Richard F. Wevers, GREEK WITH COMPUTERS. Focus Information Group, Inc., P.O. Box 369, Newburyport, MA 01950; (ISBN 0-941051- 41-2) $16.95.
This suite of computer programs was designed andwritten in 1994 to accompany Anne H. Groton's introductory Greek textbook, From Alpha to Omega (ISBN 0-941051-38-2), also published by Focus in 1995. The software is described by the publisher as "a computer tutorial program" with three separate executable components devoted to Greek Nouns, Greek Verbs, and Greek Vocabulary, and with many other adjunct files. It comes shrink-wrapped with a fourteen-page printed User's Guide, that explains that it can only be used on a DOS platform and that it requires a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and MS DOS 3.1 or higher to run. Beyond that it does not require much in the way of special peripherals. It does not require a mouse or a color monitor, nor can it take advantage of either. Although it has an extensive User's Manual, the manual is devoted solely to three segments on operating the program, one for each executable component. There is absolutely nothing to help the user with installing or setting up the program(s) except for the direction to insert your disk "into the appropriate disk drive" and then at the DOS prompt type "gnoun." This is from the first component, Greek Nouns; the directions for the next two components are little more explicit.
For those of you who want to load it onto your hard disk, there is nothing: no directions nor any install program, not even a rudimentary batch file. This may be on purpose, because there is a very restrictive license agreement; however, if after reading the agreement, you believe that you can abide by its provisions and still have the many benefits of running the suite from a hard drive, here's what you do: 1) decide which hard drive you want to use and go there (e.g. type c:); 2) create a special subdirectory for this suite of programs (e.g. type md gkdrill) and go into it (cd gkdrill); 3) copy over all the files on the distribution disk by typing copy a:\. or copy a:\*.* or, if the Greek disk is in B drive, copy b:\.; 4) do a directory listing to make sure everything was copied, and then run the program. There is one other important tip that you must know: Although the programs allow you to get to the main menu quite easily, there is no provision at certain times for a graceful exit from the program, and if you use the old reliable Control C/Break, you will find the screen is still doing Greek. To resolve this problem type loadfont normal.fnt.
The User's Guide describes the operation of the three components very well, apparently in the order in which they were coded (apparently with Microsoft C version 5). All the programs have a generally similar format: They ask for the span of lessons of Groton's From Alpha to Omega to review, and they ask what sort of questions you want, Greek-to-English or English-to-Greek, which are also called easy or hard. The Greek Noun program starts when you type in the name of its batch file, gnoun. In addition the noun program asks whether you want the words in sequential order or in random order. If you ask for the easy mode, a correctly accented form of the Greek word is displayed and you are asked to respond with ns (nominative singular) to ap (accusative plural). A list of the possible responses, including q (to quit), etc., appear at the bottom of each query screen. If you ask for the hard type of question, the program displays the root of the word and asks you to type in the proper inflection. In this mode the computer displays Greek characters. In all three components there are various forms of response, apparently randomized, for right and wrong answers; and humorous unrelated statistical statements, again apparently randomized, when you end, at which time you are given your own statistics of performance. Finally all three components keep separate performance or review files, that you can use to review selectively problem forms or words.
The Greek Vocabulary component starts when you type in the name of its batch file, gvocab. This program has a review feature that will store all the words you miss in a separate file which you can use for extra review. Whenever you start the program it asks you if you want to review the words in this special file. If not, then the program asks for the span of lessons you want, then whether you want easy or hard questions (give English meanings ["easy"] or give the Greek words ["hard"]), and finally whether you want all words or just nouns or just verbs or just non-nouns and non-verbs. On the verbs, you can also indicate the number of principal parts you want to do. Strangely the limit is the first three! The program responds with randomly varied congratulatory comments for the correct answers and similarly varied comments for the wrong answers. There is a helps-and-hints feature and you can review its options by typing in hh, which include: getting the first letters of the target word, getting the full English entry in an English-to-Greek question and vice versa, getting the actual answer, or avoiding the question. If you miss any items during the lesson, they are repeated very soon afterwards (which may considerably increase the use of the question-avoiding feature). A very good feature of this program is that in the Greek-to-English mode it asks how many of the six principal parts you want to recognize, and then it produces them apparently at random in all the variety of listed parts, tenses, finite moods, voices, persons and numbers.
