Teaching children ancient Greek

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Paul Rittman
Posts: 20
Joined: July 19th, 2011, 12:56 pm

Teaching children ancient Greek

Post by Paul Rittman »

I would like to teach an 8-year-old child of mine, classical Greek. I still have my textbooks when I learned it in college, but they are too advanced at this point.

I have seen products marketed for teaching Greek to children, but they seem to cost an arm and a leg.

Has anyone here done this on their own? What products did you use? what techniques did you use? I have a Master's Degree, as well as plenty of lexical materials, its just that I'm not sure that any of that would help out in this instance. And this child is doing pretty well in school, in the 3rd grade and reading at the 4th grade level so learning a new language should be fun.

I learned Greek in college the "new" way--through the Joint Association of Classical Teachers Greek course materials. I don't know about now, but at the time, it was the "new" method, where you were translating Greek in the first few weeks, instead of learning about various declensions for the first 3 years, before you actually started translating Greek--this is what our teachers told us they had to go through (I suppose an educated version of the old, "When I was your age I had to walk 3 miles to school in the snow" line).

If I had to, I suppose that I could simply go through these materials, but at a slower pace, although I'd prefer something more designed for kids--there is a lot of vocabulary to learn, which is needed for each lesson.
RandallButh
Posts: 1105
Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Re: Teaching children ancient Greek

Post by RandallButh »

I have a seven year old granddaughter learning Spanish, successfully, However, I don't think that either Cervantes or a reformulated Cervantes would have been appropriate in any way. And no grammar book will work. A child is not reflective about the processes of communication. They communicate, but they do not communicate about communication. If you want your eight-year old to learn Greek you will need to speak in Greek in a natural way about things of mutual interest. Children, fortunately, understand the first universal rule of grammar: we do it like that, because that's the way they do it. Children can also play games in the language, and will quickly mimic and follow explanations about surroundings or pictures in the language, but it requires smooth natural input at the correct level of understanding.
Paul-Nitz
Posts: 497
Joined: June 1st, 2011, 4:19 am
Location: Sussex, Wisconsin

Re: Teaching children ancient Greek

Post by Paul-Nitz »

Use the Where are Your Keys game... whereareyourkeys.org.
It has been working equally well in teaching my 8 year old daughter Chichewa and my 20 adult students Koine.
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
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