Followers of this blog may be interested in this report from Luke DeWeese about Christophe Rico’s recent Greek course this summer at Ave Maria University in Florida (HT: Stephen Hill). See also the brief report here on one of their excursions.
It appears that the Classics Department at Ave Maria has adopted (at least in part) living language methods for teaching Latin and Greek. This is a great development–add it to the list of schools in the US that already includes Fresno Pacific University, Moody Bible Institute, and several others. I believe we will see many more institutions attempt to incorporate modern language teaching methods into their classical language programs. The reasons are simple: it’s natural, it’s fun, and it works!
Some of Mr. DeWeese’s claims may strike readers of this blog as a bit hyperbolic (“As far as anyone can tell, for the first time in the history of classical education in North America, ancient Greek is being taught as a spoken language”). Regardless, be sure to check out these posts and don’t miss the videos:
καὶ τὰ λοιπά 