Markos has mentioned Stephen Krashen but I have only just begun to read/listen to him.
I have for long felt that the reason that my progress in Ancient Greek has been zero for the last few years is because I have read everything which I can read in Ancient Greek and what remains I can only decode. Decoding Greek seems to give me no benefit and I find that when I go back to text that I have previously decoded it is just as hard to decode as the first time.
I have felt that my personal experience is a weak guide to what really works. (My total lack of progress has even got me wondering whether I need to check that I am not in the first stages of dementia)
Stephen Krashen argues that the only way to learn a language is through comprehensible input that is engaging. Not only that, he seems to have good research to back up his claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shgRN32ubag
We have discussed several alternatives to the Grammar-translation method. From reading Krashen the whole issue of whether Ancient-Greek should be taught as if it were a living language. Krashen puts self selected easy reading as the best way to acquiring a language hence spoken Greek is not (if we follow) Krashen especially important. One of the things about Christophe Rico’s lessons that I have found to be questionable is that the students don’t get much chance to speak Greek. If Kashen is right then that is not a problem - Chistophe Rico gives his students loads of comprehensible input and is the value of his method not that it happens to be in a spoken form.
I am now rereading Taylor’s GCSE level stories https://bookshop.theguardian.com/greek-stories.html which I read so long ago that they are again fresh. But once I have done that I will back to the same problem that there does not exist the texts that I can read that are for me comprehensible and engaging.
On a related note, you might be interested in this blog post on using a program called Learning with Texts to read and study Greek and Latin.
The author explains how to set up LWT to work with Perseus for these languages. The software is free, which is mind-blowing considering how useful it is IMO.
The great thing about the program is that you can copy and paste any Greek text into it and use it to learn at any level.
The instructions on the blog just explain how to set up LWT to use Perseus to parse terms and look up definitions (since you can conceivably use LWT to learn any language with an online dictionary).
I’m sure no-one would disagree that input had to be comprehensible for you to learn from it. Engaging? Well, yes, as with anything you learn, it will have to meet certain minimum standards on that score. It’s pretty easy to determine whether input is comprehensible when some people are clearly progressing as a result of it. What you the individual happen to find comprehensible and engaging is the crucial point.
Your personal experience is probably not a weak guide to what works for you, but there’s plenty of evidence that it’s a weak guide to what works for everyone.
Except that most of the teaching of Ancient Greek is not comprehensible. My experience of direct teaching was going through a Greek text that would have been quite beyond me alone. The teacher did explain what it was supposed to mean and it seemed to make sense but when I later tried to re read the passage it was as incomprehensible as before. I had learned the relevant language but I had not acquired it so it did not stick.
So I would say that 95% of the teachers of Ancient Greek would disagree with Stephen Krashen.
I simply do not believe you are using comprehensible in the way Stephen Krashen does. Comprehensible is stuff you can read without a dictionary, stuff you don’t have to work out the tense the mood and exactly which person is - you just get it as is normal in your first language. He does suggest that the input should be a bit harder that the level where the learner gets it 100% but it should be easy enough that the bits not fully understood can be guessed at.
I answered in that way because it seemed to me that you had not understood the sense I was using comprehensible input and by dismissing my reply as “pointless” indicates to me that we are using two definitions. Comprehensible in the sense that Krashen uses it means without decoding. That is nothing like what most Ancient Greek teaching tries to do.
It might help if you check out this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXJwGFpfCY8 and skip to 20:20 where he describes how someone gained near native speaker quality of Hebrew thru chatting with friends and zero formal teaching. If you feel that “comprehensible input” has a different meaning for you than the sense that Krashen is using it then by all means suggest an alternative term for what Krashen means.
I do wish, for your sake, you could dispense with this kind of arcane, hyperanalytical fudging about the supposed inadequacies of this or that teaching method and just get on with studying what interests you. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone trying to learn anything engage in so much hand-wringing over his perceived lack of progress and in so much censure of the teaching methods he feels are almost entirely to blame for holding him back.
My response isn’t intended to censure you in turn but to stop you from wasting mental energy ruminating on things that really aren’t the things you should be ruminating on if you want to learn Greek.
daivid, I agree with Victor here. You seem to me to be searching for a Holy Grail to help you in your studies. Unfortunately that does not exist. You could be (unconsciously) avoiding something and instead turning your attention to other things. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, but don’t be obsessed with the pudding. There’s no royal road to learning.
Krashen’s approach isn’t the holy grail, but it isn’t bad either. Otherwise, Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata would not be a perennial favourite of Latin learners. Go find some graded readers. Thrasymachus, Reading Greek, and Athenaze are well known. For my own use, I’ve acquired James Turney Allen’s First Year of Greek, Hillard and Botting’s Elementary Greek Translation, Paine’s Beginning Greek, and Harper’s Inductive Greek Method, which might also be of interest to you.
Please expand. I do not know what you are trying to say here.
After a year I got up to GCSE standard. I have made no progress since then. This is despite several years of study in which I have done at least some Greek every day (apart from 4 months at the end of last year when I gave up completely. Many of those days I have spent many hours in study. Trust me I am not looking for a royal road - any road will do.
EDIT
And I really would like to know why you are so dismissive of Stephen Krashen that you don’t think he is worth even referring to.
