I would have said before this semester that Athenaze is a 'good but not great' book. The problem is that there is a fairly small number of Classical Greek textbooks out there (discounting the self-study and reprint-from-the-nineteenth-century options). Hansen and Quinn's chapters are too long, and Mastronarde doesn't have long enough reading passages.
Athenaze's major problem, I believe, is one that affects all reading-based Latin and Greek textbooks: it has too much faith in its own method. If you believe that students can learn the grammar and vocabulary through reading, you shouldn't be afraid to make the grammar explanations hard to find. Athenaze seems to take the approach that if you make it hard enough to locate an actual explanation of the grammar, the students will say to themselves, "gosh, I guess I should try to figure it out from this nice little story here."
I kid, of course. I realize the grammar is probably not deliberately hard to find. But the readings getting completely out of control in terms of length does seem to be purposeful. Okay, it is likely that a reading-based approach helps students read Greek more naturally and therefore more quickly. But students are also conditioned (by evaluations, by RateMyProfessors and similar sites) to be constantly on the lookout for 'unfairness.' Readings that are suddenly twice as long as they were a few weeks ago certainly fall under that category.
So, what to do? Someone should revise Chase and Philips (a barebones 1960s textbook that makes up in clarity for what it lacks in reading practice). Or make a separate grammar handbook for Athenaze.
Or students could learn to memorize better. Right.
Pin It
3 comments:
It can't be as bad as Wilding! Now, that is a dreadful way to learn Greek...
I also teach Classical Greek (though to high school students) from the Athenaze text with mixed success (one of my students sent me a link to your post, I'm still not sure how to take that!). I learned Greek from Allen's "The First Year of Greek" http://amzn.com/1178664341 which uses an unadapted approach. The layout is simple and the grammar is easy to access since it's all collected in a separate section. I'm hesitant to use it though because I'm not sure how my student would do with this approach. However, most of them have had several years of Latin by the time I get them and so perhaps that wouldn't be such a hurdle. Any thoughts?
Evagrius Ponticus, thanks for the warning about Wilding. I looked at the Amazon reviews and it seems the book stumbles on the too little vs. too much grammar issue. As a poetry person I'm pretty sure I would have hated the military tendencies (Herodotus, Xenophon) of the readings as well.
tleach, SO and I have considered Allen for our classes. Like you, we are concerned about using a very traditional grammar-based text. If most of your students have had Latin, perhaps Chase and Philips might be something to consider. We are also looking at Anne Mahoney's First Year Greek, which was favorably reviewed in Classical Outlook.
Post a Comment