Greek 1, Greek 2, take a year off, Greek 3?

[yvonne]

Has anyone's student taken Greek 1, Greek 2 and then waited a year to take Greek 3?  Has it worked?

 

One of my boys is taking Greek 2 & Latin 3 (Lukeion) and French 4 (TPS) this year, in 9th. He wants to continue with Greek 3 next year, which would mean his 10th grade year would look like this:

 

English

Algebra 2

Physics (or Chemistry)

World History (or Omni 3 at WHA)

AP Latin

AP French

Greek 3

 

I don't see how he can possibly fit it all in unless we really tone down one or more of the standard classes.

 

To take some of the pressure off next year, I'm wondering if it would be possible for him to take a year off of Greek in 10th and then pick back up with Greek 3 in 11th, when he'll be done with Latin & French. He won't be happy with that idea, but I don't know how else to manage this. If he knew he wanted to go into a language-related field (archeology? classics? seminary? foreign service?...), I could see toning down the math or science or history, but he has no clue what he wants to study in college, let alone what field be might want to go into.

 

Any suggestions?

[forty-two]

I agree with you that it sounds like a lot of work, but by taking a year off, he'd need to do something on his own during that year to keep his Greek up. Otherwise he'd have to do an intensive review of Greek before starting Greek 3. It looks like he'd be read to read Greek authors after Greek 2, so maybe he could get a few transitional Greek readers and have at it - read a page or something every day. Maybe pair that with a Greek grammar review once a week. But he'd need *some* kind of regular Greek practice.

 

 

Looking at it time-wise, it looks like the big issue would be how much harder or more time intensive next year's language courses would be compared to this year's (since I'm guessing the Eng/math/science/history are staying at roughly the same level). Can Lukeion and TPS (or the interwebs ;)) give you an estimate on how much time the AP Latin and AP French courses take compared to Latin 3 and French 4? Ditto for how much more time Greek 3 takes compared to Greek 2 (if he finds Greek about the same level of difficulty as Latin, I'd use the time requirement for Latin 3 as a baseline for Greek 3).

 

 

In general, it sounds like he likes languages, and if has the drive and interest and ability to do three this year at fairly high levels, he might surprise you at how he can handle them next year. (I was that sort of ambitious kid in high school and I was a better judge of how much I could handle than my teachers.) Latin 3 can be a brutal transition (from grammar to actually reading Latin) and if he weathered that well, AP Latin might not be that much harder.

 

 

I might find out the "official" time estimates for this year's classes, compare the estimates to the actual time spent by your ds, and compare all that to the time estimates for next year's classes - get a realistic estimate of how much more time would be involved, and see what that would make his schedule. Then show it to him, explain the time commitment and your reservations, and seek what he thinks. He might rather spend more time on an official class than less time on keeping up his Greek on his own, or he might welcome the chance to consolidate his Greek grammar without pressure. And he might be able to give you a picture of how hard Greek is for him compared to Latin and French, and how hard languages are for him compared to his other classes - to get an idea of how much it would truly help him to take a year off Greek. (Always bearing in mind that it wouldn't be a *true* year off from Greek, but a year of informal Greek review instead of a year of formal Greek study.)

[Allearia]

If you do decide to do this, you will have to make sure there is regular scheduled, religiously kept sessions each day to keep up with what he has done. Sure, it sounds great in theory, but with as much work as he has done if he wants to continue he can't stop for that long. We are doing sort of the same thing with Latin, and tried a different less rigorous latin class but that didn't work out. It is very hard to keep the momentum going to do it on his own. This semester he also has no formal Greek class or Latin class and I am working very hard to make him keep going. I also made sure I had some good texts with answer keys so that I could go over some of his work at least, because without regular feedback it is easy to slack off.

 

If you decide to do it, I might recommend you get the Learn to Read Greek texts and workbooks. The publishers sent me for free links to the PDFs of the answer keys. Ds had used Learn to Read Latin in his Latin courses. My son had three years of Lukeion Greek and audited two other Greek reading courses, and a lot of the work is still challenging for him, a lot of translating from English to Greek. There are a lot of original texts. But with the answer keys I still feel I can keep tabs on what he is doing. If you are near a university with a strong classics department you could get a tutor to meet with him regularly but keep it at a slower pace than the Lukeion course.

