Communicative Language Teaching in ancient Greek primary classes

Following this motion towards multilingualism, the National Curriculum in the U.K. - as a national plan to promote multilingualism - requires all Key Stage 2 children of primary education to learn Latin and ancient Greek, among seven-strong shortlisted languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Latin and ancient Greek. The Department for Education reasons that both languages provide the foundation for learning Modern Foreign Languages (MFLs) and reading comprehension; as well as a good grounding in grammar, syntax and vocabulary, which can boost pupils’ understanding of other modern languages. In addition, they have enormous cross-curricular potential, drawing in literacy, history, science, geography, art, drama and philosophy. In this context, this paper discusses the teaching of ancient Greek through the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, aiming at: (i) introducing the method with examples of current classroom practices in a primary class of bilingual children; (ii) reflecting upon current research on ancient Greek and Latin learning; and (iii) proposing possible strategies and design for the improvement of ancient Greek teaching, within the broader framework of multilingualism