Lydia: A summer in Greece!

Read and listen to the short story Lydia: A summer in Greece! and learn Greek in the most fascinating way!

(To be expected online by January 2019.)
Are you in the early stages of learning Greek or do you just want to brush up on your colloquial Greek? Do you feel like having a break from studying Greek formally with course or grammar books?
Then here is the book you are looking for! It will give you the opportunity to learn or revise Greek in a relaxing and pleasant way!

Our teachers, Τέρψη Γαβαλά and Κωνσταντίνος Οικονόμου, (in the photo above) have written a short story, which includes an Audio and a vocabulary list in English!

Lydia: A summer in Greece!

Read and listen to the short story, written especially for Beginner learners of Modern Greek (at Α1 / early stages of A2 level, as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, CEFR).

The main character of the story is Lydia, a Greek–American woman. She lives in New York and works as a journalist for a Greek newspaper. She often travels to Greece to cover different stories. On one of her trips to Athens, she meets a man, Orestis, on the plane. He volunteers to help her with an article she is writing about Athens’ neighbourhoods. After they spend some time together in the Greek capital, Orestis asks Lydia to join him on a business trip to the island of Syros, in the Cyclades. The beautiful island of the Aegean Sea becomes the setting for a series of unexpected events. And secrets are about to be revealed…

The book will help you:

• Improve your Greek reading and listening skills
• Build or revise your Greek vocabulary gradually and in a natural way

The book features:

• Plenty of dialogues covering a great variety of everyday topics, such as:
Introducing myself / Talking about my family / Ordering in a coffee–shop or a tavern / Arranging a meeting with friends / Asking for or Giving directions / Hobbies / Shopping / Travelling / Describing a city / Clothes, etc.
• Short, easily–manageable chapters
• Illustrations at the start of each chapter that show the reader clearly the essential elements of the story which follows
• Footnotes with explanations of words in Greek
• Footnotes with synonyms of words
• Footnotes with the Present Tense of verbs found in the text in other tenses
• An Audio with all of the story, recorded by native Greek Speakers
• A selected vocabulary from each chapter translated into English

The book comes with an English vocabulary. However, the vocabulary is also available in French, German and Turkish.

The book Lydia: A summer in Greece! can be used either in the classroom as supplementary material or for self–study.

If you wish to work with the book under the guidance of the authors – Τέρψη Γαβαλά and Κωνσταντίνος Οικονόμου – Skype lessons are possible via Omilo, the language school where both authors teach on a daily basis! Click here for more information.

Credits

Writers: Κωνσταντίνος Οικονόμου – Τέρψη Γαβαλά
Illustrations – Book design: David Hitch
Music: Ισίδωρος Παπαδάκης

Many special thanks to musicians Πέτρος Καπέλλας (bouzouki) and Γιάννης Βαρθαλίτης (guitar) for the beautiful taqsim (a piece of improvised folk music) used on the Audio.

The authors would also like to sincerely and wholeheartedly thank everybody who participated in the recording of the story – technicians at Artracks Recording Studios in Athens and readers – for their great enthusiasm, patience and commitment.

Audio performed by Ελένη Καλκάκου, Νόρα Καραβά, Βάσω Κασβίκη, Σόνια Λούη, Κωνσταντίνος Οικονόμου, Γιώργος Ρετσινάς, Κωνσταντίνος Σφετσιώρης, Εύα Χριστοδούλου.