Just Listen 'n Learn Greek: Beginning Through Intermediate

This book is good for anyone beginning to learn Greek. It would be nice if it covered a little more grammar but all the modern Greek books I've found seem to be for conversational purposes mainly. For that purpose, this book is highly recommended.

Riding on the waves of inspiration and dreams of Kefalloniá, I purchased the book and tape set. Like other reviewers, I found that the conversations are recorded by native speakers who run their words together; this is helpful, as it gives a true-to-life pronunciation of the speakers a foreigner would encounter. I also found it helpful that the language is printed in arabic and the Greek alphabet is introduced slowly. I strongly recommend for those in pursuit of a grammatical exactitude, a supplementary grammatical text. On the whole, this text and its tapes are truly excellent...and a bargain!

This course focuses on developing conversational skills. The most valuable part of this course is that most of the dialogues you listen to are recordings from the streets of Greece. Most courses use studio recorded audio to teach you a language and this method does not realistically reflect how native Greek speakers truncate words, run words together, do not enunciate every word and speak fairly quickly. Listening to these dialogues will give you a more realistic idea of how people will speak when you reach Greece.Because the book is conversation oriented, they do not emphasize the alphabet and you should buy another book to help you practice your reading skills.One chapter (out of 15) focuses on the future tense and one on the past tense. This short introduction will not adequately prepare you to fluently use the future and past tense, but will at least expose you to the underlying concepts.Points of grammar are introduced when they occur in a conversation and you must use the book for the explanation of grammar points.Bottom line: Use another book, such as the Teach Yourself Greek or the Colloquial Greek (with audio) if your goal is fluency in the language. Get another course such as Greek in 7 Days (same publisher - passport books) to give you a conversational course where the audio is slow and controlled. Use this book either in conjunction with the Greek in 7 Days or afterwards if you are having trouble understanding Greek when it is spoken to you. This is where the strength of this book lies: getting you used to hearing Greek spoken outside a studio.