<p>Afterhavinggrinded—ground?—mywaythroughroughlysevenchaptersofHansenandQuinn's book, I began to realise that I had learnt a staggering amount of grammar, but had had very little exposure to actual Greek text; and, to make matters worse, the text that I <i>was</i> able to read didn'tutilisenearlyasmanygrammaticalconceptsasIhadlearnt.This,perhapsnotunsurprisingly,leadtomyslowlybutsurelyfallingintothehabitofsimplyrepeatingthevocabularyIhadalreadylearnt—youknow,lestIforgetit—insteadofactuallyfocussingonreadingtext,learningnewvocabularyandgrammar.Iwas,quitehonestly,ataloss;perhapsAncientGreekwassimplybeyondmycapabilities</p>
<p>Iwas,andstillam,howeververykeenoncontinuingmystudyofthelanguage,but,unfortunately,myattemptatusingHansenandQuinnwithXenophon's Anabasis had proven unsuccessful. To visualise how keen I am on learning the language, I actually spent an additional €150-ish on buying new books that would, hopefully, prove to be much more adequate to actually acquiring the language; and the books I have bought are JACT's<q>ReadingGreek</q>series,aswellastheItalianversionofAthenaze.TheseuseratherdifferentapproachestoH&QandactuallyhavethestudentreadwholepassagesofAncientGreekprose,eitheradaptedfromactualtextsorcompletelynewstories—oracombinationofthetwo.</p>
<p>Theformer,however,arrivedafewweeksagoandIhavemade<i>much</i>morerapidprogressusingthisbook's method rather than H&Q. This may come as a surprise to you if you have read the text below, praising Hansen and Quinn'sbookforitsfocusongrammarandits<q>large</q>amountofvocabularyanddrills;Iwas,perhaps,somewhatnaïve.Indeed,evenitsnumberofexercisesisrathermeagreandespeciallyitsactualGreekproseorpoetry.Chapter4,ifmemoryservesright,wasthefirsttoincludeastaggering<i>five</i>(ish)linesofGreekpoetrywithhalfofthewordsbeingcompletelyunknowntothelearnerandonewasrequiredtocheckthebottomofthepageforhelp.Theexercises,thoughsomewhatplentiful,donothelptoalleviatetheproblemofhavingtoolittletoread,astheyaremuchtooshortindividuallytogetusedtoreadingactualGreekprose.</p>