26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thoughtful pedagogy, May 1, 2000
This review is from: Ancient Greek Alive (Paperback)
Ancient Greek Alive, through its early focus on oral skills, offers students an entrance into the language that is natural and enduring. The act of speaking Greek cements many grammatical concepts in the minds of the students before they learn them formally. The presentation is charming, engaging the students in a way that allows them to work through the grammar thoroughly without the sense of mind-numbing drudgery that seems to attend so many introductory language courses. Concepts are introduced at the right time, and in the right way. The book is a powerful learning tool; any student who works through it will be prepared to aquire the deep understanding of Greek that comes only from reading its authors.
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31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great For The Second Time Around (Or For Class), September 5, 2002
This review is from: Ancient Greek Alive (Paperback)
Some reviewers below tell of their disappointment with this book as a manual for self-study. I feel their pain; the book teaches Greek like you might teach Spanish, with lots of activities relying on repetition and reading and constructing sentences by analogy.
So if you know no Greek at all and want to learn it, don't start here.
But if you want to re-learn your Greek from school, or refresh the Greek you learned from some other (more self-teaching friendly) book, _Ancient Greek Alive_ is great.
Because it teaches Greek like a living language, there's more emphasis on colloquial Greek than you typically find in a textbook on Attic. You get a much better sense of the meaning of the little words, for instance. Paradoxically, this better prepares you for reading, for instance, Plato, who wrote in dialog form and whose characters do not declaim sentences like you might find in, for instance, Mastronarde.
The chapters are digestible in size. The writing is accessible and clear, and not encumbered by too much technical grammatical terminology early on. The readings are entertaining and accessible, combining progressively longer quotations from ancient Greek sources with folktales from various sources and the adventures of Sheik Nasrudin translated into Greek. Informative interludes introduce famous Greeks, aspects of Greek culture and the history of the Greek language. Hard to beat.
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this book! Please write a second!, November 30, 1999
This review is from: Ancient Greek Alive (Paperback)
This book has been ever-present by my side in my attempt to master (or at least comprehend) the ancient Greek language, and has made learning a new (or old?) way of thinking more fun and exciting than I ever imagined. The lessons have been created in such a way that the reader builds layers of principle one at a time, and upon this foundation is able to build another layer of skill that in turn, reinforces the lessons of previous chapters. The readings are, indeed, thorough, and although struggling through the sometimes difficult selections can be frustrating, mastery is truly rewarding. Through wise, and often witty, excerpts from works of famous writers including Sappho, Diogenes, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus, the vocabulary and grammatical skills acquired through lessons are incorporated into writings that existed MANY years ago...mind boggling and truly amazing! I can't imagine having learned such a difficult language by way of any both other than Ancient Greek Alive! It's the best! I'm just waiting for a second book in the series so that I may continue expanding my mind!
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