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81 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of both worlds, June 24, 2005
This review is from: Teach Yourself Greek Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (TY: Complete Courses) (Paperback)
Teaching oneself a language without instruction requires discipline--one should be prepared to devote time and practice (more than an hour and a half per week) if one wants to become competent. After trying several Greek textbooks, I've found this one to be the most useful and successful and highly recommend it.
For one thing, it is up to date. Make sure you check the publication date on any Greek books you find--if it's published before about 1990, it's probably out of date since the modern Greek language as it is today was officially set in the 1970's (finally officially embracing the demotiki and more or less phasing out the katharavousa), and textbooks were slow to update themselves.
If you're looking to simply memorize Greek phrases, this book is not for you. Nor is it if you're looking for a cold study of the grammar. It combines elements of both: each chapter begins with about three dialogues and provides vocabulary and grammar to back it up--the closest to an immersion-like type of learning that I can find in a book. Each chapter is very practical--dining out, drinking ouzo, finding your way around, traveling--and provides useful phrases but doesn't neglect the grammar and structure behind the phrases in the way that most books do. It has mini-tests at the end of each chapter and tested reviews at the end of every four chapters or so that are actually challenging and comprehensive of what you have studied. And finally--the dialogues are FUNNY! They're entertaining and realistic, a rarity for language books.
The CDs are useful for training your ear, though it is possible to go without. Either way, I recommend supplementing it by listening to Greek radio, since Greek speakers do speak faster than the speakers on the CD. And if you really want a solid, more thorough knowledge of the language itself (beyond conversational language), I recommend using a grammar to school yourself on the finer points.
Everyone has different approaches to learning a foreign language--some prefer to just learn conversation, others prefer a structured, detailed study of grammar and syntax before trying conversation, and most are in the middle. In any situation, I recommend this book.
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98 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A practical introduction to spoken Greek., September 27, 2000
By A Customer
A practical introduction to modern Greek, K. Matsukas does a fine job of teaching the reader to cope with situations likely to be encountered when travelling in Greece. While the book is organized into chapters covering specific themes (e.g., ordering food at a restauant or discussing the weather), it by no means a phrase book. Each chapter builds on previous chapters, challenging the reader with more complicated constructs and scenarios. The real strength of this book is the focus on fostering the development of an intuition for the language, which can be far more useful than grammar tables of conjugation and declension forms. While it does include limited grammatical instruction, the grammar presented tends to focus attention on the resulting unanswered questions and unresolved ambiguities. As a consequence, I found it very beneficial to utilize a grammar in conjunction with this text. (I used the excellent Routledge grammar, ISBN 0-415-10002-X.) For the most part, however, the issues I encountered centered on the finer points of grammar and would not prevent the reader from developing a basic working knowledge of the language. The optional audio cassettes include readings of dialogues preseneted in the text. They proved quite useful as pronunciation guides. However, the speakers (no doubt out of necessity) tend to over-enunciate. As a result, the cassettes do not provide a very realistic example of the spoken language. I would highly recommend supplementary exposure to spoken Greek (news broadcasts, movies, conversations with native speakers).
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, December 6, 2006
This review is from: Teach Yourself Greek Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (TY: Complete Courses) (Paperback)
I found this book to be one of the worst in the Teach Yourself series. Some of the problems are common to other new titles in this series, while others are unique to this book. The coverage of grammar is extremely weak. Many of the exercises are not challenging at all--matching elements in two columns, circling words, rearranging sentences--and do little to increase command of the language or reinforce material learned. Other exercises require vocabulary that was never introduced and is not even in the glossary. There is far too much English on the CDs, and astonishingly, English words are used as examples for Greek pronunciation. Often there is no time allotted on the recording to repeat the Greek phrases. The author and editors seem to lack a basic grasp of elementary principles of language pedagogy.
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