Oral Greek - Level A

Oral Greek - Level A
Oral Greek - Level A

The program “Oral Greek from A to C through B” attempts to enhance the Speaking skills in learners of Greek as a Second /Foreign Language that have achieved one of the three learning stages, A (Basic User), B (Independent User), C (Proficient User) according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF, 2001). 

The module Oral Greek A aims to help learners of Greek at the elementary level develop comprehension and production skills during oral communication. The main goal of the module at this level is learners’ fluency during oral interaction, through drilling activities, listening comprehension and productive tasks. Nevertheless, elementary learners can achieve some basic accuracy too, through noticing and repeating words, phrases, grammatical forms and structures. 

Learners will enjoy the various topics included in the material, which cover basic, frequent communicative situations, like introducing myself and others, talking about my family or my everyday program, moving around the city, shopping, visiting a doctor, looking for a flat or a job, as well as entertainment, traveling and education. By the end of this module, learners will be able to understand simple conversations about such topics better and respond in relevant requests and questions, either in informal or formal situations.

Learners will also practice how to express basic needs, opinions, attitudes, feelings and personal experiences in an appropriate and comprehensible way. Their pronunciation will not be an obstacle in their attempt to achieve their communicative goal, since they will receive focused practice in the basic sounds of Greek. Additionally, the basic grammatical structures and the thematic vocabulary in each section not only help learners build their knowledge of Greek, but also strengthen their self-confidence and boost their effectiveness during oral interaction. 

By the end of this module, learners of Greek will have achieved the basic practice which will allow them to participate not only in the basic communicative situations included in Oral Greek A but also in other occasions that require basic vocabulary and simple structures.  

Oral Greek A is the first step towards the autonomous, competent and effective speaker of Greek language.  

Iakovou Maria
Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics
Start Date Start Date: Sep 23rd 2024
Duration Duration: 12 weeks
Programme leads to Course Certificate
Educational SupportEducation type: Personal educational support
Price Total cost: 450 €
Pay as you go
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It is important to stress that this online program cannot replace the lessons of Greek in a classroom environment, which the learner has undoubtedly attended at some point in his learning path before being involved in this type of online education. The program refers exclusively to Comprehension and Production Skills during oral communication, since all teaching units lead the learner, as noted, to understand and produce more efficient Greek spoken language in various contexts according to his language level. In this sense, the "Oral Greek from A to C through B" is addressed to:

• Learners of Greek as a Second or Foreign Language who attend language courses in parallel or preceding the time of enrollment in the program and based on the ranking test or on their personal preference choose one of the three-course cycles
• Expatriates who at some point have attended a Greek language school, have been taught Greek in a classroom environment and are keen to improve their skill of producing written speech.

Each level consists of 12 teaching units which follow the main specifications of the CEFR (CEF, 2001) regarding the communication needs of learners in oral language skills (comprehension and production), but also the linguistic tools for implementation (grammar, vocabulary, speech acts, textual conventions, pragmatic information).


Each teaching unit (except for the last of each level which is the evaluation of the respective program) corresponds to one of the 14 communication subjects included in the CEFR (CEF 2001: 52) and is adapted to this program as follows:

 

Oral Greek from A to C through B: Units and topics

UNIT 1: 

UNIT 2: 

UNIT 3: 

UNIT 4: 

UNIT 5: 

UNIT 6: 

UNIT 7: 

UNIT 8: 

UNIT 9: 

UNIT 10: 

UNIT 11: 

PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION

RELATIONS WITH OTHER PEOPLE- FAMILY

HOUSE AND HOME

DAILY LIFE

SHOPPING

HEALTH AND FITNESS

FREE TIME AND ENTERTAINMENT

TRAVELLING

EDUCATION

EMPLOYMENT

SOCIETY

Each teaching unit consists of three parts:

  • In the first part, the learner has the possibility to work on the language tools at the time most convenient to him/her (for the duration of a week). These are presented either in the form of instructions/theory through authentic texts appropriately modified depending on the level of general knowledge of the language, or lexical items lists. It should be mentioned at this point that texts presented in the first part (interviews, radio or tv programs, native speakers’ oral communication) are authentic that have been modified in order to match learners’ needs and knowledge at each of the three levels. Thus, modified input becomes controlled input that prevents learners’ frustration that result from lexical burden or syntactic complexity. 

