I don’t do the exercises in my textbook (JACT). I’m ⅔ of the way through the textbook. My reading progress is good. As I open each new section, I can make a reasonable construal of the passage at first read through, before embarking on detailed analysis.
I also spend some time rehearsing grammar (eg verb endings), and learning vocabulary.
What would I gain from doing the exercises that would make it worth the time and effort?
The exercises have several advantages. They give you an opportunity to to explore thoroughly any new grammar which is introduced and to revise grammar already learned. English to Greek makes you think about vocabulary and grammar in an active way rather than the passive recognition which comes from reading. You can keep going back to exercises and repeat them to revise or relearn material in past lessons. This is not an exhaustive list…
The course was put together by experienced teachers who had used these materials for many years I think you can trust them.
If you are doing this as a hobby or for fun and you dont enjoy doing the exercises then thats fine of course. But doing the exercises also gives you some measure of how well you have understood the material. That may or may not be important to you. I think too much store is set on getting “the right answers”. The value of exercises lies in the process. Making mistakes is normal and provided you correct them and understand where you went wrong probably more helpful then simply turning in perfect answers every time.
Well done for getting so far! Its doubly impressive if you have been doing it on your own.
Petrarch101,
To add to what seneca2008 said, I can think of three reasons to do them:
- Learn forms not present in the stories that you will see elsewhere in Greek literature
- Internalize irregular forms that might otherwise be hard to master
- Check that you are retaining the grammar/vocab that you learned from doing the readings
Maybe try going back and doing some of the exercises three days after you do the readings and see how well you do.
If you find that you breeze through them, then I’d say do retain everything you need to with the work you’re doing already. If not, you’ll find some things that you can review if you want to.
Exercises have a point. Though I would have a very different list from the above. You should be learning to pick up irregular forms, etc., from your reading, imo. Picking whatever you can up from reading is an extremely useful skill, and one to be trained.
Still, given that exercises do have very real benefits, how much time should you be spending on exercises versus reading? 25%, 50, 75%? (Or 0%?) Nobody can actually tell you. Generic answers to the question are pretend answers. You only have so much time and enthusiasm. What is the most efficient use of both for you personally? The answer is likely to vary from week to week, and of the two, you have to be a far more careful guard of enthusiasm than time.
Of course Seneca’s students who do the exercises make more progress…because in a classroom, doing the exercises is a sign of engagement, and engagement will be the strongest progress correlate. Would they have made more progress with a different reading/exercise mix? Would it have varied from student to student? Somehow I doubt that simple completionism should be the guide here, though it is for many people.
And the answer doesn’t really matter in the end. What you need to know is not what is most efficient at any time, but what is going to keep you going for the next several years of the learning project that you’ve excited about now. The answer for me is to do whatever keeps me enthusiastic right now. People don’t get themselves “stuck” by skipping around or doing what they enjoy. This is a multi-year process.
Thankyou all. Very thoughtful replies …. and a humbling gift of time and effort by all of you.