Comprehensible input resources for Latin (x-post)

[forty-two]

I posted another thread asking why classical educators ignore findings from modern language acquisition research - especially that language acquisition requires a LOT of exposure to comprehensible input in the target language (well accepted when it comes to modern languages) - when it comes to the classical languages. One theme that quickly emerged was that the parent is not fluent, does not have access to someone who is fluent, and that there is a general lack of easy Latin input available, so while an immersion environment might be ideal, it is impossible for them to provide. Some Latin is better than no Latin, so they do what they can.

 

Perfectly rational and understandable. However, thanks to the Internet, there are tons of resources for Latin available - many of which are free! More than enough to provide sufficient comprehensible input so that those of us who aren't fluent in Latin ourselves can still approximate an immersion Latin environment - for ourselves and our kids.

 

Here are just a few:

 

Use other beginning texts for additional readings: I picked up complete sets of CLC and ER texts for under $20 each on Amazon. As well, Latin Book One, including audio, is online, CLC has their stories online, and here are the stories from ER I and II online.

 

Google books has tons of readers and beginning books available, as does the Internet Archive. Here is a list of links to easy Latin readers.

 

John Piazza has many comprehensible input resources on his site, including a history reader and mythology reader compiled from readings from OOP beginning Latin books, as well as an introduction to everyday Latin.

 

Evan Millner's Latinum podcast has thousands of hours of Latin audio, including recordings of the entirety of Adler's"A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language," provided explicitly to give all Latin learners access to an immersion environment.

 

Laura Gibbs has provided thousands of Latin proverbs, verses and fables online.

 

Many Latin teachers have gotten together to write Latin readers, and have posted them online at Tar Heel Readers.

 

Diederich's research into the frequency of Latin endings and vocabulary showed that a mere 18 endings comprise the majority encountered in literature. Learn those first, and their basic grammatical meanings through a grammar overview, such as Harris' "The Intelligent Person's Guide to the Latin Language," and a vast amount of Latin will be open to you - you don't have to wait till you have gone completely through the grammar to start reading. As well, his vocab frequency lists show what words to focus on to get the most bang for the buck.

 

And these are only the resources that came to mind right off the bat!

[Nan in Mass]

This is fantastic!!!!!!!!!!

[yvonne]

Wow, these links are fantastic! The Harris grammar site gives an excellent, bare bones overview of Latin grammar.

 

And good for you for self-educating while your children are young!!!!! I spent way too much time looking at curricula instead of self-educating when mine were tiny.

 

Thank you so much for posting!

yvonne

[forty-two]

Wow, these links are fantastic! The Harris grammar site gives an excellent, bare bones overview of Latin grammar.

I was ecstatic when I started reading Harris' Latin Grammar - it was *exactly* what I had always wanted to find.

 

And good for you for self-educating while your children are young!!!!! I spent way too much time looking at curricula instead of self-educating when mine were tiny.

Oh yes, I resemble that remark :D. It's perfectly normal that I can knowledgeably discuss the pros and cons of pretty much every Latin and math program mentioned on these boards, even though I am still years away from needing one, right? I've moved on to pedagogy, now - useful for math and reading, since I actually have the content knowledge, but probably somewhat premature for Latin, what with being on Cap VI of LL still. It's just so much easier to read *about* learning Latin, rather than, you know, actually *learning* it :tongue_smilie:. I'm getting there, though.

[latinteach]

Also see:

 

Upgrading Latin Pedagogy

http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/pedagogy/ulp-ea.html

An essay comparing the grammar model with the communicative model of teaching Latin.

 

Also at St. Louis

Praxis Grammatica:

http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/pedagogy/har/har0.html

 

See everything at St. Louis Latin Teaching Materials here:

http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/tchmat.html

 

Teaching Latin by the Direct Method:

(Explains how two Latin teachers used the direct method to teach Latin to students in the 1920s!)

http://www.arlt.co.uk/dhtml/directmethod1.php

 

The Art of Reading Latin: How to Teach It

(Another Latin teacher from the late 1800s/early 1900s with new ideas for teaching Latin. This was written in 1887.)

