This course - offered by the Department of Classics - was the 2nd part of 2nd year Ancient Greek, and so focused not on learning grammar - which is completed in the 1st semester of 2nd year - but rather on reading full Ancient Greek texts (that is, NON-textbook Greek). This year the course was taught by Dr Murgatroyd, who was both hilarious with his anecdotes, jokes, and general seething hatred for children (exaggerated in the name of humour, of course) and was of great help for everyone in the class with his comments on the texts we read and his availability and approachability during office hours. In short, he made the class something to look forward to in the chaos of one's day at school.
The day-to-day expectations for the course were quite straightforward; you would be selected to read 4-5 lines of Ancient Greek (which you would have already translated but would, as Dr Murgatroyd advised, not look at while reading your selected segment in class) and would be expected to make logical comments on the passage, such as pointing out cases of irony or a certain stylistic device/habit of the author (e.g., chiasmus, asyndeton, crasis, homeoteleuton, et cetera). Participation in class (there were no tutorials for this class, as it was - as one can imagine due to the subject matter - a
very small class) accounted for 25% of your final grade, and so making an attempt to comment on the passage was a foremost goal of every student in each class.
In terms of assignments, the class consisted of two tests (each worth, if I remember correctly, 20%) and a final exam (worth 30%), all of which required the student to translate a passage (or two passages, in the case of the final exam), answer grammatical questions, and answer literary questions (which were quite straightforward at times; one question from the final exam was "Point out four clear instances of ironic humour in the above passage", another was "State both the advantages and disadvantages of Pheres' [i.e., a character in Euripides' Alcestis] argument in his rebuttal directed towards his son.").
Overall, the class very much so helped with learning to read Ancient Greek texts, and did so with passages both grammatically challenging and interesting in their own right; in short, a perfect philology class.
I would recommend it! (if you've done the three prerequisite Greek courses, that is; otherwise, I would be sending you to a doom dominated by a particularly nasty archaic tongue
)
