Advice on Group Format

Are you at the point at which you can be a full language model for your student? If not, there's nothing wrong with teaching grammar and using texts for reading aloud and such. It just won't achieve the same results. Grammar teaching was used for generations, so it cannot be entirely useless. The problem is that a lot of us are learning while we're teaching. We're learning to produce Greek while we're trying to instill the language in students. It would be different if we spoke Greek naturally and then wanted to bring that to students, since comprehensible input (to use the phrase again) is natural when you simply speak and exchange messages. Know what I mean? I wish I spoke Greek naturally enough that I could just confer meaning without having to check everything I say in Greek with the Monitor. It's a pain in the rear!

@Paul Nitz, I hadn't thought about the benefits of one-on-one lessons. We are doing one-on-one twice a week for an hour and a half. I don't feel that this is enough. I don't feel that language classes are ever enough, honestly. It's hard to be a person's only language model and not have all the time in the world. He's started to comment on my Facebook statuses in Hebrew, which is nice. I've got a lot of Israeli friends, so maybe he'll pick up some Hebrew penpals or something. :)

@Jason / Ἰάσων " We are doing one-on-one twice a week for an hour and a half. I don't feel that this is enough."

Aside from a true immersion language learning environment, classroom type language instruction (ISLA - Instructed Second Language Acquisition) will never provide enough exposure (Comprehensible Input) to get beyond a beginner or intermediate-low level. It can be enough to though for a learner to continue on his/her own to become proficient. So, for example, learning Spanish in school for many years will not mean that a learner can land in a Spanish speaking country, walk onto the streets and strike up a conversation with confidence and fluency. But that person has enough language in his/her head to begin communicating and advance. In the case of Hebrew and Ancient Greek, ISLA can bring a learner to a level that he/she can begin "communicating" with a text and advance to higher levels.

@Jason / Ἰάσων "benefits of one-on-one."

I have a theory about the benefits of one-on-one instruction. When you sit with one person, you can use easier, less inherently "communicative" methods, and they will still be effective.

An example would be demonstration. Let's say I'm demonstrating the Nominative and Accusative. I take a ball, and say in Greek "αὕτη ἐστιν σφαῖρα. ἔχω σφαῖραν. Τί ἔχω; ἔχω σφαῖραν! [This is a ball (Nom). I have a ball (Acc.). What do I have? I have a ball. What is this? It's a ball!]

Strictly speaking, this is not communication. The learner knows it's a ball. He knows what I have. I am not really communicating anything to him/her. I am only demonstrating language.

But when you do this sort of thing with one other person (or maybe two), it still feels like communication. The teacher can engage one person with eye contact and he/she really feels it. That's almost impossible with a group, unless you are an exceptional person (In a Biblical Languages Center workshop I attended, the amazing Jordash Kiffiak engaged a room of 30 with demonstration, but he's wildly exceptional).

In teaching a group, a teacher has the huge challenge of coming up with some sort of activity that requires learners to use the target language to really communicate (negotiate meaning). So, for example, I just had my students using Greek to find out some information about their classmates' family and spiritual history. They are using the target language to truly communicate. Leading up to that exercise, I used demonstration, some explicit instruction (reviewing forms), and made some comparisons between Greek, English and Chichewa (a Bantu language all my students know). But it was all leading up to and aiming at using language for communication.