I got Neil as a teacher, and we used William Mounce's textbook and workbook. tl;dr: would not recommend Neil or William Mounce. There are usually 2 scenarios in class: 1) Neil just reads from the textbook, does a cursory readthrough of the chapter, and tells us to go back and memorise the declensions. 2) We go through our answers to the workbook (Neil will make everyone read out their answer one-by-one), but Neil doesn't talk much about the grammar. If you get the answer wrong, he stares at you and questions you relentlessly. In my experience, staying home and learning from the textbook is far more productive and less stressful, since you don't have to deal with Neil. Neil has minor class tests (5%) every 2 weeks based loosely on the contents of the textbook (eg. write the perfect passive of ____, translate an English sentence into Greek, etc) as well as 2 major class tests, which are more in the style of the workbook (ie. he lists a bunch of words in different forms and you write down their tense, person, voice, etc etc) The final exam is a mash up of the class tests and the workbook. You have to identify the grammar of a list of words, translate an unseen paragraph from the bible, and translate 5 sentences from English into Greek. Neil provides a basic translation of any words that we don't cover in the unit. Personally, I had an awful time trying to memorise the different verb forms, especially since the textbook doesn't spend a lot of time on verbs. If you really do want to take this unit, you should definitely study way in advance. And also grow a thicker skin, because the size of the class is dramatically diminished from Greek 1, and you (unfortunately) get a front seat to the Neil Experience.

Anonymous, Semester 2, 2018