Lingva Latina - latin question

[swellmomma]

dd14 is taking an online latin class with our school board this year.  They are using the text Lingva Latina Familia Romana for it (in fact I believe they work through the same text for all 3 years of latin they teach).  Would you consider it enough for high school credit?  Would you add anything to it? I have never used this book before so I have no clue.  They required she get the text, vocab book and exercise book.  The class meets twice a week for 90 minutes each time.  She is using latin to meet her foreign language requirements for graduation.  Although the gov't of alberta accepts latin as one of those courses it no longer lists specific outcomes to reach so it is up to me to ensure it would meet the requirements of a full year foreign language course.  Have any of you used it? is there anything lacking in it to consider it worthy of full credits without supplementing?

 

[Kendall]

I think The Potters School uses Lingua Latina and Visual Latin also has online courses using it so you could look at what else (if anything) those classes do/use.  

 

http://www.compassclassroom.com/lingua-latina/overview-5/

 

I think The Potters School has a new teacher and that teacher uses a different book.  Maybe someone that has taken it in the past could say whether something else  was used.  

 

I would have thought it would be done in 2 years, and in terms of the grammar it covers the equivalent of Wheelocks or Henle 1 and 2.  But I hope someone verifies that.  But that would indicate that just using it would be high school Latin.  A teacher would make sure the students were getting the grammar out of it whether they used another program (like Visual Latin does) or just their own materials/methods.

 

Probably not much help, but I saw there wasn't a response yet so I thought I would contribute what little I know.

dd14 is taking an online latin class with our school board this year.  They are using the text Lingva Latina Familia Romana for it (in fact I believe they work through the same text for all 3 years of latin they teach).  Would you consider it enough for high school credit?  Would you add anything to it? I have never used this book before so I have no clue.  They required she get the text, vocab book and exercise book.  The class meets twice a week for 90 minutes each time.  She is using latin to meet her foreign language requirements for graduation.  Although the gov't of alberta accepts latin as one of those courses it no longer lists specific outcomes to reach so it is up to me to ensure it would meet the requirements of a full year foreign language course.  Have any of you used it? is there anything lacking in it to consider it worthy of full credits without supplementing?

 

 

 

As homeschoolers, I think we often place too much emphasis on text books.  Lingua Latina, per se Illustratra, Familia Romana is a very unusual book.  It is written entirely in Latin, and all the vocabulary is defined in term of other Latin word, or with pictures.  With a good teacher, it can be a very effective tool.  Typical, the first book (Familia Romana) covers about the same amount as the first two years of high school Latin.  I'm not familiar with the exercise book, but learning Latin (as any foreign language) requires a fair amount of memorization, and the book never comes out and says "now memorize these 20 forms", but any good teacher would tell their students that, and verify that they have by testing them.  So, assuming the teacher is qualified, I wouldn't worry about the book.  The only thing that's a bit odd about the book is that the paradigm tables in the back are listed out in the British order, not the American one I'm familiar with. 

 

Now I'm curious what order is traditionally used in Canada!

[swellmomma]

It's not about whether or not it is a textbook but if it would cover enough.  It sounds like it is equivalent to 2 high school years and she will need 3 years to fullfill her foreign language requirements so even if she does this for 3 years she will have to take something else in  the 3rd year to meet those terms.  I think the way the book is written is pretty neat, and they will certainly be getting lots of instruction during those 90 minute class sessions.  So it sounds at least for the first 2 years I won't need to add anything to beef it up, but perhaps in the 3rd year I will.  That is good to know.  She has such a heavy load these next 2 years (of her own choosing) that being able to leave that to that tutor and her homework etc would be nice.

[swellmomma]

Oh and what are the paradigm tables? What order were you wanting them to be in?

[mommamagistra]

British texts list the declensions in the following order: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative; whereas US texts list the declensions as: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative.

It's not about whether or not it is a textbook but if it would cover enough. 

 

But this is exactly what I mean when I say that we put too much emphasis on textbooks.  No one can say with any certainty if this class will be "enough" based on the book alone, without knowing anything about how the teacher plans to teach, what extra materials she will cover, or how in depth she will use this book.  Teachers shouldn't be slaves to their texts, the text should be an auxiliary to the teaching.