Prof. Edith Foster
Kauke 202
e-mail: efoster@wooster.edu
phone: (330) 263-2352

Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday from 12:00 to 12:45, or by appointment (Senior IS students will have priority on Tuesdays. I recommend you make an appointment or call before you come in on any day.)

Class Meetings: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:00, Tuesday at 12:00.

Required Text: Anne H. Groton: From Alpha to Omega.
Jon Bruss, From Alpha to Omega, Ancillary Exercises.

Course Goals:
Greek 101 aims to give students a grasp of the basic grammatical structures of the language. We will practice the language through reading and through focused exercises, which will include reading aloud and translating paragraphs of Greek. By the end of this course (we aim to cover about 30 chapters in the textbook) students will write and pronounce ancient Greek correctly. They will have been introduced at all tenses of the Greek verb in the active, middle and passive voice, and to all major declensions of the noun. During the first semester of Greek students will be accenting their verbs consistently, and their nouns sometimes.

Grading:
1. Homework Assignments: You will often correct your homework together with everyone else in class, or go over it with the course assistant. However, I will also regularly (sometimes twice a week) ask you to hand in your homework assignments. These assignments must be handed in on time, and must be legible. All assignments must be marked with the student’s name and the date the assignment was handed in. No marks will be taken off for errors unless the errors seem to originate in carelessness. Thus 20% of the course grade can be had simply for neatness and punctuality in handing in homework assignments! Fancy that!
2. Meetings with the Course Assistant: Everyone needs a lot of help to learn ancient Greek. We are fortunate to have a CA for this course. I hope that you’ll make full use of the study and homework sessions he will offer. This will be one efficient way to get your homework done, practice pronunciation, etc. 20% of the grade will be assigned to attentive participation in study sessions.
3. Quizzes: There will be weekly short quizzes in the last half of the Wednesday 12:00 class. (I will try to return quizzes by the following day.) These quizzes will count, cumulatively, for 30% of the grade, so they will be important.
4. Exams: There will also be a midterm and a final exam. The midterm will count for 10% of the course grade and the final exam will count for 20% of the course grade. The quizzes will help you to prepare for the exams: by the time you’ve written a number of Foster quizzes, you should find Foster exams fairly predictable. I don’t tend to throw curves, but to value solid knowledge of the basics you will need in order to use the language.

Grading Summary:
20% for homework
20% for study sessions with CA
30% for quizzes
30% for exams (=10% for the mid-term, and 20% for the mid-year exam)

The Final Exam (I am sorry to say) is on Thursday December 14th at 7:00 PM.

Academic Honesty
The Department of Classics has the highest expectations in regard to academic honesty. No dishonesty of any kind will be tolerated. Thus, while we expect and encourage you to collaborate with other people when you do your homework, all of the answers to all of the questions must be your own. If you are copying answers from other people’s homework, this fact will quickly emerge from the results of quizzes and in class translation exercises, so don’t do it! Any incidence of cheating on a quiz or exam will be taken extremely seriously, and may result in expulsion from the course.

Learning Disabilities
Any student with a documented learning disability is requested to speak with Pam Rose, Director of the Learning Center (ext. 2595), and with the instructor, as early in the semester as possible. All discussions will remain confidential.

Week 1

Aug 28: Introduction and Lesson 1. Topics: The Alphabet and other basic information. A Breathing is a Letter.

Aug 29: Review of Lesson 1; Hand in first homework assignment.

Aug 30: Lesson 2: Introduction of Greek Accents. No Quiz

Sept 1: Lesson 2: Review of Lesson two; Hand in second homework assignment.

Week 2

Sept 4: Lesson 3: Omega Verbs (Aristotle looked out. And he saw that language was divided into nouns and verbs…)

Sept 5: Review of Omega Verbs: present tense, infinitive and imperatives (What kind of language has third person imperatives?!! Let it be called bad names.) Hand in third homework assignment.

Sept 6: Lesson 4: First Declension. First 20 minutes taught by CA. Second half hour: Quiz 1 (NOM, GEN, DAT, ACC, VOC. If you know Latin, here’s where life gets good: Greek has no ablative case!

Sept 8: Lesson 4: Review of first declension.

Week 3

Sept 11: Lesson 5: First Declension. (Remember: though the singular forms may vary, the plurals are all the same. So get a handle on those plurals!) Hand in fourth homework assignment.

Sept 12: Lesson 5: Review of first declension. Intro to lesson 6: Omega verbs and the future tense; some smaller and more annoying words.

Sept 13: Lesson 6: review of the annoying words, as well as of the future tense (The Future is formed on the present stem -- just add a sigma. It WILL be wonderful); Quiz 2.

Sept 15: Lesson 7: Second Declension Masculines.

Week 4

Sept 18: Lesson 7: Review of Second Declension Masculines. Hand in fifth homework assignment.

Sept 19: Lesson 8: Second Declension Neuters, and some very fine adjectives.

Sept 20: Lesson 8: First half hour: review of first and second declension (Taught by CA); Second half hour: Quiz 3.

Sept 22: Lesson 9: You are your job. The masculines of the first declension and the hoplite citizen.

Week 5

Sept 25: Lesson 9: Review of masculines of the first declension. Hand in sixth homework assignment. (If I leave the breathing off of the word “homework” the word is “omework.” Breathings really are letters.)

Sept 26: Lesson 10: Omega Verbs: Imperfect Tense. (The imperfect is formed by adding a temporal augment (an epsilon) to the front of the present tense stem, and secondary endings to the end. Translate with “was” and “were.” It WAS a wonderful tense, not at all imperfect. We WERE HAVING a wonderful time learning that tense.)

Sept 27: Lesson 10: Review of the imperfect tense; Quiz 4.

