Anyone want to work through Dickey's Greek Prose Composition book?

[Jonathan Robie]

As late as you want, as long as it's Saturday!

Done. So ... how do we process the homework?

[EricSowell]

Good question. Here are a couple suggestions.

1. Each week a person will be chosen to post his answers here to the forum. This will give everyone something to discuss and then people can each offer any extra answers they came up with if they so desire. We'll be creating an answer key...which is good...bad?

2. Each week each person buddies up with another person at random and they exchange and grade each other's work and they can raise questions to the group about anything they couldn't answer.

3. Every week we could all post our homework here and we can all comment on everyone's work. That could get very chatty.

Anyone else have proposals?

[Jonathan Robie]

I like the buddy up proposal. But I also think it would be good to post interesting / difficult cases or questions here for discussion.

[EricSowell]

Okay, let's try it. I'll pair up with Jonathan this week since he already sent me his. Who else has done the work and needs a partner?

[Louis L Sorenson]

I received Dickey's book yesterday. I'll try to participate, though some weeks may be hard.

The GreekStudy group had an email collation software for this type of class participation. I ran a couple of groups there. I also ran a group on Greek composition, using Moodle, where we used assignment submission forms to manage turning assignments. Perhaps there could be a Moodle module on B-Greek for those wishing to lead classes?

I still want to lead an Epictetus Enchiridion II class, along with a favorite Psalms II class. It would be good, I think, for B-Greek to provide some sort of platform for those who desire to lead such classes. Most classes on Textkit.com seem to fail (at least in the distant past) - people just lost interest. The newest platform should be mobile friendly, and perhaps allow an hour for video conversations, which could be recorded. There was a great desire for the GreekStudy composition course -- I think we had about 12 people participate in the Greek composition group I led.

Any more ideas? The idea of partners is good. But do you match skilled with skilled and newbies with newbies, or perhaps let the skilled alternate between newbies and other skilled participants? Those in the NT Greek community who use Buth or Rico may be more skilled in composition (though non-written) than those who have had no oral/aural exposure. Perhaps both having a mentor and a buddy would be the best sort of arrangement. You go to your mentor for issues you and your buddy cannot figure out.

Dickie has a partial answer key (Appendix G, pp. 216-251). I have not evaluated her book enough to know if her Answer Key is enough for an independent learner who has no compositional experience. Usually, composition classes in traditional university classes happen at the very end of a person's major, in year 3 or 4. I personally think that composition (oral or written) should start at the end of the first year.

BTW, her book on ancient Greek scholarship should be read by all who are trying to get a handle on the study of ancient Greek.

I would suggest that Dickie's "Recommended syntax reading", which usually refers to sections in Smyth, be augmented to add sections from two Greek beginning-intermediate grammars: (1) Eugenius Van Ness Goetchius' The Language of the New Testament" and (2) Funk's A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek. Both those authors were trained in the school of Structuralism - at least that is the linguistic framework in which they were taught language. Those two authors, more than any other beginning grammars, teach basic compositional elements. Dickie is a classical Greek composition book. NT Greek is 98% classical with a more limited vocabulary and simplified syntax. NT students who are using her book need a little bit of simplification. Goetchius and Funk help bring that NT syntax to her book.

[EricSowell]

Hope you can join us. Since we're just starting, you aren't very behind.

There are 20 numbered chapters and the accents stuff before that. Jonathan, Nathan, and I have all done the accents work, which I'm going to call chapter 0. Let's see if we can all get the "real" chapter 1 done by Saturday.

Though we're all obviously at different levels, right now we don't have any beginning Greek students that are doing the work as far as I know. If someone else is following along, I'd love to hear about it. The partial answer key should at least make any differences in ability less of a problem.

I like the idea of having video chat and recording it. Maybe if we run into a tough chapter we jump on some video chat platform and discuss?

As for other group classes, I'm all for them. I do so much better with structure. For the last few years off and on I've hired a tutor to give me that and it was helpful when I was doing it. This kind of thing also provides that structure and I'm happy to not pay a tutor.

[NathanSmith]

I've finished chapter one's sentences and analysis. I was having a bit of trouble with the translation in a a few of the analysis sentences. Since the purpose of the exercise is to evaluate the articles (or lack thereof), I had mercy on myself and consulted an English translation of Anabasis (which is conveniently hosted in Perseus).

[EricSowell]

I worked through the selection then checked myself with it. No judgement here!

[NathanSmith]

I've started creating Quisition packs for each chapter's vocab. I found that my major struggle thus far is not knowing the accents and endings. As I quipped on social media, I wish I could go back in time and scold my undergrad self!

Just search for Dickey in the pack library.

[samcotten]

I am working through Dickey by myself ... does anybody have a full answer key that they could email me?
Thanks,
Sam Cotten