Lesson Plan Notes for Ancient Greek in Action & Lingua Latina Comprehensibilis (Patreon)

Dearest Patrons!

I can't tell you how grateful I am for your support. Truly, each of your names is so especially important on my recent Ancient Greek in Action and Lingua Latina Comprehensibilis videos, since you make possible my subscription to Storyblocks, which is where I get the high quality video clips you see, and you have also allowed me into invest in audio and video equipment as well as the editing software I use.

Since the two series are made with all of you in mind, I thought I would share with you my current plans for the two series, to give you an idea of where they are going and how I intend to tackle the various pedagogical challenges each language presents. I will likely update this post in the future, so check back for changes as I add them.

Last update: 2021-01-15

Updated: 2020-09-15

ANCIENT GREEK IN ACTION

As you can tell, I'm already having too much fun with this series. Kittens, turtles, and temples -- I hope this is an entertaining introduction to Ancient Greek.

Introduction to Nouns

Stage 1: basic noun types of 1st and 2nd declensions, similar to the Latin paradigm; counting 1-5; counting questions, and the question mark

Lesson 1: 1st decl fem nouns sing, dual, plural 

Lesson 2: 2nd decl masc nouns sing, dual, plural 

Lesson 3: 2nd decl neut nouns sing, dual, plural 

Lesson 4: 1st and 2nd decl masc and fem nouns, sing, dual, plural 

Lesson 5: 3rd decl nouns sing, dual, plural 

Lesson 6: Roman Empire geography

UPDATE 2021-01-16: The next stage will be Familia Romana style Roman Empire geography lesson, then Polis inspired commands with more in-classroom type visualized activities. As always, the goal will be to produce a series of videos that allows the viewer to have adequate preparation before attempting Athenaze or Alexandros, among other introductory texts.

I have mentioned elsewhere that I prefer to teach the whole paradigm if it's easy to do so, thus I have included the dual from the very first lesson, with full knowledge that it is quite rare in all forms of Ancient Greek from Epic through Koine. My thinking here was that if students see two kitties and learn that dual form, they'll always remember it, so when they encounter it in real Greek texts later, it won't bewilder them, but instead the dual will return to their memory as the recollection of an old friend.

Once I introduce the word for "or" in context, I will clarify that "two cats" may be expressed by means of the dual or the regular plural. From that point the dual will appear much less frequently.

Stage 2: 'unexpected' genders in the 1st and 2nd declensions; counting 1-5; counting questions, and the question mark 

Unlike Latin, where we can get by with nouns of the 1st and 2nd declensions and see how the three genders usually work quite well for many chapters as in Familia Romana, it's really not possible to do much with Ancient Greek within those those limitations; we can't even clarify the female teacher (which retains the second declension form as ἡ διδάσκαλος) or a male student is in the first declension: ὁ μαθητής . Thus I have decided to introduce the nouns in a systematic way before attempting the "simple" sort of in-context sentences like Lingua Latina Comprehensibilis 1C or Familia Romana Cap.1. 

Lesson 4: 1st decl masculine nouns sing, dual, plural; 2nd decl feminine nouns sing, dual, plural; review of all 1st and 2nd declension nouns: masculine nouns will be pictured together, and the respective articles clearly emphasized, and then the term for "masculine" in Greek will be taught; then the same for feminine and neuter nouns.  

This is a bit facile, perhaps too easy for most teachers, who can easily give their students the run-down in English/Italian/Spanish/German/Polish etc. and dispel confusion so as to get to the good stuff sooner. But Ancient Greek is more intimidating than we might give it credit, especially for the autodidact, as my experience with many has shown me of late: the Greek alphabet is second nature to almost all of us here, but is a huge obstacle for most (a comment on the Ancient Greek Reddit under my Lesson 2 post was quite instructive; the person asked, "Is this video for beginners or advanced?" which led me to believe that Greek is a lot harder than I had given it credit for). Thus I favor this slow pace for the very beginning.

While Familia Romana has essentially done all the work for us as far as systematically presented comprehensible input sequencing is concerned, requiring only minimal clarification from the instructor, the best textbooks at our disposal, namely Athenaze (Italy version), Alexandros, Reading Greek, Polis, and Ancient Greek Alive either assume a non-Greek-language as the means of glossing or explaining the grammar, vocab, and idiom, or that we already know Latin and can just figure it out by comparison, or that we have the benefit of a fluent Ancient Greek instructor who can teach us via TPRS (Total Physical Response Sequential, which Polis Institute champions).