Sept 29: Lesson 11: The middle/passive voice. (FEAR NOT! The middle voice translates like the active voice, only it’s more egotistical, the passive is just passive. They share the same endings, for now.) Prepositions.

Week 6

Oct 2: Lesson 11: Review of middle passive voice, preposition drills. Hand in seventh homework assignment.

Oct 3: Lesson 12: The verb ????. Some extremely annoying small words: enclitics. (Even words can have dependency problems.)

Oct 4: Lesson 12: Review of ??µ? and enclitics: Taught by CA; Quiz 5.

Oct 6: Lesson 13: Demonstratives (These are similar to that helpful word, the definite article. So it shall have been good (notice the future perfect passive) to have learned the article thoroughly.)

Week 7

Oct 9: Lesson 13: review of demonstratives. Hand in eighth homework assignment.

Oct 10: Lesson 14: Personal pronouns (Your EGO starts here.)

Oct 11: Lesson 14: review of demonstratives and personal pronouns; Quiz 6

Oct 13: Lesson 15: The terrible, horrible contract verbs. If only we could learn the contract verbs by taking a pill. We will definitely need a break after this.

Week 8

Oct 16: Break!

Oct 17: Lesson 15: Recovering from contract verbs: it wasn’t as bad as we thought!

Oct 18: Midterm Exam.

Oct 20: Lesson 16: Review of contract verbs and introduction of the third declension. (Consonant stem nouns, like the middle/passive voice, are old. Older than the College of Wooster, older than the United States, older than Europe, older than Greece. They are recognizable in Sanskrit, and come from Indo-European, the language of our remote ancestors.)

Week 9

Oct 23: Lesson 16: The third declension, reviewed, explained, and clarified by your very own Greek professor. Hand in ninth homework assignment.

Oct 24: Lesson 17: Oh Joy! More third declension!

Oct 25: Lesson 17: The third declension reviewed once again by your very own course assistant: Quiz 7.

Oct 27: Lesson 18: What’s on your Horizon? The aorist tense: first aorist indicative, infinitives, and imperatives, active and middle voice. Can you believe you already know how to handle all these categories?

OCC Convention Oct 28/29.

Week 10

Oct 30: Lesson 18: Review of the aorist tense. Hand in tenth homework assignment.

Oct 31: Lesson 19: More aorist: (Keep those synapses popping!) second aorist indicative, infinitives, and imperatives, active and middle voice.

Nov 1: Lesson 19: Review of the aorist. Quiz 8.

Nov 3: Lesson 20: The perfect is so perfect. There’s nothing more perfect than the perfect! Except maybe the pluperfect... (The principle parts or the Greek verb are starting to accumulate in a rather threatening fashion. Keep a grip on each one as they are introduced. This one is especially peculiar, with its reduplication at the front. However, this very peculiarity makes it easier to recognize and remember.)

Week 11

Nov 6: Lesson 20: Review of the perfect active indicative and infinitive, and the pluperfect. Hand in eleventh homework assignment.

Nov 7: Lesson 21: WHO knows WHO you are? The indefinite and interrogative pronoun in Greek (and English).

Nov 8: Lesson 21: Review of the indefinite and interrogative pronouns taught by CA; Quiz 9.

Nov 10: Lesson 22: ONLY TWO MORE PRINICIPLE PARTS TO GO. (sort of.) The fifth principle part: Perfect middle/passive tense forms.

Week 12

Nov 13: Lesson 22: Review of the perfect middle/passive. Hand in twelfth homework assignment.

Nov 14: Lesson 23: The relative pronoun, ALL of ??S, and “expressions of time.” (The relative pronoun is no sweat: it’s mostly the same as the article, except with rough breathings instead of tau. You see, rough breathings really are a letter.)

Nov 15: Lesson 23 review; Quiz 10

Nov 17: Lesson 24: Participatory Participles! Active participles of the present, future (just add the sigma!) first aorist (sigma alpha!) and second aorist (same as the present, but on the aorist stem); also, the perfect active participle (this one is like ??S, so now you understand their clever plot to teach you ??S before they introduced the participles.)

Week 13

Nov 20: Lesson 24: Review of active participles. Hand in thirteenth homework assignment. Can you believe how much Greek you’ve learned by Thanksgiving?

Break!

Dr. Foster’s rules for a good holiday: 1) Buy a New Yorker Magazine or Atlantic Magazine, and read more than the cartoons. 2) No television if you aren’t on a treadmill. If you are on a treadmill, you are allowed to watch until you drop. 3) Buy an organic squash or something, and do some cooking. An experienced cook always has a social advantage.

Week 14

Nov 27: Lesson 25: You’re almost through the semester! Middle Passive participles. You are going to love these. They are much easier than the active participles. A favorite of poets because they fall easily into dactylic hexameters (seriously), the middle/passive participles are easy to recognize, take easy endings, and are much the same in all tenses.

Nov 28: Lesson 25: Review of middle/passive participles

Nov 29: Lesson 26: Questions? Direct questions, indirect questions, alternative questions…did you come to college to ask questions? Quiz 11.

Dec 1: Lesson 26: Review of questions.

Week 15

Dec 4: Lesson 27: The last principle part (officially). The aorist passive tense. Hand in last homework assignment.

Dec 5: Lesson 27: Review of Aorist passive

Dec 6: Lesson 28: It shall have been edifying: The future perfect active and middle/passive. Quiz 12.

Dec 8: Lesson 28: Review of the Future perfect. That’s it. You now know the tenses of Greek verbs and the declensions of Greek nouns. Next semester we do the fancy stuff: subjunctive and optative moods, for instance. We’ll learn more complicated sentence structures and there’ll be lots more reading and translating than this semester.

Week 16

Study Session TBA

The final exam is on Thursday, December 14th at 7:00 PM.