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0066

 

http://www.pullins.com/Books/03232McCarthyNunc.htm

(The book is about $14, but there's free interactive software for download to accompany it: http://www.discamus.com/nunc/)

Guided Conversations for Latin

 

Get the Rules for Reading Latin here:

http://www.promotelatin.org/downloadablematerials.htm

Edited June 16, 2009 by latinteach

[8filltheheart]

We have an easier solution.......our Mass is about 50% Latin. ;)

[Mama Lynx]

Perhaps I'm working off a different set of definitions or assumptions than you. I consider myself to primarily teach the g/t method, but we use many of those resources you listed. I do feel that those resources help us to read Latin more fluently, but can't myself reinforce any but the most rudimentary immersion.

 

We use Galore Park's Latin Prep series, and I focus on the grammar. That series includes many reading passages. We use Lingua Latina on the side, and listen to the Latinum podcasts. We have spent some time with Using Latin Book One.

 

And yet, if you ask me, I would answer that we use the g/t method.

 

I'm just musing out loud, here. Interesting. Thanks for all the links!

[latinteach]

There's a wonderful essay entitled Something New, Something Old, where the author discusses the combination of old and new methods for teaching Latin. (Texas Classics is revising its website, so if you can't find it at the link above, try here: http://www.txclassics.org/ at the new site and look around.)

 

Perhaps I'm working off a different set of definitions or assumptions than you. I consider myself to primarily teach the g/t method, but we use many of those resources you listed. I do feel that those resources help us to read Latin more fluently, but can't myself reinforce any but the most rudimentary immersion.

 

We use Galore Park's Latin Prep series, and I focus on the grammar. That series includes many reading passages. We use Lingua Latina on the side, and listen to the Latinum podcasts. We have spent some time with Using Latin Book One.

 

And yet, if you ask me, I would answer that we use the g/t method.

 

I'm just musing out loud, here. Interesting. Thanks for all the links!

[Nan in Mass]

Not exactly a dead language for you, is it GRIN. I remember once being in a multi-cultural situation and listening to people giving their traditional prayers in their traditional languages. Suddenly it dawned on me that my religious tradition had prayers in a traditional language, too, and I even knew some of them LOL. Duh!

[Nan in Mass]

Are you sure you aren't making the assumption that you are using mostly the g/t method because the others don't feel like work to you? How much time do you spend on grammar excersizes and chanting (or flashcards or however you memorize)? How much on reading somthing?

[forty-two]

Perhaps I'm working off a different set of definitions or assumptions than you. I consider myself to primarily teach the g/t method, but we use many of those resources you listed. I do feel that those resources help us to read Latin more fluently, but can't myself reinforce any but the most rudimentary immersion.

 

We use Galore Park's Latin Prep series, and I focus on the grammar. That series includes many reading passages. We use Lingua Latina on the side, and listen to the Latinum podcasts. We have spent some time with Using Latin Book One.

 

And yet, if you ask me, I would answer that we use the g/t method.

I would differentiate between inductive and deductive study and utilizing comprehensible input for fluency.

 

I define inductive and deductive study like this: With the inductive method, you first see lots of examples of your target grammar structure, generally in context. The goal is that, with all those examples, you now have an intuitive sense of the structure, and hopefully can generate the rule yourself. With the deductive method, you are given the rule and then are given a bunch of examples, generally some isolated and some in context, to consciously practice applying the rule. The goal is that with enough practice you will internalize the rule and it will become automatic.

 

(Interestingly enough, as you can see, you can use a deductive text inductively and vice versa, just by switching the order of the readings and the grammar instruction.)

 

But no matter which way you choose to introduce yourself to the grammar, you can still profitably read/listen extensively for fluency.

 

Clear as mud?

