The team of Greek Lessons OnLine would like to sincerely thank all of you for taking part in our survey this September in New York. It was lovely meeting all of you in Astoria, New Rochelle, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island City. Taking some of your time to participate in our survey means the world to us and we are really looking forward to seeing you again. Thank you.
The results of our survey and your answers present a lot of interest and have been really helpful for us to learn a bit more about the Greek diaspora in New York and your relationship to Greece and the Greek Language. 918 Greek-Americans took part in our survey. 61% of the people are first generation Greeks, while 28.3% are second generation Greeks. Most of you (36%) answered that you visit Greece once a year something that makes as extremely happy to hear because as we all know our country’s heart beats strong within all of the Greek expats everywhere in the world. Around 11% answered that they visit Greece more than once a year, while 18.6% of you visit Greece every two years, proving that the Greek expats still preserve very strong bonds with the country.
As for where you stay when you visit Greece, the truth is that a great variety of Greek towns and regions came up. We saw answers from Cyprus to the extraordinary north of Greece with towns like Kozani, Alexandroupoli or Volos coming up quite a few times. However, Athens undoubtedly claims the first position since out of more than 900 people surveyed almost half said that they stay in Athens when they travel back to Greece. The beautiful Greek islands like Crete, Kefalonia, Rhodes, Chios and more are a close second, with the third position going to various towns of the Peloponnese like Kalamata, Patras, Sparta and more. Last but not least, we have to mention Thessaloniki since around 30 of you said that you stay in the city or Halkidiki when you travel back to Greece.
You then answered how well you think you speak Greek in scale from 1 to 5. 63.3% of the people who took the survey answered 5. 14.3% answered 4 while third position went to those who answered 1 with a percentage of around 9%. The fact that most of you think you speak Greek fluently made us really happy since the biggest goal behind Greek Lessons OnLine is to keep the Greek language and culture alive and spreading. To see that such a big percentage of people coming from the Greek diaspora of New York are also trying to do the same thing was truly one of the highlights of our trip in New York.
75% of the people surveyed answered that their children do learn Greek. The questionnaire gave the options of Local Greek School, parental teaching, private lessons, online lessons, and Greek language Summer Camp so as for us to get a better perspective concerning how the younger generations of Greek expats learn Greek. Local Greek School was the most chosen option, since 73% of the people asked answered this. 61.2% said that their kids learn Greek through parental teaching. 6.8% through private lessons, and 3.2% through Greek language Summer Camp. Taking into account that most people prefer long-established institutions like the Church or parental teaching for Greek learning, we could not ignore the 12% of you who answered online lessons. This is an important percentage considering how new this kind of learning is and it is sincerely making us happy to see that the Greek diaspora has already started to put their trust on online learning.
To reiterate and since 67.1% of you answered that you would absolutely be open to take Greek lessons online, while 25.7% said maybe, we are happy to offer you the chance to take part in a free trial Greek lesson offered to you by our Online Greek School. We are confident that a live lesson with one of our amazing teachers who live and teach in Greece through our specifically designed for online learning platform will turn the percentage of your trust in us into 100%.
We would like to thank you once again for your time and help with our survey. The way you welcomed us in New York was incredibly moving and we are already looking forward to meeting you again in one of our online classes or future trips.
