First Thoughts On JACT Reading Greek

So I took a break today (though technically I guess that was yesterday...it is just past midnight) from reading the Protoevangelium of James to read some in the Reading Greek books (by the JACT) for learning Classical Greek. I've owned them for a while so I thought I would give them a spin.

The text is reading intensive, and I like that. However, I find its explanation a little terse and I found myself thinking that there needed to be more.

My only other complaint is related to format. The curriculum is broken up into two books, one on grammar, vocabulary, and exercises. The other is the reading text. Though there are some advantages to having split texts, I found having the vocabulary for the readings in one book and the actual readings in another to be very annoying.

I read through the first two sections, which was a total of about 11 pages of Greek text. Having the words available made the reading very quick and enjoyable, and made it through the grammar and that translation in about two to three hours.

Tonight I checked on Amazon to see what other books they had for the series (I have a couple readers from it, so I figured there might be more I didn't know about). ἰδού, βίβλους καινούς εἶδον. Since my purchase of my copy they have come out with a new edition, and they fixed the annoyance of having the vocabulary separated from the text. I was tempted to buy it but decided I should spend my money on other books. Oh well.

I have spent little time in Classical Greek, so this has been fun. I think I'll have to keep doing this.