Hellenizein: A Flexible Structure for Teaching Greek to Archaeologists and Ancient Historians

Description

Round 1 Teaching Development Grant

The principal aim of this project has been to develop a flexible structure for appropriate and effective delivery of Greek language teaching in non-traditional classical degrees.

THE FINAL REPORT
The Hellenizein project

This covers, for example, degrees in ancient history, archaeology, or classical archaeology where a high level of language expertise is not required. As well as this brief report, the project has also produced a booklet which is a practical resource for university staff who teach ancient Greek in these circumstances. The booklet was prepared in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, prepared during the spring of 2002 by Eva Parisinou and revised by her and Graham Shipley between then and the spring of 2003. The booklet will be made freely available (see below). This report outlines the background to the project and content of the resultant booklet.

The original idea sprang from a conviction that an important need was not being met. Perhaps largely because of the demands of a national curriculum, the teaching of Greek (as also to a lesser extent Latin) has all but disappeared from UK state schools. Yet university recruitment in modern classics ancient history, classical studies, classical civilization, and similar subjects is buoyant.1 Students in such programmes typically have little experience of foreign languages, and may have been deterred from applying to traditional classics degrees by the language requirements of the courses. If at all possible, however, they should have the opportunity to gain an understanding of the nature of classical languages and the ways in which this could enlighten (and enliven) their learning of the ancient cultures they are encountering. Furthermore, ancient history and other non-classics students have a particular need. Unless they intend to specialize in text-based work, they do not need to be brought to a high-level understanding of grammar and syntax. Rather, they need to encounter the varieties of primary evidence that will be most useful to them in their study.

With these points in mind, we resolved to develop further a module that has been running at Leicester since 1994. Our Language Tools for Ancient History and Archaeology modules, one in Greek and one in Latin, were designed as part of the BA Ancient History & Archaeology. More than 150 students have now completed the modules, including one cohort in a new BA Ancient History & History degree. The School of Archaeology and Ancient History now has nearly a decade s accumulated experience of delivering Greek to ancient history students. While different university departments will have different resources and needs, we were confident that we could develop an adaptable structure that colleagues elsewhere could draw upon and modify. To do so, we have drawn on our existing teaching materials and those of our ancienthistory colleagues at Leicester, adding similar material. New material gathered for the booklet has been trialled in our teaching and student feedback gathered.

Teachers and lecturers will devise their own ways of using the booklet. It is designed to used in ways that will foster active, independent learning. It is not a fixed template. In our teaching, we have alternated periods of grammar and syntax development with examination of real ancient documents of the kinds incorporated in this booklet. Where possible, we provide drawings or photographs of inscriptions and papyri to allow us to explore the relationship between the original text and its printed descendant. Students are encouraged to explore library resources and on-line materials to find further examples.

The booklet allows learning to be assessed, if desired, in a variety of ways. Exercises may be used in the classroom for self-testing, group work, or for the tutor to lead the students through. They may be printed or photocopied separately and set as homework. And so on. Our own practice and that of our colleagues has been to set occasional homework for formative assessment, followed by a summative open-book examination (usually held in class time) that combines simple grammatical and syntactical tests with translation and discussion of short passages of real texts and documents. This gives students an opportunity to demonstrate not only their knowledge of grammar and syntax but also their understanding of the uses of the language in its ancient contexts.

Our final objective, in the spirit of the LTSN, was to make the teaching framework and teaching material available for dissemination. To this end, hard copies of the booklet will be distributed to all Classics and Ancient History departments and copyright libraries in the UK by the Classics section of the LTSN Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology. It is hoped that a soft copy of the booklet can be made available in an electronic format, but the difficulties of using ancient Greek fonts in electronic media may frustrate this objective.

The Hellenizein booklet

This book is designed to serve the needs of campus-based university students who wish to learn ancient Greek as part of a degree not centred upon the study of literary texts in the original language. Such degree programmes may include single or joint honours in ancient history, classical civilization, classical studies, history, and classical archaeology. Most UK students in those degrees will not have taken a full A-level in a modern language such as French; but the course should be useful and interesting even to those who have. It will also be of interest to those to have done classical courses before, such as GCSE Greek or A-level Ancient History, since much of the experience gained from using this work will be new. It focuses on the significance of primary texts for the uses of the written language, as well as the texts historical content in the widest sense. Thus it gives students a relevant and real life experience which they can relate to other courses. It not primarily a language course in the traditional sense; it is, rather, ancient history teaching combined with language awareness teaching. It engages with the kinds of vocabulary and linguistic forms that students are most likely to encounter in the study of ancient history, classical studies, or archaeology.

