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Classics and Ancient History

Greek Language 2

CX 126-15, 226-15

depending on year of study

Module convenor: Dr Emily Clifford

Module weight: 15 CATS, Terms 2 - 3

Eligibility

This module builds upon the Greek Language I (CX 120-15 / CX 220-15) module and gives the opportunity to read continuous passages of original authors. Students need to have a sound basis to enrol on the module: students coming from Greek 1 will need to have performed to a satisfactory level (60) overall. A placement test may be required at the start of the year.

The Department welcomes enquiries from students outside the Classics Department, although in some years numbers may dictate that the module be limited to members of the Classics department. Postgraduates from other Departments who are interested in taking the module should email the module co-ordinator to signify their interest.

This module is also studied by first year undergraduates on the Classical Civilisation or Ancient History courses who have studied Greek at A level but did not achieve the grade necessary for the module Greek Literary Texts. Anyone else who is interested should discuss their position with the module tutor.

Aims and Objectives

This is an intensive course. Building upon the morphology and basic grammar of Greek 1, students will cover additional morphology along with all all the major points of Greek syntax, and will begin to read, unadapted, the prose of Lysias (in particular, his speech On the Murder of Eratosthenes). By the end of the module, students should expect to have reached a sufficiently advanced level of linguistic knowledge to read original texts by Greek authors of a certain complexity.

Attendance, Independent Study, and Drop-in Sessions

Because this is an intensive course, students are required to undertake a significant amount of independent study outside the classroom. There are four hours of teaching each week: three hours of lecture, and one hour of consolidation and revision.
Attendance is required at all classes, unless there is a very good reason you cannot attend. Our experience is that regular attendance is the single most important factor for success on this module. If you have appointment you cannot miss, please discuss this in advance. If you are ill, you should email as soon as possible (on the day) giving a brief explanation of why you could not attend. In the absence of any such email, attendance will be noted as unauthorised in the register. In the event that you have to miss classes for more than one week due to illness, university regulations usually require you to submit a medical certificate from your GP or similar healthcare professional to the departmental office.

You should expect to:

  • work on the materials at the fast pace of this intensive module;
  • study and revise over Reading Week and Easter vacation;
  • spend a considerable amount of time each week on independent study (at least 10-12 hours per week, 200 hours in total).

You should be in email contact with the module tutor and your personal tutor since it is easy to fall behind in such a situation and catching up becomes progressively harder.

Drop-in sessions offer students the opportunity to sort out areas of uncertainty as the module progresses. Often a quick, well-directed question can sort things out quickly and put your mind at rest. Drop-in sessions are particularly important where you have missed a class. You are expected to do the work which is always set out online, but you should use a drop-in session to check on anything you have not understood.

My current drop in hours are Thursday 11-13 (in person, in my office at FAB 2.08).

Bibliography

The course will begin with the completion of the textbook from Greek Language I, L. A. Wilding's Greek for Beginners. We will swiftly move on to more advanced textbooks. Some books are clearer and more thorough than others in the way they arrange, address, or explain specific topics; therefore, the following resources will be synchronously used and integrated (further details will be given in Week 1):

  • John Taylor, Greek Beyond GCSE, Bloomsbury Academic 2017
  • Abbott and Mansfield, A Primer of Greek Grammar, Bloomsbury Academic 1977 (and following reprints)
  • James Morwood, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, OUP 2001
  • Juan Coderch, Classical Greek: A New Grammar, 2012
  • Evert van Emde Boas et al., The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, CUP 2019

Students must obtain copies of these textbooks in order to engage successfully with this course. Students coming from Greek Language I should already possess some of these items; both printed and digital copies of all these books can be found in the Warwick Library. Supplementary materials will be distributed in class and uploaded onto Moodle. In the second part of Term 2 and Term 3, we will be reading Lysias I (On the Murder of Eratosthenes). The module tutor will provide the material.

In this module we will also use a Greek-English Lexicon (Liddel Scott Jones, online https://0-stephanus-tlg-uci-edu.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/lsj/#eid=1). If you are a Q800 student or if you think you are likely to continue to Greek Literary Texts next year, then you should get a copy of Liddell and Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (if you go online you can find cheaper print-on-demand copies rather than hardback). If not, then the Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Classical Greek by Morwood/Taylor (£4 abebooks) should be perfectly satisfactory for this year.

Assessment

Assessment is organised as follows:

  • 3 1-hour tests taking place in Week 4 and 7 (Term 2) and Week 1 (Term 3), weighted respectively at 10% (Week 4), 20% (Week 7), and 20% (Week 1).
  • Final exam 50%.