Ancient Greek to gcse

[Wobbles21]

Wondered if anyone had experience of starting Ancient Greek in year 9 and taking it to gcse. DS has this option : it would be a small group for 2 hours a week at school and would mean his gcse choices were language heavy: french, German, Latin and Greek.
Wonder if this is really doable?
TIA

[Fleurchamp]

I did Ancient Greek GCSE alongside A Level Latin (back in the 90's!) - the teacher did it in her own time and so we probably had an hour a week with her and then we studied together/ on our own the rest of the time. It started out as an introduction to Ancient Greek for those of us considering studying classics at university but several of us decided to take the GCSE and we covered the course material in a year.

[hoodiemum]

As other posters have said, GCSE/O level Greek was doable in a year in Sixth Form without too much pain if you had strong Latin and were motivated. And A level Latin was probably my easiest A level - just depends on the type of brain you have, standard of teaching, etc.
Now trying to learn modern Greek, with a much older brain, and am finding it much much harder.

[ghislaine]

Also presumably there's no spoken component. I did both French and Latin at A-level equivalent (in another country) and the Latin was at a more complex level grammatically and vocabulary-wise because we didn't spend time on speaking, pronouncation etc.

[NeverDropYourMoonCup]

How do kids manage only studying a subject for two years?

Same way lots managed Business Studies, Economics, Psychology, Law, Sociology, PE, Child Development, Textiles, Graphics, Computer Studies, Music Tech, Media Studies or any other subject that wasn't part of the curriculum at a younger age.

Transferable skills and decent teaching materials/a teacher that can read a course specification.

[elfonshelf]

Also presumably there's no spoken component. I did both French and Latin at A-level equivalent (in another country) and the Latin was at a more complex level grammatically and vocabulary-wise because we didn't spend time on speaking, pronouncation etc.

There's no spoken component at all - although I believe there was a school teaching it as a spoken language at one point due to a quirky teacher. I wish it had been taught as a spoken one - agree that might also have meant less of the pesky grammar. But would you teach it like an MFL or as an ancient language... would be rather fun to be able to buy a chariot ticket and order beer and chips!

I moved to Italy in my mid-20's for a job speaking not a word of Italian and my Latin came in very handy then - my colleagues were very entertained by my apparent knowledge of archaic Italian... till they worked out what I was doing.

DD is starting Latin next year with any luck (waiting on 11+ results) and will need to speedily catch up to the rest of the class - I'm rather looking forward to helping with that homework.