on ancient Greece are fairly interesting (although they make it seem that Attic and Koine are one and the same). Each book makes up for the other’s shortcomings, and so I’d highly recommend the combination to anybody.
But I’ve got a few concerns about this approach. Basically: how likely is it that I’ll burn out? I can do 90 vocabulary words in a week (as I did this week), both Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek, and can retain old vocabulary easily. But:
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I’m still in the easy part. All that I’ve done so far is the alpha and omicron declensions, the present active tense, and the middle voice (consonant declension this week, starting tomorrow). There’s been no difficulty yet; the middle voice took a second reading to really get the concept but everything else has been extremely smooth sailing. There’s going to be some very difficult stuff ahead. Is it suicide to proceed with two books and two sets of vocabulary, even given a bit of overlap? That’s a lot to deal with; I guess I’ll find out this week when I have to learn about ten varations of the declension.
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I’m very obsessive with this sort of thing. I’m taking only a half course-load this semester and maybe next, so I have a lot of free time which would have otherwise gone to those other classes and their homework. I therefore have a lot of time to study Greek, and I do. Learning the very basic grammar is easy, so I haven’t had to tear my hair out for that yet; most of my concern is in my perfectionist streak that demands I have to learn every declension and verb forms I study by heart in all three persons and also know the vocabulary both ways and with accents and vowel length. Combined with #1: is it a very, very bad idea to use two tracks at once, in terms of burnout? I love this language right now and don’t want to come to hate it when it turns around and bites me. Are the Attic declension and dual number at all useful, even just as a curiosity, or are they just a useless waste of brainpower that could be better spent elsewhere?
That’s about it. This was much, much longer than I intended, by the way. I generally write about a fifth as much as this when on message boards, if not just a sentence or two. Sorry for taking up so much of your time! I’m too damned enthusiastic about my studies so far, so I guess that it would naturally follow that I’d be too damned enthusiastic about writing about it, no matter how big a schmuck it might make me come off as.
(my method of vocabulary learning, which may or may not be useful if there are any other beginners reading:
- Get several packs of 3x5 index cards (the more the better; you don’t want to run out unexpectedly) and make flash cards out of them. Write the lesson or unit number at the top for future reference;
- Run through the Greek-to-English several times;
- Take a sheet of loose-leaf paper, flip the cards to the English-to-Greek side, and quiz yourself. You obviously won’t know about 90% of them.
- For each that you don’t get, write the Greek word over and over, margin-to-margin, while staring at it, repeating it and its English equivalent, and all the while thinking of its general concept. Writing + visual + auditory + abstractly thinking of it + the mneumonics that inevitably arise while repeating a word mantra-like = retention.
- Go back through the Greek-to-English a few more times. You should know most if not all;
- Try it English-to-Greek again. You should know most, except for the few that inevitably refuse to stick in your head no matter what;
- Drill yourself on those few;
Try it English-to-Greek, then do step 3 again whenever you feel ready. When you get them all, just go through the flash cards now and then to reinforce all of it.
This by no means all has to be done at once: it’s probably best over the course of a few days to a week. You want to retain it over time.)