AS and A Level · Years 12-13
A Level Classical Greek tutors
Extended unseen passages and substantial set texts in verse and prose, with literary analysis of style, rhetoric and metre carrying significant marks. Participles and the middle voice cause the most trouble in translation, since neither has a clean English equivalent to fall back on.
- USD 28-34 per hour
- One-to-one, online
- Free 1-hour trial class
What AS and A Level actually demands
Three or four subjects studied in real depth, and the grades universities actually offer against. The jump from IGCSE is larger than most students expect: questions stop testing one topic at a time and start combining several.
More inflected than Latin and with a new alphabet to absorb first. The reward is direct access to Homer, tragedy and Plato; the cost is a heavier upfront investment in morphology.
Where A Level Classical Greek students lose marks
- The alphabet and accents not fully automatic, which slows every subsequent task
- Participles and the middle voice, both without close English equivalents, translated loosely
- Principal parts of irregular verbs not learned, making unseen passages guesswork
- Set texts translated but not analysed for rhetorical and metrical effect
Is this the right subject at this level?
Students taking Greek at school, usually alongside Latin, and those heading for classics, ancient history or philosophy degrees. It suits people who enjoy the puzzle of translation and are prepared to invest heavily in morphology early, because nothing else in the subject works until that is automatic.
What it costs
USD 28-34 per 60-minute one-to-one lesson at AS and A Level, the same rate in every city we teach in. Billed monthly against lessons actually taught, with no prepaid blocks and no minimum commitment.
Paired lessons (2 students) are USD 20-24 per student. Small group lessons (up to 6 students) are USD 14-17 per student. What each format is good for is here.
How we teach it
One-to-one, online, with a shared whiteboard. The first thing we establish is the exact syllabus the student is entered for: schools do not always publish the version they actually enter, and preparing for the wrong paper structure wastes a term.
After that the work is diagnostic: a past paper under timed conditions, marked together against the published scheme, to find out where the marks are genuinely going. That is almost always more useful than covering the syllabus again more slowly. The full process is here.
Classical Greek: questions parents ask
How much harder is Greek than Latin?
There is more upfront investment, a new alphabet, more inflection, and constructions such as the middle voice and participles that have no clean English equivalent. Students usually take it alongside Latin, which helps considerably.
What causes the most trouble in translation?
Participles. Greek uses them far more than English does, and students who translate them loosely lose the structure of the sentence and, with it, the marks.
Is the set text just translation?
No. Literary analysis of style, rhetoric and metre carries significant marks, and students who translate accurately but analyse superficially leave a substantial number of them on the table.