Reddit reviews Greek to GCSE: Part 1

This series is awesome.

I am a Sixth Form student in the UK. I have just completed my Latin AS and am teaching myself ancient Greek.

After using the first few CLC books as a start to Latin GCSE, we used John Taylor's Essential GCSE Latin. The CLC books are, in my opinion, probably a better starting point for self-teaching Latin than that John Taylor book, but after a few of the CLC books, you should be in a great position to start learning from the John Taylor book, which provides lots of information with clear examples and detailed explanations, but which relies upon a reasonable amount of base knowledge. There's then his Latin Beyond GCSE after that. I would certainly recommend them and have found them to be good and useful.

For Greek, however, John Taylor has a series of books designed for students to teach themselves Greek from no knowledge of it, and your knowledge of Latin means that you'll be comfortable with most or all of the linguistic concepts in the early stages, so you shouldn't be delayed by that. I am currently working through these, and have found them excellent. They will build up your knowledge of Greek on a step-by-step basis, from understanding the alphabet to genitive absolutes and the subjunctive mood and whatnot, with longer and more complex passages to translate as the books develop, and plenty of vocabulary introduced across the books. I have completed Greek to GCSE Part 1, am working through Greek to GCSE Part 2, and have Greek Beyond GCSE lined up.

In terms of what works best... Well, it seems as though it used to be that Latin and Greek were taught with a strong grammatical focus. This is certainly important, but I would personally suggest doing that as a supplement to the induction approach which the CLC and John Taylor's Greek books take. I personally have found that approach more interesting and more enjoyable, and all of the grammar and endings will probably sink in quickly enough and probably more quickly when you're seeing them in the context of proper passages, rather than just tables of stuff.

I realise that this is rather generic. Please feel free to ask more about any of these things if they're unclear or you want to find out more! Best of luck with your studies!

Edit: links