Combining blogging and revision

One of many current challenges is to learn the Apologia. I wish my Greek were in a state were I could give it a brief glance and know what it means, but even if it's not a particularly difficult text, the language and meaning is very exact, and I'm a long way from adequacy. That it's an argument rather than a narrative also complicates my last resort 'memorise everything' approach. For my last exam I had to learn two books of Iliad, which was a fair amount in itself - but at least it could be broken down into an easily memorised series of events. For example, book nine begins: state of mind of the Argives/wind simile/calling an assembly/Agamemnon speaks/silence/Diomedes - and so on. With the Apologia, it's more like 'oh, my accusers lied to you, because I can't speak well.. unless you think telling the truth is speaking well; they didn't tell the truth: this is shameful. I can't help it; I'm old, all this 'rhetor' speak is beyond me.. I don't deceive people...' and so on. I still think it's ridiculous. I've been learning Italian and Greek for three years apiece and unfortunately lack that spark of genius, so it's been slow work.

I've been trying to figure out a way that makes it even vaguely possible. So, this is how I'm trying to get my head around pages and pages of Greek text:

1.) First I read the entire thing in English.

2.) I read the Greek in small manageable sections, look up words I don't know or recognise, then write out the lemma and translation in Italian.

ὅτι  μὲν  ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες  Ἀθηναῖοι, πεπόνθατε  ὑπὸ  τῶν  ἐμῶν  κατηγόρων, οὐκ  οἶδα: ἐγὼ  δ᾽ οὖν  καὶ  αὐτὸς  ὑπ᾽  αὐτῶν  ὀλίγου  ἐμαυτοῦ  ἐπελαθόμην, οὕτω  πιθανῶς  ἔλεγον.
(Plato Apologia, 17a)

πεπόνθατε = πάσχω
κατηγόρων - accusatori
ἐπελαθόμην (= ἐπιλήθω) - far dimenticare.

3.) I write up my notes, and then go through the text sentence by sentence, translating out loud, and making sure I know exactly what each word means. Then I check what I've said against the Italian translation I have, because I know that my way of phrasing things is wildly incorrect.

Che effetto hanno fatto a voi, o Atenisiesi, i miei accusatori, non lo so; quanto a me, parlavano così persuasivamente che non per poco mi hanno fatto perdere la nozione di me stesso.

4.) I repeat it out-loud while looking at the Greek, and desperately hope I remember some of it in the pressure of the moment.

And then it begins again. I am so unimpressed with the Italian exam system.