    In any case, all the necessary components of each unit are given in the form of necessary steps/actions directly accessible from the beginning. Then, the learner has the possibility to review the information and study them through guided exercises, which are in the form of list matching, multiple-choice (pick one) or right-wrong (boolean). For these exercises, the program provides to the learner direct assessment and the opportunity to refer to the first part of the theory whenever he feels there are gaps in the initial contact with it.

    This first part is essential, not only because it functions as the ‘exemplified linguistic input’ that helps learners enrich their vocabulary, syntactic structures and communication strategies, but -more importantly- because comprehending speech production precedes speech production and is the cornerstone of the development of all other language skills. Researchers have convincingly argued that “the relevance among skills shows that, if listening comprehension is neglected, there will be consequences in the development of the other language skills”

  • In the second part, the learner is asked, in a time predetermined by the program, to perform a speaking task which is the final product of each module. In fact, the learner practices the material of the first part in order to complete the task of the second part. However, topics and activities involved in this part are not identical with those in part A, since the aim of Part B is not only enhancement of listening comprehension but mainly improvement of speech production. Specifically, tasks in Part B have the following form: 
    - First, one or more texts from Part A are chosen in order to trigger a discussion between the learner and the instructor. The learner is asked to comment, criticize, express his/her agreement or disagreement, suggest solutions or present his/her ideas related to the issue at hand. The learner does not know in advance which of the text(s) will be chosen for this task, in order to regard all texts in Part A as equally important.
    - In the second task, the learner has to make a ‘presentation’ of a topic relevant to the learning unit s/he has worked on. Texts in Part A function as examples which give him/her the required linguistic input as well as some basic ideas on which the learner can ‘construct’ his presentation. This way, all texts of Part A are put in use, comprehension and production of spoken language are connected and learner’s overall skills are evaluated, moving from the micro- to the macro-level of his/her production
    - The third and last task is a role-play activity between the learner and the instructor. The learner has a specific role (e.g. client in a house moving company) or just the role of a person with a specific point of view that contradicts that of the instructor’s, in order to create a context for a debate. In both cases, the learner knows in advance the role s/he has to play and has enough time to prepare his/her oral production, making the best of the input s/he had in Part A.
     

  • In the third part, the learner receives personalized feedback on his own linguistic output. The feedback includes error annotation and metalinguistic explanation for each error type.

    The structure of the material entails two things:

    1.    The learner may not proceed with the second part of the task, if he has not previously followed the instructions and have not been familiar with the material that is presented in the first part. Each task targets the comprehension of the language tools preceding.

    2.    The learner cannot stay in the first part of the linguistic input, and not perform the task provided in the second part. This way he "breaks" the chain of consecutive language productions and participation in the program is insufficient. 

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The content of teaching units is summarized in the following table:

  • Lexical items lists (for each thematic unit at each language level)
  • 3 live streaming sessions with the ability to interact with a designated tutor
  • Language instructions/theory (grammatical rules, conventional speech acts, text types conventions, text organizational structures) enriched with pictures, figures, tables and links
  • Appropriately modified texts according to the language levels
  • In-context presentation and analysis of linguistic items
  • Examples of usage
  • Modeling exercises
  • Additional bibliography and selected webography
  • Additional files (Pdf, Power Point)
  • Self-evaluation exercises
  • Final production task
  • Personalized feedback

The main focus and innovation of the whole program lies in the second and third parts of each module. There the learner receives personalized feedback for his own language output and enhances his/her productive skills in speaking according to his/her own capacity. 

This way, participation in the program allows for a targeted inspection of each learner’s oral production and “pushes” the learner to test and verify his knowledge to the fullest extent possible. In fact, this is the only way to "force" learners to activate part of the knowledge to which they have already been exposed by pushing them to produce their own language material. In this way, learners’ output is converted into a new learners’ auto-input on which the necessary corrective feedback will be given.

This role is undertaken by the program support team "Oral Greek from A to C through B" by commenting, analyzing and interpreting the language production of each learner separately and thus creating a new personalized input that results from the needs, the level and ability of the learner him/herself.

The prerequisites for participation in the program on the learner’s part are:

- Internet access

- Basic computer knowledge

- Certificate of attendance in Greek language courses (if applicable) (eg. in case of attending Greek language courses at the University/school or institute/language school in another country or in Greece).

When will I receive the Certificate?

The Certificate will be sent to you electronically 30 working days upon completion, if you have no remaining academic or financial obligations. The Certificate will be also sent to you through traditional post services. Upon request the Certificate can be sent with the use of courier services. In this case, the relative cost should be covered by your side.

 

 

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