I’m hoping to commence learning Ancient Greek this upcoming year, and I have my input sources more or less figured out, but I’m trying to choose the best beginner resources for transitioning into output.
In short, what I’d like to do is interact with my texts as I read them, doing things like questions and answers, oral summaries, written paraphrases and expansions, playful fanfict, etc.
Rouse and Zuntz’s courses both seem well designed for starting to do this, but also rather inhospitable to self-study. What I’m trying to weigh out is what courses would prepare me to use them independently.
My current plan is to read Jeong’s Greek Reader plus Croy’s Primer to develop passing familiarity with Greek Grammatical features, then work through Ancient Greek Alive to develop a more active knowledge of Greek Grammar, then start some sort of output practice while extensively reading the various graded readers out there, and finally coming around to aforementioned Rouse and Zuntz. There are a lot of appealing looking options out there that I can’t judge from my naivety. I’d love your input on the following resources, as well as any other advice you have:
Elementary Greek Exercises by Hillard and Botting.
A Greek Ollendorff by Kendrick.
Foundations for Greek Prose Composition by Lewis and Styler.
An Introduction to the Composition and Analysis of Greek Prose by Dickey.
Based on my experience, I would suggest a different starting point.
I have worked through Croy’s Primer and while I think it is better than many textbooks on the market, I would recommend using this new series, “New Testament Greek: A Reading Course”, instead:
https://www.bolchazy.com/NewTestamentGreek.aspx
It breaks the material down into smaller chucks and it has a better ratio of exercises and readings to new material covered. Its layout is also much more user friendly.
Based on what you said about wanting to interact with Greek, I think you’ll also like that the book asks you questions about the content of the readings and not just asks you translate them as Croy does.
I worked through half of Croy and started to feel like the material wasn’t sticking. I switched to “NTGARC” and completed the first volume and found it to be a much better textbook.
Then I went back and finished Croy. Now that the second volume of “NTGARC” is out, I’m currently working my way through it as well.
That being said, Jeong’s Greek Reader (which I have also read) is excellent is should still included in any plan.
Thanks for the reply, I’ll definitely add NTGARC to my list of potential resources. The main reason Croy is on here is to be used “inside out” as a grammatical commentary on Jeong’s text to facilitate noticing.
My conception of working through Jeong would look something like:
Day 1) read Jeong along with the translation for understanding and drill the new vocabulary via the premade Anki deck for Croy.
Day 2) read Jeong again with fresh eyes and the previous days input consolidated overnight, then study each subsection of Croy followed by a close reading of Jeong to notice all the grammatical features introduced by Croy.
Day 3) Read the same chapter in Jeong again, drill all the easy synthetic sentences from Croy’s Text and Student Guide in Anki, and then start a new chapter of Jeong.
Elementary Greek Exercises by Hillard and Botting pairs with Elementary Greek Translation by Hillard and Botting, which is a reader that follows the same grammar sequence.
Are you using the English or German version of Zuntz? James Turney Allen’s First Year of Greek (1917) is similar to Zuntz in that it uses ancient writings for each lesson. Allen’s exercises are more of the oral pattern drill type than of the translation type.
Woah, thanks! I knew that Elementary Greek Translation existed, but I had assumed it was just another awful sentence book, not a charming grader reader, which is a game changer as far as I’m concerned. I’ll definitely bookmark Allen, it seems like it could be useful at a more intermediate-advanced stage.
As for Zuntz, I have the PDF readings prepared by Christopher Alderman, based the publically available German text, but which has the vocabulary under the readings and iota subscripts instead of adscripts. For the exercises, I have a PDF of the English edition, but the oral exercises are in Greek so I don’t know that it makes a difference.
John R Cheadle has some good books on learning Greek, especially helpful if you already have some Latin knowledge. Also John Taylor’s books are great for self-study, and you can find pdf’s of them online 