1. Ἔν ἀρχῇ ἤν ὁ λόγος... Ancient Greek vocabulary acquisition and education Jeroen Vis, the Netherlands

2. Introduction  Importance of vocabulary in foreign language acquisition is stressed in many studies.  Huge body of literature on late foreign vocabulary acquisition.  Sparse systematic research on Ancient Greek.

3. Outline of presentation  Several topics related to Ancient Greek vocabulary acquisition. 1. Learning approach: activity based vs. paired-associate. 2. Defining difficult words. 3. Role of the Greek alphabet.

4. Aims of presentation  To stimulate the discussion on Ancient Greek (and Latin) (vocabulary) acquisition and education.  To add (experimental) linguistic research to this discussion.  To provide linguistic tools for designing didactic material.

5. Theoretical background  Knowledge of vocabulary is important in second language acquisition  Speakers should have acces to about 95% of a text (Nation 1990)  For this, 5000-10000 vocabulary items are needed  How can this status best be achieved?  Are there innate difficult words?  Is the Greek alphabet problematic?

6. Background: Ancient Greek  There is sparse empirical research with respect to Ancient Greek vocabulary acquisition  Textbooks only provide bilingual word lists, vocabulary activities are marginal  Can we incorporate current research in Modern Languages? – Which point of view? – Ancient Greek exhibits some peculiarities  Additional experimental data are needed

7. Characteristics of teaching AG  Peculiarities of Ancient Greek: – No spoken language > input is only written – Traditional method of teaching – Different alphabet – Unfamiliar concepts – Input limited to classroom  Classroom setting, including – School age – Beginners – Diversity of items – Students’ learning preference

8. Learning approaches  Two main approaches concerning the most effective way of acquiring foreign vocabulary (Modern Languages)  A) paired-associate (Mondria 2003, de Groot 2010): the concept is already in the brain, it only needs to acquire a new ‘label’. Other activities are merely distracting and time-consuming.  B) Activity based (Hulstijn & Laufer 2001 among others): more involvement leads to better acquisition.  Both approaches are supported by experimental data.

9. Experimental data  3 test conditions: multiple choice activity, paired associate, multiple choice + paired associate  immediate post-test and delayed post-test

10. Test condition → test ↓ paired- associate multiple choice glosses paired- associate + multiple choice glosses immediate post-test mean: 19,40 s.d. :1,73 mean: 16,11 s.d.: 3,30 mean: 17,74 s.d.: 3,00 delayed post- test mean: 14,12 s.d.: 3,89 mean: 11,69 s.d.: 3,37 mean: 11,00 s.d.: 3,74 vocabulary loss mean: 5,28 s.d.: 3,17 mean: 4,42 s.d.: 2,52 mean: 6,73 s.d.: 3,24

11.  For short term acquisition, the paired associate approach seems best.  For longer term acquisition, the activity based approach seems promising  >> Learning by means of PA, deep processing by means of activity based learning

12. Defining difficult words  3 parameters, partly based on Groot (2006 & 2010) : General idea: more activity in the brain makes a word more difficult to learn A.Phonetic form – Focus on clusters [pt], [kt], [ps], [ks] B.Meaning – abstract vs. concrete meaning C. Grammatical category – Not included in Groot, substantive – verb – adjective, possibly related to #B

13. Experimental data  All parameters and combination of parameters tested in a learning task  No significant results  Conclusion: difficulty of words can’t be defined in terms of these parameters a priori  Teacher base their estimation on frequency of the word

15. Role of the alphabet  Different alphabet  Difficulties for language acquisition according to some teachers  Greek alphabet vs. transcription  Beginners vs. advanced learners  No significant results

16. Conclusions  Paired associate is an efficient learning approach  Vocabulary activities contribute to deep processing  Difficult words can’t be defined a priori  Teachers have a different idea of difficult words than pupils  The alphabet plays no role in learning vocabulary

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