Ancient Greek in Rome with Christophe Rico

As some of you know, I’m in Rome for the month taking an intensive Greek course with Christophe Rico.  I’ve mentioned Dr. Rico before, way back in 2009, before his textbook Πόλις was published.  Now he has an apparently thriving organization based in Jerusalem, the Polis Institute, which teaches Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, Aramaic, and Spanish, and which runs summer courses in Rome for Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.

For Greek, the beginning class runs from 9 to 1 and the intermediate class from 11 to 1.  Rico teaches the beginning class from 9 to 11 and then leaves to teach the intermediate class, when his two assistants take over and teach the beginners from 11 to 1.  Though I was placed in the intermediate class, I and several others in the same situation attend the beginning class from 9 to 11 and then the intermediate class from 11 to 1.  Four hours of input per day is much better for language learning than only 2.  Even with sixteen total hours so far, I’m just barely beginning to express myself in Greek.  My listening ability, of course, is improving much more quickly.

Rico’s instruction has been mostly what I expected — a communicative approach, including total physical response and explicit grammar instruction.  Everything is in Greek, partly to maximize language acquisition and partly out of necessity, since not everyone shares a common language.  One thing I did not expect: a dearth of opportunities for production.  I assume he’s doing it this way because we have very little productive skill — but the only way to correct that is to make us produce!  I hope more productive exercises will come later.

That notwithstanding, the course is excellent.  I wish it were two, three, or six months long instead of one — but then, of course, I couldn’t take it and almost everyone else probably couldn’t either.

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