{"id":138,"date":"2012-08-31T20:42:44","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T20:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/?p=138"},"modified":"2012-12-21T19:59:04","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T19:59:04","slug":"the-future-of-ancient-greek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/2012\/08\/31\/the-future-of-ancient-greek\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Ancient Greek"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The print textbook will be gone in ten years. What’s the Greek classroom going to look like?” \u00a0This is the question that\u00a0Tom Sienkewicz<\/a> put to Greek scholar and pedagogical innovator Wilfred Major of Louisiana State University. Major\u2019s response, first given at a 2012 CAMWS panel<\/a> he co-organized, has just been published in the latest issue of Classical Outlook <\/em>(\u201cTeaching and Testing Classical Greek in a Digital World,\u201d CO\u00a0<\/em>89.2 [2012], pp. 36-39). It’s an important article that should be read by anyone interested in the teaching of ancient Greek, and since it’s (ironically) not on line, I take the liberty of quoting in extenso.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“A future where digital platforms are the standard mechanism for\u00a0teaching ancient Greek is nearly in sight,” he says. Crucial advances are being made.\u00a0Advanced Greek readers are already very well-served on line by Perseus<\/a> and the TLG<\/a>. Intermediate Greek is also increasingly well-served by digital resources.<\/p>\n

Computerized analysis of the lemmas and\u00a0morphology of Greek texts has made it possible to prioritize the\u00a0assistance new readers need at their fingertips, as they make the\u00a0transition from beginners to intermediate and then to independent\u00a0readers. Support for this transition includes providing vocabulary\u00a0(entries appropriate to their level) and morphological data (in the\u00a0form of parsing information).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Major points to developing projects like the DCC, Geoffrey Steadman’s downloadable Greek readers<\/a>, and the ongoing series by Evan Hayes and Steve Nimis<\/a>, which<\/p>\n

make texts, facing vocabulary, and other support\u00a0information accessible at a glance to intermediate students, saving\u00a0the time and drudgery of flipping through pages and allowing\u00a0both students and teachers to stay focused on the comprehension\u00a0and benefits of what they are reading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The stabilization of the core intermediate vocabulary in the DCC<\/a>, he argues, means that advanced\u00a0students can also get involved by generating running vocabulary in a clear,\u00a0straightforward manner, and have the satisfaction of producing lasting pedagogical materials for other students.<\/p>\n

The bottleneck, he argues, is in Introductory Greek, where high-quality but in some ways antiquated print resources have not yet been fully matched by digital counterparts.<\/p>\n

with no disrespect to the authors and\u00a0publishers of these volumes, in terms of presentation, information,\u00a0layout and design, standard word processing programs can produce\u00a0virtually everything found in these books. With the addition of\u00a0images and slide programs (such as Power Point), a teacher can do\u00a0more, and better, than anything in these books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such materials, he insists, must take full advantage of\u00a0computerized\u00a0analysis of Greek texts to help\u00a0make students effective\u00a0intermediate and advanced readers of digital Greek. This means\u00a0taking into account\u00a0vocabulary frequency and density of texts, and also\u00a0statistical\u00a0data\u00a0about the frequency of morphology and syntactical structures (here Major sites Anne Mahoney, \u201cThe Forms You Really Need to Know,\u201d Classical\u00a0Outlook<\/em> 81 (2004): 101\u201305, also ironically not on line!).<\/p>\n

Beginning\u00a0Greek must be reconceived as it moves to digital platforms. Merely\u00a0transferring current print presentations to digital display monitors\u00a0will strangle the learning of Greek, a shameful prospect when such\u00a0treasures now loom just beyond the beginning stages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another interesting point in the article has to do with the typing of Greek. Students must be helped to become proficient in typing Greek as soon as possible, and must not be required to buy a new piece of software to do so. He urges keyboard designers to work with standard Modern Greek keyboards as a basis.<\/p>\n

Both Windows and\u00a0Apple devices now have polytonic Greek keyboards and inputs\u00a0built in at the system level, which need only be activated. Both\u00a0incorporate the Modern Greek keyboard. While the Apple system\u00a0has more flexible input options, it includes all the same input\u00a0options as the default Windows system. As things stand, therefore,we should promote this system for its widespread accessibility and\u00a0compatibility. Expecting or requiring students to purchase and\u00a0install additional software will inevitably lead to problems as they\u00a0move from computers to phones, tablets, and so on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most important, Major stresses that digital platforms are ideal for encouraging the steady practice, repetition, and feedback with the core material of\u00a0Greek in a way that best address the frustration and attrition that plague beginning\u00a0classes.<\/p>\n

The vocabulary and parsing tools\u00a0already established for advanced and intermediate digital materials\u00a0also provide a goal and clear purpose of method for introducing\u00a0vocabulary and morphological identity from the earliest stages of\u00a0beginning Greek. Doing so means we can dispense with relying on\u00a0the dozens of pages of charts and paradigms that we, explicitly or\u00a0implicitly, expect students to memorize as a precondition of just\u00a0beginning to read the simplest continuous Greek passage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you are not familiar with Major’s work on this kind of pedagogy, I urge you to check out his articles\u00a0\u201cOn Not Teaching Greek<\/a>,\u201d Classical Journal<\/em>103 (2007): 93\u201398, and\u00a0\u201cTeaching Greek Verbs: A Manifesto<\/a>,\u201d Teaching\u00a0Classical Languages<\/em> 3 (2011): 23\u201342 (the latter co-authored with B. Stayskal), and the superb resources available on his frequently updated Greek resources page\u00a0http:\/\/www.dramata.com\/<\/a>. My own thoughts about using the DCC and its core vocabulary in a sight reading-based approach can be found in an earlier post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The print textbook will be gone in ten years. What’s the Greek classroom going to look like?” \u00a0This is the question that\u00a0Tom Sienkewicz put to Greek scholar and pedagogical innovator Wilfred Major of Louisiana State University. Major\u2019s response, first given … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[95803,61735,61738,61736],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pedagogy","tag-teaching-greek","tag-textbooks","tag-wilfred-major"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}