Lukeion's Greek

[Meriwether]

Ds13 is going to be a freshman next year. I'm trying to figure out his options. He wants to do Greek instead of Latin. He also wants to learn Mandarin, I could teach him Spanish.

 

My daughter is taking Latin II with Lukeion this year. I have a lot of respect for Lukeion, but I'm wonder how accessible it is to more average students. My daughter is doing okay but not fabulously. She definitely isn't at the top of the class. I want to say she is a better student than my son, but it is more that they are different. She works quickly but not all that carefully. She generally understands concepts pretty easily. Ds13 is a slow worker, but he generally understands concepts too. He is good at grammar and is fairly interested in languages - not passionately, though. Part of me thinks that a class that takes Dd14 10+ hours per week could very well take Ds13 15+. Maybe not, though. He is getting faster as he gets older. Plus, he may be stronger at languages than she is even though she is the stronger student overall.

My question has several parts.

A) Is Lukeion's Greek about the same difficulty as it's Latin? Harder? Easier?
B) Can an average student do well in the class without spending significantly more than 10 hours/week on it?
C) Would you encourage a child to take a class they won't necessarily do well in? Meaning they would likely get a B not an A in it. I don't think this child will do particularly well on standardized tests (time being an issue), so I am not worried about grades as much for him. I would rather challenge a kid and have them learn a lot than take easy classes they won't learn from, but there is a middle ground that I should maybe aim for?
D) Would you let a child do Greek and Mandarin if you could do Spanish with him? My inclination is to let him do both since he wants to but to hedge my bets with Spanish, knowing I could get him through Spanish IV in high school. But three languages for a slow working child. :huh:

 

Other courses that I know he will be taking:

Foerster's Geometry
TOG Year 4 - R level but only the first half with some other lit/history mixed in.
Apologia's Biology

Possibly an elective called Principles of Technology or something with programming.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Meriwether

[crazyforlatin]

Dd has gone through Latin 1-4a and Greek 1. Based on her experiences, the difficulty level of Greek 1 is the same as Latin 1, but the time spent on Greek 1 was less time consuming than you would think from such a class. Mr. Barr gives quizzes but no midterms. Dd definitely did not spend 10 hours per week and still got an A. We went with CLRC for Greek 2, and while I think the teacher is excellent, Dd didn't like the way homework was submitted. She has a hard time writing in Greek, so it would have been more efficient with quizlet. I'm still deciding whether she should continue with Greek.

 

What resources are you planning for Mandarin? It depends how easy it is to find a class or tutor. I live in a large city with many Saturday Chinese schools. And, I use italki.com for additional conversation time. A couple of the online schools now have Mandarin as well.

[eternalsummer]

Can I ask why you switched to CLRC for Greek 2, crazyforlatin, and whether your DD is a gifted student in general, and what age she started Greek?  (sorry to ask so many questions!  We are considering Greek next year).  

 

Meriwether, I'd let him do the language he has an interest in, but I'd definitely keep Spanish in reserve if Greek doesn't go well after the first semester.

[Meriwether]

I think the Mandarin course would be one of the two mentioned in a thread here. We do not have anything local as far as I have found. If he gets serious, there is a weekend class 1.5 hours away. I would do that only if he became *really* serious about learning Mandarin but it would be a possibility.

[RootAnn]

Speaking as a mom of a kid who does two languages at a time, they are a serious drain on time! (She dropped Latin after Latin 2 to switch to German this year. She's in Spanish 4 as well.) I wouldn't have a kid do a third language just because I could teach it if they weren't interested in that third language or languages in general. IMO, two languages (or more) is for kids who like learning languages. I'd suggest he start with one language (either Greek or Mandarin) his freshman year. If that is going well and he has the time, I'd let him add his second chosen language Sophomore year. If he doesn't like Greek, he can still switch to Mandarin Sophomore year and have time for three years of it before graduation.

 

Here are some old threads for you on Lukeion's Greek. Looks like there are several posters who are regulars, so you can PM them, too.

Lukeion Project (2012 thread)

Latin 1 and Greek 1 simultaneously? (another 2012 thread asking about workload, priorities, talking about starting two new languages at once)

Lukeion Greek for a beginner (2014 thread, has a couple of the 2012 posters update on how it went/is going)

Lukeion Greek Problems (2014 thread about first week problems with the Quia interface, commiseration, and tips on the keyboard/font)

How insane is it to take both Lukeion's Latin and Greek? (crazyforlatin's 2015 post wondering about workload for two Lukeion classes)

 

 

[Meriwether]

Thank you, RootAnn. I read through the threads you linked.

I think I would let him do at least two languages, since he is interested in both Greek and Mandarin. He is currently doing Latin, Spanish, and Mandarin (on his own with videos and a textbook) but only about 15 min/day for each. He also did some Welsh on Duolingo last year. He is used to a 8+ hour school day  :sad: , but I don't want it to become a 10+ hour day. He has asked to do some of his work during the summer, which may be an option. I don't particularly want to do that either.

[yvonne]

One nice plus to Lukeion is that you can sign up for only one semester, if you want.  If your son is interested in learning ancient Greek, you could let him  try it for a semester and then decide how to proceed. He wouldn't be risking much.

 

If it goes well, great! Keep going!  My son loved Greek with Mr. Barr and continued for four years!

