Latin/Greek GCSE in one year?

I've always been interested in classics however as I attend an average comp I've never had the opportunity to study either of these languages. I am interested in studying either Latin or Greek to GCSE level and will take the exam next summer, but I have three questions:
1. is it doable in a year?
2. Which is easier Latin/Greek?
3. Which exam board would be best and how many exams would there be?
Thanks x

Reply 1

999tigger

Original post by Lulucer

1. Must be a yes. Its only a GCSE.
2. No idea as it will be subjective. Join here and ask it seems to be mixed.
http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/is-latin-easier-than-ancient-greek.18815/
3. they should be he same but you should do some research and check which syllabus you prefer.
4. You could also check whether there are distance learning courses for either to give you some structure and feedback.

Reply 2

kat273

1. I'm currently in y10 and I take both Latin and Greek, and at my school we study Greek for only 2 years but I'm sure that if you're willing to put the time and effort into learning the grammar both will be very doable.
2. Personally I find latin easier as you don't have to spend extra time learning a new alphabet and I find the verb conjugations are a lot easier to memorise.
3. I really have no idea, but I do OCR.

Reply 3

uziiiii

1.I'm In Year 11 and I've done it for four years now. It would be very difficult to do latin esp. but I think it's do-able depending on what course you take ofc. You probably wouldn't be able to do IGCSE for example.
2. People seem to find Latin easier as the alphabet makes the language seem closer to ours. But once I familiarised myself with Greek, it was easier tbh.
3. I do cambridge IGCSE and there's four exams for each.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 4

martin7

Original post by Lulucer

I am interested in studying either Latin or Greek to GCSE level and will take the exam next summer, but I have three questions:
1. is it doable in a year?
2. Which is easier Latin/Greek?
3. Which exam board would be best and how many exams would there be?

I started Latin at age 11, and did GCSE at 16 (so, after 5 years).

In 6th form (i.e. over 2 years) I did A level Latin & GCSE Greek.

I found Greek much harder than Latin, but at least part of that was probably because I was having to learn the same amount of stuff in 2 years rather than 5 (and getting correspondingly less practice in using it).

I didn't find the alphabet to be much of an issue; but what was hard was learning things like principal parts of verbs -- much easier in Latin than Greek.

I'd suggest Latin would be easier if you want to squeeze it into one year. But you would really need to make the effort and put plenty of time and effort in.

Reply 5

Classics_Teacher

Latin or Greek GCSE in one year would be quite a task, but it's not impossible (I've tutored students privately who have done it). I'd suggest going with the WJEC board, as they give the option for you just to study the language, rather than the additional pressure of literature, and that would be in two papers, as opposed to OCR, which has three exam papers.

I'd go for Latin first, since a lot of Ancient Greek textbooks seem to assume a basic knowledge of Latin grammar in their explanations.

Reply 6

cindyclark46

I do both and I have to say, Latin is 10000 times easier to learn quickly. The greek letters make it abnormally difficult in comparison. For WJEC latin set text, you get vocab in the exam for set text, but in OCR greek you don’t.