Page 1 of 2
Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 2nd, 2014, 3:06 pm
by Wes Wood
Does anyone here have a strong recommendation for an introductory textbook or primer for high school classroom use? I am especially interested in books that could serve well in either a classroom or independent learning setting. Any experiences or advice for teaching this material to this age group would be appreciated.
Re: Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 3rd, 2014, 4:57 am
by Barry Hofstetter
I used Crosby & Schaeffer supplemented with Athenaze. If I get enough students for next year's Greek elective, I plan to use quite a different approach, but probably with Athenaze as the base text.
Re: Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 3rd, 2014, 7:34 am
by Jonathan Robie
Quite a different approach?
Re: Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 3rd, 2014, 9:16 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Jonathan Robie wrote:Quite a different approach?
I've been fairly heavy on a reading-grammar methodology, but since this is a one trimester elective, I plan to experiment with a much more oral/aural, conversational method.
Re: Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 3rd, 2014, 10:07 am
by cwconrad
Barry Hofstetter wrote:Jonathan Robie wrote:Quite a different approach?
I've been fairly heavy on a reading-grammar methodology, but since this is a one trimester elective, I plan to experiment with a much more oral/aural, conversational method.
More power to you, Barry! I'm thirteen years out of teaching Greek now, but there are a lot of things I'd do differently if I were starting over at teaching it -- far too numerous to mention ...
Re: Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 3rd, 2014, 11:18 am
by Paul-Nitz
You might consider the Living Koine series.
http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/
Re: Classical Greek Grammars for High School Students
Posted: April 3rd, 2014, 10:55 pm
by Wes Wood
Thank all of you for your input. Professor Hofstetter, did you primarily follow the lesson progression in Athenaze or in your other resource(s)? On a side note, I wish you success if you implement new strategies. It is extremely stressful for me to make changes in methods I have had success with in the past. Standardized testing in high school tends to perpetuate the status quo where I am. (If most "pass" it is good enough.)
Classical education not just Greek.
Posted: April 4th, 2014, 1:02 am
by Stephen Hughes
Abbot and Mansfield is a short primer of Greek grammar for middle school.
Senior students usually read the so-called school texts. Those are editions of some of the Classical authours with lots of notes in them, and difficult passages are simply translated for them rather than explained.
Greek is more than the language, it's also an education about the classical world and the Western heritage, so there is an element of background - history and culture - studies involved.
In New South Wales, students are typically highly intelligent, high achievers who score well in their matriculation exams. Only a few schools offer Greek.
If someone were personally wanting to diversify from NT to Classical Greek, I would suggest they try just reading Xenophon's Anabasis, to realise how much you know and to see what you still need to achieve. Then try one of the plays by Euripides. Both of those works are recommended / required for high school students studying Greek.
Re: Classical education not just Greek.
Posted: April 4th, 2014, 6:00 am
by cwconrad
Stephen Hughes wrote:If someone were personally wanting to diversify from NT to Classical Greek, I would suggest they try just reading Xenophon's Anabasis, to realise how much you know and to see what you still need to achieve. Then try one of the plays by Euripides. Both of those works are recommended / required for high school students studying Greek.
Yes, those were standard choices, dating back, I think, to British public schools where boys (chiefly) were preparing for careers involving military service in the British colonies: Xenophon's Anabasis and Caesar's Gallic Wars. I'd cut the selections from the Anabasis in half and replace the missing half with a couple books from Xenophon's Memorabilita: that provides more of a taste of daily life in Athens of the later 5th century.
Christianised classical heritage
Posted: April 4th, 2014, 7:23 am
by Stephen Hughes
cwconrad wrote:Stephen Hughes wrote:If someone were personally wanting to diversify from NT to Classical Greek, I would suggest they try just reading Xenophon's Anabasis, to realise how much you know and to see what you still need to achieve. Then try one of the plays by Euripides. Both of those works are recommended / required for high school students studying Greek.
Yes, those Greek texts were standard choices, dating back, I think, to British public schools where boys (chiefly) were preparing for careers involving military service in the British colonies: Xenophon's Anabasis and Caesar's Gallic Wars. I'd cut the selections from the Anabasis in half and replace the missing half with a couple books from Xenophon's Memorabilita: that provides more of a taste of daily life in Athens of the later 5th century.
Reading those texts that I mentioned is following the Byzantine educational system. The great fathers; Basil, Gregory, Gregory, John Chrysostom and Julian the apostate would have all started with those texts, then moved on to Lysias and Sophocles and then eventually on to Demosthenes. Later students would progress to John Chrysostom after Demosthenes on the Crown. Classical education is demonstrably the legitimate successor to the Byzantine educational heritage. Then (as now) education for the Christianised Romans used secular (even pagan) sources to learn the language in which they delivered the Christian message. The educated of Byzantium were not an enclave of Athinite monks slavishly reciting the NT and other ecclesiastical texts, they were the vibrant successors of a Christianised Classical heritage. Following the fall of Constantinople we in the West (How is Australia west when it is in the far south-east?) were given the privilage of carrying the torch of both the classical Greek and Roman heritage. An earnest study of the classics was expected of those who wanted to read not only our Classical past but also our ever-renewed present in Christ. The classics are not an invitation to return to the errors of paganism and pre-Christian humanism and democracy as some of the Italian city-states did during the Renaissance, but a call to accept all that is good and beautiful in both God and man's creation and to sanctify whatever can be found for the glory of God.
A classical education is THE key to the fathers, it is the broader context in which to understand the New Testament linguistically, it is a tangible continuation of the Ancient world - the world which gave us our Greek New Testament - into our present day.