Ελληνική Γλώσσα (Elliniki Glossa)

The teaching of Greek as a second (or foreign) language is increasingly troubling experts these days, mainly in relation to two issues: a. The experience we have gained from the application of the communicative method in the teaching of Greek as a first (mother tongue) language, and b. The ever-increasing demand for learning Greek as a second language, especially among adults (repatriating Greeks abroad, younger generations of Greeks living abroad, foreigners especially from European Union countries, migrant students, etc.) Regarding the application of the communicative method in the school teaching of Greek, a method that places great emphasis on the use of the language, practice has shown that to the extent that the teaching of the grammatical-syntactic system of the language is incomplete, fragmentary and reduced, the desired deeper and more substantial knowledge of the mother tongue is not achieved. Problems arise in particular in the awareness of the mechanisms of language and in the ability to produce, perceive and process more demanding texts (oral and written). These problems are not necessarily inherent in the communicative method. They are rather linked to the ways of applying the method, to how and to what extent linear structures and their syntactic functions are taught in both axes of the language, i.e. not only in the "syntactic" (within the sentence) but also in the "paradigmatic axis" (nominal declension, verb conjugations, inflectional system, pronoun system, etc.). Regarding the teaching of Greek as a foreign language, despite some notable efforts to apply the communicative method, it has not been possible to teach it effectively so far: that is to say, in an understandable, "economical" (in a linguistic-systematic sense) and useful manner, especially with regard to the structural-functional system of Greek (grammatical types and syntactic functions).