Latin exams (NLE, AP, SAT)

[dauphin]

Hi, I'm looking ahead to high school and in another post/subforum, a parent mentioned that she was not continuing with a community-based program because the level of latin instruction would not meet her needs with regard to preparing for the National Latin Exam, Latin AP, and Latin SAT. I would love to learn more about why that would be important. I already have my questions about the program myself (lack of flexibility/opportunity to accelerate in subjects as needed), but would appreciate some counsel on the purposes of pursuing that level of Latin accomplishments (in other words, do I want that too but I just don't know it yet? We are new to homeschooling as of 16 months ago)

 

TIA!

[Corraleno]

Whether you want your kids to take the AP or SAT2 in Latin depends on their (and your) goals. Will they be taking 3-4 years of high school level Latin? If so, it may be worth it to take the SAT2, since many colleges recommend (and some require) 2-3 subject tests, especially for homeschoolers. Depending on the college your students attend, a score of 4 or 5 on the Latin AP may earn college credit, and/or may meet the college's foreign language requirement. And it's certainly a plus from an admissions standpoint as well.

 

The National Latin Exam doesn't count for college credit, but it's cheap, short, easy to administer at home, and the student can win honors and awards that look good on a college app. Students who get gold medals in their senior year are also eligible to apply for a small scholarship through the American Classical League. There are 7 different exams offered, from Intro (for students below Latin 1) through Latin V-VI. IMHO there's really no good reason not to take the NLE if you can.

[G5052]

It may have been me because I've related that before here.  I'll say up front that I can appreciate that not everyone's goals are the same.  Plenty of people study Latin without wanting to ever take one of the national exams.

 

In our case, I had a kid who was excelling at Latin and showed real talent. He did well on his first NLE despite using a book that doesn't match the NLE syllabus. I also wanted four years of Latin studies in high school.  Four years of a single language shows more academic potential for college admissions, and I also consider four years of a single language part of a rigorous high school program.  I knew from my own studies through AP German in high school that you have to demand vocabulary and grammar mastery in order to get there.  If you don't have that in the first few years, you're not going to go further.  I also wanted national exams to document the Latin study because that's what selective schools expect.

 

Well...in time I saw my kid getting discouraged and the possibility of four years of Latin draining away.  Mastery was not required, and the exams didn't expect memorization.  We were not going to get to the point where translating Latin literature was possible, which is what you need for the SAT II and AP exams.  So we continued locally, but I paid for an additional class.  Eventually we decided to go our own way for high school and go to online Latin teachers who knew the language well.

 

And the kid that started it all has continued to do very well.  We expect yet another gold medal this year on the NLE and will be taking the AP in May.  My second one is also doing beautifully and should graduate with four years of Latin and will take the Latin SAT II (not an AP kid, but still a good Latin student).

 

As I said earlier, my goals were different, and we had to make a change.  YMMV... 

[stephinsocal]

Reefgazer1963, check out www.nle.org.  They let anyone besides the teacher (e.g., a neighbor, the other parent) proctor the exam.  It's cheap and easy.

[G5052]

Your post has me curious because I am interested in the NLE for my daughter for next year and was wondering about the exam.  When you say it is for students below Latin I, I am assuming that is high school level Latin I, right?  Also, I am wondering about the testing and how she would be tested for the exam.  How do you find a proctor?  From your post it seems that a parent is allowed to administer it in their kitchen, similar to a standardized CAT or IOWA test.  But I may be misunderstanding that.

 

Latin Intro is for students in the first year of a two-year Latin I class.  So they are taking Latin IA one year, and will take Latin IB the next.  This is usually middle school.  If they are in a regular Latin I class, they should take the Latin I exam.

 

You can proctor your student as long as you are not the Latin teacher.  When we were with a local group that taught Latin once a week, I did it for the group, and tested 10-30 students a year.  There are certain rules of course, and I collected enough to cover the exams and my expenses.  Every year I had parents who tried to get me to bend the rules and do things differently, but you can't do that.  Some of the students who had "A" grades in that group did very poorly on the NLE.  Different syllabus, different expectations.

 

My own have always taken it very seriously, and study specifically for it on top of their regular Latin from October-March.  They do some Latin all summer too.

 

This year I tested just my own teens (both in online classes now) and friends of ours who are public school Latin classes.  Their Latin teacher hasn't offered the National Latin Exam in years because of the logistics and headaches involved, and she's fine that I do this.

