The best way to learn Ancient Greek is with a live teacher, in person, with lots of contact time, speaking, talking, reading, writing. That’s not possible for everyone, and I don’t have a position that lets me teach like that anyway. It’s why SeumasU exists – to provide a way for people throughout the globe to learn Latin or Ancient Greek online, with live interaction, and to read a variety of texts that rarely get touched in traditional institutions. And if my courses don’t suit, I will happily point you to several other excellent online instructors in Latin and Greek.
And yet there are some people for whom live classes aren’t possible or viable. That’s one reason why I have been developing for quite some time now a stand-alone video course that takes you through Athenaze, with all the instruction you could expect from a teacher or professor. No, it doesn’t replicate live conversational classes. It does do everything else though.
The first part of this course is now complete. That is, all the core content is there and ready for someone to use and guide their own way through Athenaze, while still tackling it as a ‘live’ language. I’m now working to complete the core content for the second part, as well as create a considerable amount of bonus content for part one.
What’s in Part 1?
Part 1 of this course covers Athenaze chapters 1-8. After introductory material on the alphabet and orthography, we move into the main content.
Each module consists of 4 sets of videos.
Vocabulary Pre-Teaching: Introduces some of the key vocabulary for the chapter, with pictures, example sentences, links to English and Latin words. It’s a pre-step to get you ready for reading.
Text and Explanation: For each of the readings in Athenaze, I provide a teaching video where I guide you through the passage, giving English-language explanations of new elements as well as interesting features.
Greek Questions: For each reading I provide a subsequent video that demonstrates and exemplifies Greek questions and answers about the passage, section by section.
Grammar: The grammar videos cover, but do not replicate, the material in the textbook. Instead, you get my own take on the grammatical topics for each chapter, going above and beyond standard introductory explanations, and drawing upon contemporary approaches to Greek linguistics.
Bonus Videos: As the course expands, I’m adding bonus videos that dive into additional readings, as well as cover Greek grammar in Greek.
If you’re looking for an asynchronous online video course to guide you in your ancient Greek learning, this is it.