 

If your son decides it's not for him, that's good, too, because then he can cross it off his list and focus his energy on another interest. My son had been asking to take Greek for two years before I realized how serious he was. (Bad mama! Bad!)  If he'd never tried it, he'd always be wondering & wishing he had.

 

If your son gets a grade he/you don't want on his transcript, don't report the class at all. Consider it an interest-based EC, like cooking, or canoeing, or whatever. You don't have to report all those.

 

I don't think there's any way you're going to be able to know ahead of time how it will work out for your son. If he really wants to try it, just do it! All he risks is losing one semester of high school credit if it doesn't work out. That's nothing compared to the risk of regretting not having pursued a genuine interest at the time and never knowing if it might have been something your son would have loved.

 

 

ETA: I guess another potential risk is that the Greek displaces one semester of some other subject. As a pp mentioned, language learning is time-intensive. The first semester of Greek may be  especially so. But if it's a self-initiated interest/study, it is probably worth that minor risk.

Edited December 26, 2017 by yvonne

[crazyforlatin]

Can I ask why you switched to CLRC for Greek 2, crazyforlatin, and whether your DD is a gifted student in general, and what age she started Greek? (sorry to ask so many questions! We are considering Greek next year).

 

Meriwether, I'd let him do the language he has an interest in, but I'd definitely keep Spanish in reserve if Greek doesn't go well after the first semester.

We went with clrc because the starting time for their class was better than Lukeion's which is 7:15 am Pacific time. Clrc's teacher has a PhD from Berkeley.

 

DD began studying Greek in first grade by using Elementary Greek books, so she had an easier time with Lukeion's Greek at the very beginning.

[eternalsummer]

Ah, 7:15 is early!  That would pretty much be a non-starter for us too :)  

[NotSoObvious]

My daughter took Greek 1 while taking Latin 2. She's in Latin 3 this year. She's had A's in every class and she works very hard.

Here are her answers:

1. Greek is harder.

2. She says she spent about the same time on Greek as Latin. Not 10 hours a week usually, though she says there is a lot of homework, so it would depend on the child. 

3. Mr. Barr is pretty strict. She says she would still take the class even though she'd get a B, but understand that Lukeion comes with the black and white, high standards. No hand holding. 

4. "Absolutely not." She took Latin, Greek, and Spanish (FLVS) in one year and only chose to continue with Latin. It was too much for her and she LOVES languages and does well (A's in all three). She just has other interests. Latin will be such a good foundation that she can pound out Spanish quickly later if she chooses.

 

Other kids have done great doing multiple languages though!

 

Hope that helps. 

[Corraleno]

A) Is Lukeion's Greek about the same difficulty as it's Latin? Harder? Easier?

 

DS found Latin easier than Greek, but that may be because Greek was his first foreign language class (and he was in 7th grade at the time). He's also dyslexic and ADD, so he kind of jumped straight into the deep end with Lukeion's Greek I. Once he fought his way through that, Latin seemed quite easy in comparison (he did 2 years of Latin with Lukeion and 4 of Greek, plus a 5th yr of Greek on his own). I think for an older student who already has a strong grasp of grammar and some prior exposure to foreign languages, Greek is not going to be that much harder than Latin. 

 

 

B) Can an average student do well in the class without spending significantly more than 10 hours/week on it?

 

I think so. Greek was definitely DS's most time-consuming class (10-12 hrs/wk probably), but he is not only dyslexic and ADD, he is a perfectionist and somewhat obsessive about his translations. He would spend a LOT of time looking up all the various possible meanings for words, choosing the best one, rearranging the sentence structure to be as fluid as possible without changing the meaning, etc. He rarely scored less than high-90s on quizzes and never got less than an A+ in any Lukeion class. So, yes, it took him 10-12 hrs/wk, but that was for a perfectionist kid with LDs. I think there are plenty of kids who do well without investing so much time.

 

 

C) Would you encourage a child to take a class they won't necessarily do well in? Meaning they would likely get a B not an A in it. I don't think this child will do particularly well on standardized tests (time being an issue), so I am not worried about grades as much for him. I would rather challenge a kid and have them learn a lot than take easy classes they won't learn from, but there is a middle ground that I should maybe aim for?

 

When DS first signed up for Greek, I honestly thought he was going to crash and burn. I only registered for 1A, and I told him not to beat himself up if it was too hard, that he didn't even have to finish 1A if he didn't want to. No one was more shocked than I was when he ended up with an A+ — that was entirely his own doing, and I honestly would have been thrilled with a B and satisfied with a C. He learned so much from that class about perseverance and time management and pushing through feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. In many ways, those lessons were more important than the actual language learning.

 

 

D) Would you let a child do Greek and Mandarin if you could do Spanish with him? My inclination is to let him do both since he wants to but to hedge my bets with Spanish, knowing I could get him through Spanish IV in high school. But three languages for a slow working child.  :huh:

I wouldn't make him do Spanish if he has no real interest in it. Motivation is so important in foreign language study, moreso than any other subject IMO. You can force yourself to memorize historical facts or mathematical equations, even if you have no interest, but you can't make yourself learn to think in a language you don't care about. Languages kind of have to be learned from the inside out, and you can't get inside a language if you don't want to be there. (Hence why so many kids who've plodded through 4 yrs of HS foreign language often can barely speak a word of it.)