The authors of the book are ancient historians who have a background in classical languages and use archaeology in their teaching and research. We hope it will be useful to other tutors who, like us, do not normally teach Greek intensively but would like to deliver effective language-based teaching to students taking ancient history and related subjects. The material uses a variety of assessment formats (simple case-matching and parsing exercises, two-way sentence translation, explication of simple original texts, short passages for comment, etc.) and includes examples of final assessment tests. We have researched teaching materials available on the World Wide Web and have added links where appropriate.2 Tutors will find it easy to devise their own pathway through the primary materials and build in additional material. The book is thus suitable for use within a variety of degree programmes, at different levels from first-year undergraduates to taught postgraduates and research postgraduates at the training stage. Though originating from an ancient history teaching context, its use within history and archaeology programmes can be also be foreseen.

We designed the book for use alongside a modern, accessible grammar such as Morwood3 and a dictionary such as Morwood Taylor4 (the most useful of the cheaper lexica, and a marked improvement on the Langenscheidt on which it was based). We give page-references to Morwood at many points. Each tutor (or self-directing student) will strike the most appropriate balance between grammar and syntax on the one hand, and study and discussion of original texts on the other. Other grammar books and dictionaries, of course, can be used in place of the OUP volumes.

While no particular teaching schedule is assumed, experience suggests that a typical group of 8 10 UK students who have no post-GCSE foreign languages will need 25 35 hours teaching (i.e. a term or semester) to get some way into Part Two. That would take them as far as the simpler examples of funerary and dedicatory inscriptions, perhaps to the simpler examples of numerals (e.g. prices on sherds, tribute quota lists). The remainder of Part Two contains more complex source material which may be more suited to a step 2 learning phase; to cover that ground thoroughly might require another term or semester. Different student groups, however, will find their own pace, and this workbook is inherently flexible. The balance between focusing on the basic grammar and syntax and focusing on the primary texts can be adjusted according to need. For self-taught students wanting a more intensive approach, not subject to the artificial divisions of academic terms, a shorter time-scale may work.

After one term or semester or the equivalent, as described above, a student should be able to use a facing translation, such as a Loeb Classical Library volume, with confidence. Knowledge of the nature of Greek should enable them to move between translation and original, identifying names and, more importantly, key terms whose translation is often controversial. At this stage, students should also be able to read, with the aid of a dictionary and a grammar book, simple epigraphic texts such as inscriptions in Attic dialect. With the aid of appropriate books such as LSAG5 or Meiggs Lewis6, they should be able to recognize the main features of non-Attic alphabets and, depending on the content, decipher them. Experience shows that students in year 1 who take the module on which the present book is based, and the parallel Latin module, often build on their learning experience by using materials in the original languages for second-year essays and third-year dissertation work. We do not expect students at this stage to be able to read even relatively straightforward prose authors such as Xenophon. That, indeed, would contradict our aim, which is to enhance students experience of courses in Greek history or culture, not courses on literature in the original. For history and culture courses, it is vital to understand how the Greeks used their written language, what range of surviving sources is available to the historian, and how an understanding of the nature of a source is a control upon the range of possible interpretations.

Part One contains a summary review of the basic grammatical and syntactical features of Greek, including explicit examples and exercises in every section. At this point, students will have to divert from our written materials to seek additional information, as this is not a grammar book in the traditional sense. References to Morwood are provided for this purpose. The tutor or student may, of course, find it useful to go beyond these examples and exercises and look for further examples and exercises in other books, such as Abbott and Mansfield,7 Wilding,8 the Cambridge course,9 or Peter Jones s recent introduction,10 as well as fuller explanations of grammar and syntax. Part One does not just teach grammar: it uses actual Greek texts to illustrate the points about the language that have to be grasped.

Even more distinctive is Part Two, where we integrate language teaching and historical sources (mainly inscriptions). This builds on the introduction to regional alphabets in Part One, and assumes knowledge of the individual grammatical phenomena and sentence structures explained there. Ideally, students will have worked through the whole of Part One and become familiar with most of it before attempting to get into the more advanced documents.

This course provides not only an introduction to reading and writing Greek for undergraduates studying history and archaeology, but also a useful grounding for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates wishing to specialize in epigraphy or a related discipline. It gives useful bibliographical links to the use of different types of documents as sources; but does not lose touch with the function of epigraphic texts as linguistic artefacts operating with rules of composition similar to those in literary texts. Like the range of texts selected, the period covered is wide, stretching from the earliest Greek texts (late eighth and seventh centuries BC) to excerpts from the Greek Old Testament. Users of the work will wish to take different routes through the material, devising for example their own exit and entry points; printing or photocopying certain passages for study; supplementing them with their own teaching materials. One particular way the work could be augmented is by using examples of Greek poetry, particularly in non-Attic dialects such as the lyrics of Sappho and Alkaios.

Eva Parisinou and Graham Shipley

Leicester
June 2003

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