Beechick vs. Classical/LCC/TWTM?

[hlee]

Hi everyone--new to homeschooling, trying to figure it all out, want to create a Christian classical education for my kids and am trying to sort through all the slightly differing opinions. Has anyone read Beechick's book on A Biblical Home Education and do you have an opinion on her thoughts about Latin? She seems to think that it's not very helpful and that the grammar one learns from learning Latin doesn't translate all that well to English grammar. If anyone has given this some thought, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Thanks.

 

--Helen

Married to DH 13 years

Brand new homeschooler to my three little boys (7, 4, 20 mos.)

[CourtneySue]

I haven't read Ruth Beechick's book, so I can only speak from personal experience here. As someone who grew up in our wonderful public schools, I never really understood English grammar until I went to college and started studying Greek and Latin. It made me far more aware of how English worked than I had ever been before.

 

hth

[dangermom]

I've never read the book, but IMO Latin grammar doesn't replace English grammar--but it's very useful anyway, esp. for helping make English grammar clear. It seems that you don't get it until you look at it from outside, kwim?

 

I find Latin very useful for a lot of reasons, so I disagree with her there. Now I wish I'd had Latin as a kid--I have been learning so much from it. When I read WTM and it said Latin was important, I was quite skeptical, but once I tried it, I was totally convinced.

 

So I guess my suggestion would be to give it a try sometime and see how it goes. One of the 'baby' Latin texts isn't very expensive.

[Colleen in NS]

Hi everyone--new to homeschooling, trying to figure it all out, want to create a Christian classical education for my kids and am trying to sort through all the slightly differing opinions. Has anyone read Beechick's book on A Biblical Home Education and do you have an opinion on her thoughts about Latin? She seems to think that it's not very helpful and that the grammar one learns from learning Latin doesn't translate all that well to English grammar. If anyone has given this some thought, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Thanks.

 

--Helen

Married to DH 13 years

Brand new homeschooler to my three little boys (7, 4, 20 mos.)

 

I did read that book, but I can't remember exactly what she wrote about Latin. I vaguely recall thinking that she didn't think highly of studying it, but I'm not sure now. Anyway, here at our house, we've studied English grammar first, and added Latin in later. I find that the Latin grammar is helping us to think more clearly, because it's so precise....but I'm not too sure yet about carrying Latin grammar over to English grammar, so we continue to study English grammar, too. But I do find that studying Latin is 1. helping us to be more precise and 2. helping us with English vocabulary. So we will continue to study Latin.

[dsacco]

I didn't read the book and I am new to this way of schooling.... but I have got to say that my daughter's vocabulary increased to the point of missing 1 problem on her standardized test this past year from getting about 50% wrong last year! We didn't do additional grammar only latin roots and greek roots (English from the Roots Up) but it made a HUGE difference in her understanding of words. My son had the same type of results but not as dramatic as my dd because he tests a year behind the level of work he's doing.

[Mama Lynx]

Hi everyone--new to homeschooling, trying to figure it all out, want to create a Christian classical education for my kids and am trying to sort through all the slightly differing opinions. Has anyone read Beechick's book on A Biblical Home Education and do you have an opinion on her thoughts about Latin? She seems to think that it's not very helpful and that the grammar one learns from learning Latin doesn't translate all that well to English grammar. If anyone has given this some thought, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Thanks.

 

--Helen

Married to DH 13 years

Brand new homeschooler to my three little boys (7, 4, 20 mos.)

 

Our experience has been just the opposite. Latin grammar has greatly strengthened our understanding of English grammar. I cannot even imagine why she says it doesn't translate well. Yes, there are parts of Latin grammar that have no English counterpart, but there's enough that does that it's quite useful. And even for the parts that we don't find in English ... still, the skill of being able to analyze the sentence, to identify and understand the grammar, absolutely increases your understanding of how language works.

[AudreyTN]

I read the book (and we just moved so it's MIA) and I love love love Ruth Beechick's common sense approach to everything. I do think that learning Latin and Greek (at least the roots) is very important for Vocab. I'm not far enough into it to say anything about the grammar.

 

This past year we focused on learning to love it (with SSL and Minimus) and also the letter sounds (Latin's Not So Tough 1). This year, we will be working through Matin Latin (ties English grammar to Latin grammar) and LNST 2. We're also doing Greek Roots using English from the Roots Up.