The last component deals with verb forms (type gverb to start it), and it is the most developed component, although not the biggest program. Its elaborateness is in part the result of the complex nature of the morphology of the Greek verb. There are more entry setup questions: three options of mode (translation into English, identification, and both); then tense and voice; then lesson span; then all verbs or just the more difficult; then moods (both finite and not); and finally beeps on wrong answer or not. Strangely, there is no option that asks the user to produce the actual Greek forms; in this sense this component does not parallel the other two. Since the author does not accept the possibility of translation of the oblique moods out of context, the translation option is limited to the indicative. Accordingly, the identification mode is by far the most useful, although it would be even better if it did not tell you what the verb means as the first of the six items of identification, and also allowed the user to determined which items he or she wanted the machine to ask about. There is a particularly helpful extra help feature in this component: If you type in pp, you will get a list of the verb's principal parts. All three programs have a series of follow-up exit questions, before you can quit or start a new drill.
These three programs are very rudimentary in their overall design, interface, and pedagogy. Apparently the plan was to produce programs that could be used on the simplest and oldest machines. The interface in particu lar seems to come from the early teletype days of paper-tape programming, with its asterisk or single-letter bordered half-screens. The pedagogy is of the basic drill-and-practice variety, but lacks the speed and vari ety to keep it engaging and demanding. The programs use the vocabulary only from the lesson lists, never from the readings, and when it is put in sequential access mode, it strangely enough does not access the words in alphabetical order, or in the order given in the lesson vocabulary lists, nor in the chapter word lists at the back of the book. Also in some cases lesson vocabulary was not included. In other cases impossibly ambiguous questions were asked (e.g. Greek word for "no"--enter ou and it tells you that the correct form is me ). These are minor matters, but there are also some errors in the Greek forms produced by the morphological engines: In the noun program there were incorrect accents on the "fully accented" forms produced by the program, and the vocabulary program produced verb forms such as eklap klepto and eph < phylatto. It was also disconcerting in the identification verb drill to have entered the fifth item and then never see the completed chart, as the screen flashed to something else. Finally, even more than the rest, the verb program desperately needs a better, more graphical interface for the user to select the parameters of conjugation to be drilled. I would also recommend adding an English-to-Greek option to the Greek verb program, and allowing some sort of standardized non- contextual quasi-translation for the oblique moods, so that Greek forms could be asked for by formal labels (e.g. first person plural aorist middle optative of _____) or by English translation.
Though Wevers' suite of programs needs a lot of work in terms of overall design, user interface, and pedagogy, he is to be praised and highly praised for having the expertise and the courage to take the initia tive in producing one of the few CAI programs avaiable for Classical Greek. This is a pioneering effort that should be judged more for its vision than for its glitz or its bells and whistles. A next step might well be to produce a component to cover lesson by lesson the English-to-Greek composition sentences in Groton's book. There is very definitely a place in our instruc tional arsenal for tools such as those that Wevers has already produced and those that he might produce in the future. I would see them as very useful instruments for drill and review for students who were having trouble mastering the vocabulary or morphology. I would consider them less an aspect of the classroom and more a part of the homework or assigned extra help.
The really intriguing part of this suite of programs is the neat Greek-font generator. The font itself is a little boxy, but it is easily recognizable no matter what kind of screen display or screen size you are using. Be aware that it will not work in a regular Windows DOS window, but it works in all varieties of DOS over MS 3.1. Moreover, Wevers' character generator very cleverly uses the upper ASCII slots to store the Greek characters, so that the English fonts are still available to the user with a little programming legerdemain. To demonstrate the easy use and wide applicability of this setup, I have written two small programs to work as add-ons, if you believe that the copyright allows you to expand the functionality of the original programs in this way. (If the publisher opposes such use, it is not a difficult task to write one's own Greek character gener ator, if one is willing to work without accents as Wevers' programs do.) The first add-on, edgrk, allows you to write Greek and English on the same screen simultaneously, and then save the displayed text to a file. The second add-on, playgrk, plays back the text in whichever file you list on the command line. These add-on programs are available at cost through the CANE Computer Resource Centers.
There is certainly a serious need for a cheap, easy, simple little Greek script word processor for quick little quizzes and tests. Of course, the major drawback of Wevers' approach is the lack of dead-key diacriticals (accents, breathings, and iota subscripts); it is also the big challenge.
On the whole I must say that despite its lack of technical panache Wevers' Greek with Computers is a good beginning and a useful tool, especially if you are using Groton's book.
Allan D. Wooley
Phillips Exeter Academy
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