I have just read the first couple of pages which are available in preview. I have not so much as opened a Latin book for 50 years yet I understood/guessed every word. Those words that I had to guess are quickly repeated so I could read then without guessing the next time. It is brilliant!!! Why has no one ever done this for Ancient Greek?
And this thread was intended to be about Krashen so I would be interested to hear what you think his strengths and weaknesses are.
Thrasymachus, Excelent book but half way through the speed suddenly increased so much that I was completely left behind - I will try again to see if I can get any further Reading Greek, This was my first book. The first chapter was hard going but okay. From then on the pace increases very quickly to point that the adaption is so light that it isn’t any easier for me than the real thing. The adaption is just enough so that you are unable to use a translation as a key.
and Athenaze are well known. Brilliant. Excellent original story. The pace does increase dramatically in the second half but I did make it all the way through. I have also read the workbook readings. I do think that I never really acquired the material in volume two because it goes too fast. It is largely due to Athenaze, however, that I acquired the elementary forms.
JamesTurney Allen’s First Year of Greek, This is available online but it has a very confusing layout. They are very explicit that they expect the overwhelming majority of their students will not keep up their study of Greek beyond the one or two years of their course so they might as well expose them to much real Greek as possible. As such it seems to me that it is far from a graded reader as it is possible to get.
Hillard and Botting’s Elementary Greek Translation, I have just discovered this. The emphasis is on just so you are right to suspect that I might not know of it. I am just about to put an order in for it.
Paine’s Beginning Greek, This bases the course on unadapted real Greek. I would drown if I attempted it.
Harper’s Inductive Greek Method, This seems to be a textbook that uses an unadapted text of Anabasis as the reading. The same criticism applies this as to Paine. On top of that I have read the entire first book of Anabasis. Indeed I have memorized sections of it. I don’t believe re-reading it with Harper will make it any easier to acquire the Greek of Xenophon if I go thru it again.
Lest you think my criticism of traditional methods is due to lack of experience of those methods I am currently studying Attica: Intermediate Classical Greek by Cynthia L. Claxton. It is grammar translation on steroids but for that reason I am willing to give it a try. It is grammar-translation but done very well. The texts she chooses are not for me “comprehensible input” but she gives such huge support that I am able to decode it.
If Krashen is right, however, I will not actually acquire much if any of the Greek I decode. I will at least have read a large section of Xenophon and Antiphon.
I just get the impression that you’re constantly searching for something new because you feel that nothing you’ve tried so far works for you. It gives the impression of restlessness, and I fear it might distract you from the main thing. With royal road I meant there are no shortcuts: it’s a hard work to learn a language. Most of my teachers have said one needs strong glutei.
I don’t take a stand on Stephen Krashen and his views here. It’s obvious, however, that doing what one is interested in helps. The better you can maintain your interests the better the results.
You can see that I joined textkit six years ago. Though for six months I had not made a decision to seriously study Ancient Greek, and I did give up for four months at the end of last year for the rest of that time I have done at least some Greek every single day. Many of these days I have put in many hours of study. I have also read the first book of Anabasis. You should know this because I have stated so in the thread.
What don’t fully appreciate is that getting though Anabasis was extremely hard work in which the meaning of most sentences had wrested word by word and often I got stuck for a long time on a single sentence.
And Anabasis is of course only a portion of my reading.
On top of that I have posted a link to my verb test I might have expected you to realize that I do do drills as well - a program like that you write for yourself and only having done that consider whether its worth putting online.
This is the internet and is very hard to realize that the feeling that something is written is the feeling that is conveyed. But take a moment to re-read what you have written. How would you feel after so much labor to be told that your problem is that you spend your time looking for shortcuts and are unable to face up to the hard work needed? I do believe you when you say you posted because you care but how do you think your words convey that?
On top of that you endorse Victor who tells me that I have to make up my mind as to whether I really want to learn Greek. I have many faults. However,
after six years of study and after my one attempt to give up ending in failure - that I want to learn Greek should be beyond question.
For your information I have not spent the last six years watching Krashen on youtube as a way of avoiding study. Until this week Krashen was just a name. However what he says makes sense of my problem. Reading the first part of Athenaze was easy and the forms I encountered there have stuck in brain. The things that I learn through hard toil I forget. I am more than willing to put in the hard work but my experience is that it doesn’t work.
Krashen makes sense of my experience. Athenaze was comprehensible input so I was acquiring. Reading Xenophon (or any of the other extant writers) is not for me comprehensible input so even though I do end up with the meaning and end up understanding why it means what it means. Hence I only learn the forms reading Xenophon and in a few months whatever I learn I forget. Likewise my verbtest the forms only stay if I constantly drill them.
What does it mean to say you care if you dismiss that out of hand?
I did expect (indeed sought) a counter view, that some people would disagree with Stephen Krashen but this…?
I’m sorry if I offended you. It was completely unintentional. I’m just worried you’re looking for some sort of magic trick to help, which I don’t think exists. That is the only reason why I wrote about royal roads. I do wish you find what you’re looking for, and perhaps you find it in Krashen.
An anecdote about Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff epitomises the difficulties in learning Greek, and their remedies. A student lamented to the renowned professor that he studies Greek all day long, but it just isn’t enough. Wilamowitz said, ‘What do you do during nighttime?’
Why has no one ever done this for Ancient Greek?