I find this deeply unsatisfactory. Athenaze and Alexandros are not friendly to the raw beginner: they jump right into irregular nouns of the first 2 declensions, and Alexandros even has 3rd declension nouns in the first chapter. I don't have a problem with mixing the declensions in the first lessons, as Polis also does, because TPRS and other techniques employed well by the teacher can overcome that. But seeing text with target-language-only to instruct demands a lot of clarity, and that patterns be made obvious and manifest.

Patreon supporter and friend Seumas Macdonald's stellar Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata is a fantastic remedy for much of this. We greatly look forward to the pictures and marginal notes which will be necessary for the autodidact.

So the goal of this entire Ancient Greek in Action project is that, as a students move through certain stages, they will be able to then go to Athenaze or Alexandros or the current beta version of Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata with a solid foundation in the audiovisual basics of Ancient Greek.

Stage 3: As this point, while I would be eager to do all kinds of adjectives, or a locative intro with a geography lesson as in Familia Romana or Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata, I think it will be best to continue the above template for 3rd declension nouns. I am of this opinion because, while Latin can describe 8 complex chapters of Familia Romana with just the first two declensions, Greek is yet quite limited.

Moreover, Greek has an advantage that Latin does not: it has articles! Once gender is clearly shown to be visible for every definite noun thanks to its article, learning 3rd declension nouns should be much simpler than it is in Latin, and can happen sooner.

This will permit us to have video lessons with "man," "woman," "father," "mother," "child," etc. A lesson like Lingua Latina Comprehensibilis 2A will follow.

Lesson 5: This lesson will look like Lingua Latina Comprehensibilis 1A, including greetings, and the words for teacher, student, etc.

Lesson 6: Geographical locations, imitative of LLPSI Cap1.

Lesson 7: Third declension nouns.

Lesson 8: Family terms (imitative of LLPSI cap2).

Stage 4: Adjectives and simple verbs.

Hereafter, the stages will follow the basic path laid out by Athenaze, Alexandros, etc. More to follow soon! Check back for updates.

Pronunciation note for teachers: you probably all know my penchant for the Lucian Pronunciation. Even if you don't use this system, my hope here is twofold: 1) that the Lucian Pronunciation is sufficiently intermediate between the various other standards that you can kind of convince yourself you're hearing your preferred pronunciation if you "squint" a bit; 2) you can mute the audio, play the video in class, and narrate the images and text in the pronunciation you want the students to emulate.

To the end, the final credits music montage is not a mere indulgence of slow motion video of kittens and turtles and temples and birdies: its purpose if for teachers to have their students shout out the Ancient Greek word for the things they see during the finale music. Almost every image will have a word covered in the previous videos. This can be a fun classroom activity. Let me know how it goes!

LINGVA LATINA COMPREHENSIBILIS

The structure, as you can tell, is built upon the foundations of Familia Romana. Indeed, I already have plans for lessons that teach the contents of Roma Aeterna and the other supplements through this Comprehensible Input methodology. While I would be excited to start on that advanced project right away, I decided to favor introductory lessons first so as to increase the number of fluent Latin readers and listeners as soon as possible. Then we'll all stroll together through the advanced LLPSI material, a video for each chapter (at least!).

Which is the strategy: each Familia Romana chapter will have at least one video lesson. I intend to break the chapters up into less complicated parts, and focus a bit in each video on one topic. Familia Romana has an excellent structure, but, if you have used it, you know it has some challenges, challenges I would like to untie for students and teachers.

The other goal of Lingua Latina Comprehensibilis is to create video lessons with a emphasize conversational vocabulary that teachers can use in their classrooms from day 1, which is why video lesson 1A and 1B are "hi! how are you? do you speak Latin?" etc. I intend to add to the Familia Romana structure in these videos as much as I think is reasonable to make the material easier to use in a spoken Latin classroom.

Many of you are of course expert Ancient Greek and Latin teachers, and I welcome your feedback on these materials I am producing. Anything I post on YouTube or here on Patreon you are (of course!) most welcome to utilize in your classrooms -- that's what they're for! -- and if you have particular success or difficulty with any of these materials, I would love to know! That way I can iterate my process and produce even better videos and audio materials for you.

Updates to these notes coming soon.

My deepest gratitude to each and every one of you!