[Cosmos]

You guys really think a student would forget it all? I wonder. I'm remembering my own experience. I had taken two years of French in high school, then took a year off while I was an exchange student (not in a French-speaking country). I did no French at all during that year. When I went off to college, I spent a couple of weeks reviewing French and when I took the placement test, I placed into French 3 at my college. It was a little tough the first couple of weeks, but mostly because my speaking skills were so rusty and my French kept coming out as the wrong language.

 

Of course everyone's experience is different, and that was French not Greek. But I think languages comes back fairly easily once you start studying them again.

[Cosmos]

One of my boys is taking Greek 2 & Latin 3 (Lukeion) and French 4 (TPS) this year, in 9th. He wants to continue with Greek 3 next year, which would mean his 10th grade year would look like this:

 

English

Algebra 2

Physics (or Chemistry)

World History (or Omni 3 at WHA)

AP Latin

AP French

Greek 3

 

 

 

While I'm here, can I ask you a question about this? My ds is also taking French at TPS, and I thought their sequence goes --

 

French 1

French 2

French 3

French 4/5

 

I thought the French 4/5 class was the AP level. Is that not correct?

 

[yvonne]

Cosmos,

You're correct about the TPS French sequence.  What's a little odd about it is that TPS French 1 covers BJU's French 1 text, French 2 covers one half the BJU French 2 text, French 3 covers the second half of the BJU French 2 text, and French 4/5 uses French lit (all in French, of course.)  I've been super happy with the lit-based French 4/5 class; I haven't seen lit-based French classes like that anywhere else besides the 4-year colleges/universities or a few of the private high schools near us.

 

It's called "French 4/5" because a student can take it one year as "French 4," using certain works of French lit. The next year, Mme S uses a second set of texts so the student can take a second year of lit-based French, "French 5." Then the 2 year cycle repeats.

 

To prep for the AP, there's a "French AP Supplement" class (at a much lower cost) that a student can take simultaneously with TPS French 4/5.

 

 

HTH,

yvonne

[yvonne]

Thank you so much for helping me think this through, Laura and forty-two. I so appreciate it.

 

Forty-two, if he were just taking the next higher level of Greek and Latin, I think he'd be fine. The problem is that next year he will need to add some sort of history to his schedule if he wants to meet the standard college admissions requirement of a minimum 3 years of history.  This year, he did not take history in order to make room for Greek 2.  It's been a heavy, but doable load.  I don't know if adding in a 7th course, history, next year is at all realistic.

 

I was also thinking that one option might be to skip science next year. The standard college admissions minimum science requirement seems to be 3 years. He took biology (w/ lab) this year. He could take physics in 11th and chem in 12th and still meet the 3 year min.  Is that a bad idea?

Or, theoretically, he could double up on sciences in 11th or 12th when he's no longer taking Latin & French.  He wouldn't be thrilled with that idea, but maybe it's the answer.

 

I think your idea about laying out the facts for him might be the best approach. He really needs to make the decision. The thing is he's very diligent and tends to want to do what's "expected." ("If everyone takes three years of history, or if I need 4 years of science, I'll do it.")

 

 

[MomOfABunch]

Could he do a class over the summer? That would free up time during the year. I would bump science or history to "summer school" to make room for all his languages.

[yvonne]

That idea just occurred to me! :)  It sounds like DO's physics course counts as a "lab science," and he could do that, or half of it, this summer, and finish the second half over the course of next year. I hate to ask him to work over the summer, but that might be the only solution.

Thank you!

 

[MomOfABunch]

You're welcome :)

 

Isn't flexible scheduling one of the benefits of homeschooling? For math and languages, it's best not to skip a year. If there's any way to keep up all those languages, I would certainly do it. That will benefit him, I'm sure, come college application time. If you think about it, public summer is 20-30 school days of only one subject.

[EndOfOrdinary]

The AP tests happen in May. Theoretically say he took the rest of May and then June to do Derek Owens. July is free to either stop and have summer, or do half time, or whatever he wanted, then August through December and he would be almost done. A shorter half credit science could round out the year and it would be no big deal. Not four full credits, but three and a half. It would be a bit messy for a transcript, but eh.

 

This would mean he could have a summer, not be totally overloaded, and still get to take the Greek.

[yvonne]

Thanks, EndOfOrdinary. I was thinking of having him do DO this summer; I hadn't even thought of doing it after the Latin & French AP's next year.  That would actually make more sense since that's when his load will really lighten up. Hm.

Thank you!