Latin Road to English Grammar...

[HSKLNG]

...I need your input.

 

I we have done LCI and will be finishing LitCT, which of the volumes of LRtEG is the appropiate one?

 

As you can see, I have not yet find the right Latin course for my HSchooler.

 

I am not interested in battles, wars and pagan religions, we just want to learn latin. Some history is ok, but not a life book of details...neither around Pompeii history.

 

I know, picky...can someone help, anyways? Thanks in advance.

[LisaNY]

I was under the impression that LitCT contained a storyline that centered around a Christian Roman family. I did not think it was heavy on wars, battles, paganism, etc. Why would you switch?

 

I have a suggestion, FWIW. If your ds is doing well with learning the grammar via LitCT, I would take a look at Oerberg's Lingua Latina as a supplemental reader. LL is an immersion-type program, where everything is in Latin, including the grammar portion at the end of each chapter. It also centers on a Roman family. It is just about daily life. It has a smattering of everything, and is not heavily focused on any one subject. In the final chapters of LL, students are beginning to read portions of real Latin. It is an excellent way of putting Latin grammar into context.

 

I am a huge fan of LL. It teaches grammar and vocabulary within the context of a running storyline, which facilitates understanding and retention. Some use it as their main text, and others use it as a supplement to a standard grammar/translation program.

 

Focus Publishing is the company I use to purchase my LL materials. For your purposes, you would need LL-Familia Romana and Jeanne Newmann's College Companion (for the grammar and vocabulary explanations). I also like Colloquia Personarum, which is an additional reader which contains stories that coincide with each story in LL.

 

I would give that a try before switching programs. LL is a great stand-alone text, as it does teach the Latin grammar, albeit in a different way than a standard g/t text. It requires more work on the part of the teacher, as you have to intuit a bit more when teaching via LL, but it can be done.

 

If you do a search for Lingua Latina, you will see many posts on this subject.

[carol]

I tried Latin Road to English Grammar with my son in middle school when my husband was deployed. It is not a book to have your child self teach. It highly recommends the parent to do the lessons too. I liked the program but unfortunately didn't have the time to keep up. It has been a couple of years but if I recall correctly it primarily focused on grammar and Latin.

Student recieves 2 years Latin credit and 1 year grammar.

 

Carol

[Janice H]

Dd and I bombed out of LREG 1. I felt starved for more reading passages or even more sentences to translate before memorizing the next bunch of new material. Compared to other programs it seemed to have more straight memorizing of grammar forms without the fun of applying it to readings. (The series has been revised since we used it 5 years ago, so maybe this aspect has changed.) I do know a young woman who completed all three years of LREG, so it might be right for you too.

 

We have settled down with the Henle (dd's preferred text) and Lingua Latina combo.

[latinteach]

...I need your input.

 

I we have done LCI and will be finishing LitCT, which of the volumes of LRtEG is the appropiate one?

 

As you can see, I have not yet find the right Latin course for my HSchooler.

 

I am not interested in battles, wars and pagan religions, we just want to learn latin. Some history is ok, but not a life book of details...neither around Pompeii history.

 

I know, picky...can someone help, anyways? Thanks in advance.

 

I'm trying to understand your question. You've finished LCI and will be finishing LitCT. Does this mean you have finished the first volume of LitCT or the entire four year sequence? If you've just finished the first volume, are you trying to figure out another series and at what point you should pick up the other series? It sounds like you have your mind set on the Latin Road to English Grammar. Visiting the LRtEG site, they give a description of each volume, so you probably need to compare what you covered in LCI and LitCT and select the appropriate volume of LRtEG. However, my concern is that you don't want to keep on repeating the same concepts in a different textbook -- that gets you no closer to learning Latin. You need to move forward and get through the grammar and syntax, so that you can do some reading.

 

You say you are not interested in battles and war, pagan mythology, biography or Pompeii, although some history is okay. My hope is that, having taken the time to learn some Latin, you'll choose to read some authentic Latin literature. If you read Roman histories, you are very likely to encounter battles and war. Livy and Caesar have traditionally been the first pieces of authentic Latin literature read by Latin students, as they are generally easy and allow the intermediate student the opportunity to encounter all those grammatical and syntactical constructions they've been learning in context. But a lot of people have indeed objected to all the focus on war. So there are mythological stories written in the style of Caesar by (more or less) contemporary authors from the 19th or 20th century and you'll often find these in Latin textbooks. From there, one would generally read Cicero (politics and philosophy) and Vergil (epic poetry) or Ovid, Catullus and Horace (more poetry.) Understanding the history and mythology is of great benefit when reading other classics of Western civilization (Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, etc.)

 

I guess my question is why are you studying Latin and where do you hope to go with it? One of the reasons that Latin has been core to a classical curriculum is that one not only learns grammar and vocabulary, but at the same time also builds a foundation for later study of Western civilization.