ATHENS – Vasiliki Baskos is a teacher of Greek and founder of Learn Greek Online (https://learn-greek-online.com/), an innovative way people around the world can learn the language. Baskos spoke with The National Herald about how the crisis led to this new method of teaching Modern Greek as a foreign language online via Skype to students from anywhere around the globe.
Before the economic crisis, Baskos had taught Greek to a lady from Belgium who had moved to Greece. Overall, it was a very positive experience and the student eventually took the Certificate of Attainment in Greek examination successfully. Baskos never thought of making this type of teaching her full-time job. She and her husband planned to live quiet teachers’ lives, just like their parents. Unfortunately, when the crisis broke out, Baskos was a temp teacher and when legislation changed, she had little chance of becoming a permanent civil servant, so her income fell while expenses increased.
Baskos and her family had to adapt. Utilizing her teaching skills, experience, and her communicative and friendly manner combined with the technology so readily available, Baskos founded the Learn Greek Online website, noting that “if it was not for the economic crisis, I would have never pursued this as a career.”
She said, “The method of teaching has changed tremendously since I first started. Initially I was using the academic ‘recommended’ textbook. Now, I am always on the lookout for newer and better books or methods. We try to employ a variety of sources, like news articles, music, videos, etc. Especially for the children, we use sources from mythology, history, and geography.”
More than 160 people have taken lessons, including children. Though there were a few who took just 2-3 lessons and gave up, many continued for more than two years. The average student takes lessons for about 6-8 months, which is enough time to see great improvement in their language skills.
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