Intensive Ancient Greek (Greek 1003)
Second Summer Session 2008, M-F 1040-1220, M-T 1255-225
Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Associate Professor of Classics
327 Anderson Hall, 1-3672, robin@temple.edu. Office hours:by appointment
Texts: Ancient Greek Alive by Saffire and Freis. Chapel Hill
Overview: This course aims to introduce you to the language of the ancient Greeks. By the end of the summer, you will be reading actual ancient Greek texts!! That is, you will if you survive! This course will be hard, but it will also be extremely rewarding. No matter how clever you are, learning Greek will take a fair amount of time. You should not take this course unless you are willing and able to spend some time on Greek every day, for this time will be the single most important factor in your level of success. I will give you as much help as you want or need. By the end of this term you will be ready for a normal third-semester Greek course, in which you will be rewarded for all of your hard work with some of the best texts ever written!
Approach: We stress learning Greek through reading progressively harder passages of the original language, a practice accompanied by memorizing important vocabulary and forms. The readings are quite fun, and we will supplement them with passages from The New Testament, Greek philosophy and other texts such as inscriptions from tombstones. It is very important that you not wander off or fall behind. If you are going to miss a class, you must call me or email, and I will return your message as soon as I can with your assignment. But it is imperative that you not miss any class meetings.
The first few weeks will stress the systems of Greek nouns and adjectives, before turning to the verb system. We will spend the first three days reading the nine “scripts,” which start us with conversational ancient Greek (not a typo!!!).
SOS? If you at any point feel overwhelmed, dumber than everyone else in the class, or just plain confused, please talk to me. Don’t sneak away and then try to avoid running into me on campus. I am very willing to offer advice or extra help. Consider setting up study groups with your classmates.
Grades: Quizzes: %40, Exams %30, Daily work: %30
Quizzes: there will be a daily quiz involving the vocabulary words from the previous day's Lessons and any recent forms.
Daily work: this means class performance, which is a factor of overnight preparation and attention in class. You will make mistakes in class, and these will not affect your grade. This assessment will be based on effort and attitude. On every Friday you will receive a specific assignment to complete over the weekend.
Final: this occurs on the last day of classes.
Note that I will weigh the second half of the course more heavily than the first if you show real improvement as the semester progresses.
Starting out:
By Tuesday , learn the Greek alphabet for a quiz (see page 5). For now, learn the lower case letters, since these are the ones you will see the most. Make yourself flash cards. The single biggest obstacle most students face as they begin is the alphabet, so if you get used to it quickly, the rest will be much easier.
Web help:
http://home.millsaps.edu/freiscr/ This site has audiofiles of the Greek scripts for the first week, as well as online vocabulary drills for the first two lessons. The audiofiles you can download to your Ipod or burn to a CD. Please let me know if you need help with this.
http://www1.union.edu/wareht/greek100/ Handouts for this textbook by Professor Tarik Wareh of Union College.
Schedule:
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Week 1 |
Week 4 |
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Week 2 |
Week 5 |
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Week 3 |
Week 6 |