Learning to read ancient Greek at school: where ancient language learning meets contemporary behaviourism

Abstract

In this paper, an existing behavioral intervention designed to facilitate the acquisition of, among others, reading skills, known as Technology of Teaching (Berens, 2020) is introduced and applied to the acquisition of phonemic decoding of ancient Greek graphemes in the context of the early phases of ancient Greek learning during the first year of Liceo classico (the Italian high school were both Greek and Latin are studied). The Technology of Teaching is mainly based on Precision Teaching and, as such, on the use of the Standard Celeration Chart, whose application to Greek learning will be detailed in these pages.