Krashen and Ancient Greek teaching methods

[rmedinap]

@daivid

I owe to Athenaze a great deal of the the Ancient Greek that I have acquired -there is just not enough of it.
I have not obtained the Italian edition but I have read the readings in the workbook. I have been given the impression that most of the extra stuff in the Italian edition found its way into the workbook.

Here I must say that your impression is not very accurate, the first volume of the English version has 386 pages out of which only 281 have actual Greek (and with a lot of English vocabulary, big pictures, grammar explanations and exercises in between). The Italian edition has 529 pages out for which 423 are pure Greek with small illustrations, synonyms and almost no Italian around except for the grammar explanations at the end of each chapter and some notes. That difference is considerably bigger in the second volume (the second English volume has 398 pages, the Italian 610). Take a look yourself there’s a free preview available here and here.

If you have any good impression of the English version I strongly urge you to immediately acquire the Italian one, were talking about at least 142 extra pages of pure comprehensible input just in the first volume and some 200 on the second.

@daivid

I still keep discovering resources that I ought to have known about but in this case it was because I don’t intend to study Latin

I see, it struck me as a surprise because on both occasions (here and here) I was addressing specifically you and the subject was language acquisition theories and I made very clear references (as in, saying the names) to an “active method”, “nature method” or “inductive method”. Anyway I hope I was any help at all.

@Markos

Though not designed exactly for the same purpose, we do have Doukas’ Ajax. That, combined with some good editions of the Scholia and Chad’s monolingual notes, provide the building blocks. But I forget who said, if you build it, they will come.

Actually Doukas made editions of almost all the great Tragedies, Homer, Pindar, Theocritus and some historians and orators (sadly my beloved Thucydides got a Katharevousa paraphrase instead of an attic one) they can be found here.

Other than more comprehensible input I’d say that making new paraphrases with attic explanations, synonyms and images of the basic authors should be the next priority for teachers.