About

The Ever-Shrinking Classical Reading List

While I was studying classics as an undergraduate at Brown, one of my Greek professors invited a small group of students to his home to read the Odyssey and spend time with him. It was an enjoyable afternoon and I felt grateful to receive this hospitality. When we'd finished reading Homer and were sitting around chatting, our professor lamented the passing of the golden age of classics, when the very brightest minds entered the field and performed its foundational philological work — comprehensive dictionaries and grammars, critical editions, etc. "Today," he remarked, "all the brightest minds go into quantum physics." The other students and I looked at each other sheepishly and chuckled to ourselves.

A few years later, I was studying at Campion Hall, Oxford. I had just completed Honour Moderations in Classics and was taking a celebratory walk around Christ Church meadows with one of my tutors. "You did very well," he said, "very well, indeed..." He paused and looked out over the picturesque scene before continuing: "Of course, the reading list isn't what it once was." Once again I felt myself chuckling as we indulged together in golden age nostalgia.

Each of these moments took place more than 20 years ago, and, today, the joke is on me. When I survey classical reading lists from around the world, I find myself thinking "How are students going to appreciate these works of art if they're reading just bits and pieces?" But unlike my esteemed professors (both of whom have departed for the Elysium fields), I believe I have developed a solution to the ever-shrinking classical reading list. You heard me right. Stop the shrink! Let's start building the lists we want students to master rather than bowing before the exigencies of our time...

Reversing the Trend

I know I must sound a bit crazy now, but consider these facts. With LexAudio's synchronized audio translation (premium feature), any student possessing a basic knowledge of ancient Greek can read the entire Iliad in just 15 hours. A play from Euripides, Aristophanes, or Aeschylus? Just over an hour. Plato's Apology: 1 hour. The Crito or Euthyphro? Each a half hour. A book of the Aeneid, 90 minutes. ALL of Catullus? Just two hours. During a first pass with LexAudio, students won't achieve perfect knowledge of a text, but they will be exposed to every form and grammatical structure the text has to offer along with a fully aligned audio translation — rapid exposure to the original text and its meaning without ever turning their attention from the page. With a second or third pass they will reinforce what they already recognize and start to fill in the gaps. Only when they've exhausted their capacity for inductive learning will they need to employ the word level morphologies, grammatical analyses, and personalized vocab lists which are available at their fingertips. And so, yes, with LexAudio professors should be able to assign several times as much classical language reading than they currently do. Students will not only be able to master those texts in record time, they will do so with less strenuous effort, more enjoyment, and more overall comprehension of the works they’re studying.

If that sounds overbold, consider the pedagogical problem that LexAudio solves...

The Problem of Comprehensible Input

Most languages are learned through exposure to a high volume of comprehensible input with gradually increasing complexity. Grammar is taught at the early levels, but the intermediate stage takes place over many years as students see the same vocabulary and the same grammatical structures over and over again; new material makes up only a small manageable portion of the overall input. Students of classical languges spend one or two years on grammar and then jump to advanced authors, each with their own lexicon, dialect, and complex syntax. Instead of learning inductively, students are forced to learn deductively, painfully working out each form, phrase, and sentence with little engagement of the text as a whole. This method has made learning Greek and Latin synonymous with inaccessibility, difficulty, and growing irrelevance.

LexAudio's meticulously aligned audio translations solve the problem of comprehensible input. Students process the original language visually and the meaning of the text aurally. This continuous dual-channel processing means that students are, without interruption, mapping Greek vocbularly and grammatical structures to English forms and structures in a continuosly reinforcing process of pattern recognition and comprehension.

LexAudio as a Cheat Code

When trying LexAudio for the first time, students often report that they feel like they're cheating. "This should be harder!" At first this reaction worried me, but fairly quickly I realized that it was the mark of a truly innovative technology, one that differentiates itself from other available tools. To the students who worry that Greek and Latin are now too easy, I say: Yippee! Go and do something awesome with it. Instead of needlessly drilling down on every new form and structure, engage the literature widely and deeply. Develop new theories, new analyses, new ways of reading and thinking about the foundational works of ancient Greece and Rome (new languages coming soon!). Make the stories and ideas of classical literature available to an ever-widening readership so that our literary, linguistic, and philosophical heritage does not perish simply because our old texts demand new ways of reading and learning. And for the professors who distrust new technology, let the proof be in the pudding. A tool can only lead to improved student performance if it has facilitated improved student learning and comprehension. My challenge to you: introduce your students to LexAudio and assign more of your favorite works than you typically would in this bronze age of Classics. If there is a work that you want to teach, but is not yet available on our platform, email me and we will get it up on the site quickly.

If it's not already clear, I am LexAudio's creator but also its most avid user. I contiue to hone every feature to make it easier and more enjoyable to engage classical texts. The library is growing almost daily and I will continue to develop LexAudio's features to improve students' reading and learning experience. If you have an idea for a feature, shoot me an email. You may be surprised how quickly you see your proposal made real.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe the humanities have as much to offer the world as quantum physics. Moreover, I think the students pursuing classics today are exactly the ones we need to make relevant, vibrant, challenging, and meaningful contributions to the field. To those emerging scholars, I offer you a new tool for old texts: LexAudio. Do something creative with it.