[forty-two]

Thanks latinteach for the additional links! The Art of Reading Latin was the essay that first introduced me to the idea that, in order to eventually read Latin in word order, you need to begin that way. In my two years of high school Latin, I translated via the patchwork method: translate the words you know, look up the rest, slot in the ones that make sense into your translation in their proper places, and sort of fling the rest around and hope for the best. I never felt like I actually *understood* the Latin, and certainly never even thought of attempting to just read it (way too hard, clearly). Yet I always thought, that with enough study, I'd somehow magically develop a reading ability. Hale's essay showed me that wasn't so, and pointed me toward methods that would. I'm very, very grateful to him.

 

Momof7 - That's awesome! I've always wanted to go to a Latin mass, but the nearest one to us is 1.5 hours away - a bit much when you aren't even Catholic :tongue_smilie:.

[forty-two]

 

Are you sure you aren't making the assumption that you are using mostly the g/t method because the others don't feel like work to you?

Interestingly enough, by modern language standards, even the most progressive Latin teachers still teach using a grammar-based method. They may focus on reading ability and only discuss grammar in context, but that is still grammar-based teaching as far as the foreign language teaching community is concerned. Even the most radical teachers on the Latin - best practices list still include grammar instruction in some form. (If you know of Latin teachers who are even farther out of the mainstream, I'd love to know about them!) Given that the goal of Latin instruction is to read Latin - generally the classics - that is not surprising, as it would be extraordinarily difficult to get students to that level without at least *some* discussion of grammar.

[Vida Winter]

Thank you for all the links! Gold mine!

[Nan in Mass]

My Greek prof said that we had to do translations from English to Greek and learn grammar because there had been experiments that failed where the students were left to form their own grammar from lots of reading. Perhaps it is an occupational hazard that Latin profs value that which has gone before and learn from the past LOL.

[forty-two]

My Greek prof said that we had to do translations from English to Greek and learn grammar because there had been experiments that failed where the students were left to form their own grammar from lots of reading.

I'd be curious to know how they defined failed. Given the context (of requiring E-to-G translations), I'm guessing it means that students who never explicitly learned either Greek grammar or how it relates to English grammar (and possibly never explicitly studied English grammar either!) were unable to accurately translate, either G-to-E or E-to-G. That seems eminently plausible to me.

 

I consider translation a higher-order skill - one that requires practice to perfect, even if you are fluent in each language. It definitely requires explicit grammar knowledge in both languages. Doesn't remotely surprise me if students with only intuitive grammar knowledge and little to no prior translation experience failed miserably on a translation test.

 

But does that mean they failed to accurately *understand* the Greek that they failed to accurately translate?

 

Not necessarily. I know that in most classics programs the ultimate (and generally *only*) way teachers evaluate students' understanding is through translation. The idea that translation=understanding is ubiquitous, and generally it is just assumed, not ever consciously examined. (The number of times g/t teachers, confronted with the idea of not having students translate every scrap of Latin (or Greek that crosses their path) have plaintively asked, "But if the students don't translate, how will I know if they understand the passage?")

 

Well, how do we assess understanding of literature in our native language? All of those techniques are equally applicable in assessing understanding of Latin material, as well. Plus they have the added benefit of providing extra Latin exposure, too - thus helping build fluency, as well.

 

(Just to be clear, I see value in learning to translate as well in explicit grammar study. I agree that both have excellent brain-training potential. I think that translation, in particular, is excellent composition training: you have to choose just the right word, phrase, grammatical structure, etc. to best render the Latin meaning in English or vice versa. Talk about paying attention to every aspect and nuance of a language! I just don't think that translating into or out of a language helps us actually *acquire* it - it just helps us become more eloquent in expressing ourselves in it. I think we need to already be very comfortable working in both languages separately before we can truly reap the benefits of translating.)

[Nan in Mass]

I've had to translate French/English and I much prefer just working in one language or the other. Translating is very different. And my youngest understands lots of French that he is unable to translate. He is often unable to translate even words, but if you put them in context, he has no trouble with the meaning. I would be surprised if the project were considered failed because of translation. I would guess that the students failed at the all-Latin curriculum. It would be easier to look at that than to give them an outside test of some sort involving translation. That would mean that they couldn't answer comprehension questions, perhaps? I don't know, though.

-Nan