Bob Bass
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Greek as a Treat


Introduction to the Teacher

Despite the sterling efforts of Kris Waite and Fred Pragnell, the prep school Greek sector, which is a small one, is poorly served. There's no money in it for publishers, of course. Secondary level text books are often used faute de mieux, but the basic requirements of young beginners (e.g. unsophisticated explanations, spacious lay-out, clear and large text) are different from those of teenagers. Hence Greek as a Treat. This is a foundation course targeted at young learners which can be completed, assuming about one hour's lesson time a week, in three terms. It is non-exam-/syllabus-specific and provides plenty of opportunities for writing in Greek, which some modern coursebooks don't. At the end of the course the pupil will have a sound grasp of first and second declension nouns and adjectives, four indicative active verb tenses (present, imperfect, aorist and future), simple infinitives and imperatives, and simple questions using ἆρα. From this solid base pupils will be able to progress with confidence on to the more mainstream coursebooks.

Like most such books, this material started out some years ago as a series of worksheets which were drip fed to those of my Year 8 latinists in our scholarship stream who had opted to start Greek. Latterly one or two younger pupils have expressed an interest in pursuing Greek off-timetable. I therefore decided that it was time to bring all the sheets together into this sort of format, to save my frequent visits to the photocopier.  Some of these younger students have no Latin (yet); hence none is assumed.

What is assumed is familiarity with the Greek alphabet. I issue a separate work-book for pupils to complete over the summer holiday prior to their starting Greek in September, but other teachers will have other approaches.

This book is available as a free pdf download, from which you can make as many copies as you wish: please email me if you would like access to the file. I would be very pleased to receive corrections and suggestions for improvement.

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