 

If you do this, you have to register in December or early January.  They're very nice to deal with, but sticklers on deadlines.

[Corraleno]

Reefgazer, here's what the Intro Latin exam covers: 

http://www.nle.org/pdf/syllabi/LatinIntro_NLESyllabus2009.pdf

 

The NLE is 40 minutes long (+ 5 mins for filling in name, date, etc.), with 40 multiple choice questions. It has to be administered during a specific week in March, and returned immediately. We do the NLE through Lukeion, but if you're doing it on your own, it's $4 per exam (with a $10 minimum) plus $10 shipping & handling.

 

It's not a difficult exam (IMHO), and it's fun to get ribbons & medals for academic work. DS scored 100% last year and got a very impressive-looking hand-lettered certificate in addition to his gold medal. Kids who get multiple gold medals or perfect papers can also win book awards.

 

 

 

[chiguirre]

Trinqueta took the Intro test this year because a local homeschool class teacher had an extra. She didn't study much for it, but it was a good experience. She's been doing First Form Latin and it doesn't match up well, but I got a study guide from MP, used the first couple of stages in Cambridge Latin 1 for reading practice and printed off old exams for practice. We prepped for 5 days for the exam and T managed to finish it although she said the reading was difficult. For us, it was interesting to see what a reading based approach was like and gave T exposure to what's expected in a translation based course. That will help her next year when she switches to a more reading based curriculum. We haven't gotten her results, but even if she doesn't win a medal, it was worth doing just for the exam experience and the practice reading Latin.

[Alice]

Your post has me curious because I am interested in the NLE for my daughter for next year and was wondering about the exam.  When you say it is for students below Latin I, I am assuming that is high school level Latin I, right?  Also, I am wondering about the testing and how she would be tested for the exam.  How do you find a proctor?  From your post it seems that a parent is allowed to administer it in their kitchen, similar to a standardized CAT or IOWA test.  But I may be misunderstanding that.

 

My 5th grader took The Intro to Latin exam through his co-op just for fun. He is in the middle of Lively Latin Big Book 2. He just took it so I don't know the results but he thought it felt similar to the practice tests and on those he was scoring about 85-90%.

 

It's cheap, only $5 for us through the co-op and pretty short. I think you get 45 minutes max to take it. So it was a pretty low-stress and low-time commitment experience. I had him take it just to see how he did and also to give him a little testing experience. He also really likes Latin so I can see him wanting to take the exam when he gets older with the purpose of getting a medal.

Hi, I'm looking ahead to high school and in another post/subforum, a parent mentioned that she was not continuing with a community-based program because the level of latin instruction would not meet her needs with regard to preparing for the National Latin Exam, Latin AP, and Latin SAT. I would love to learn more about why that would be important. I already have my questions about the program myself (lack of flexibility/opportunity to accelerate in subjects as needed), but would appreciate some counsel on the purposes of pursuing that level of Latin accomplishments (in other words, do I want that too but I just don't know it yet? We are new to homeschooling as of 16 months ago)

 

TIA!

 

I love the NLE.  It is cheap, they make it easy to administer (no need to find testing centers), and it is low stakes.  If they don't do well, oh well, you don't send the test scores anywhere, and they can try again next year.  If they do well, it can be used to validate "Mommy grades".  In a small way, it is practice for the "big" standardized tests like the SAT and ACT.  At least for us, it maps pretty well to what we'd be studying in Latin anyway, so there's not a lot of extraneous test-prep.  If a Latin program didn't prepare students to take the appropriate level of NLE in the appropriate year, it wouldn't be rigorous enough for my tastes.

[EndOfOrdinary]

One of the major concerns I have is providing third party recognition of the grades on my son's transcript. If he was a 3.85 or higher at public school, no biggie. However, I have been told many times now that some colleges question inflated transcripts from homeschoolers. I see AP, CLEP, SAT II, and such tests as a way to show that others can vouch for the grades my son is going to be getting. This also can show me if I am not being realistic about the level of work he is demonstrating. If I seem to feel he is a genius, but he bombs an SAT II test, that might mean I need to re-evaluate. We plan on using them to keep everyone honest.

[Gwen in VA]

We have a LONG sad relationship with Latin, but please learn from our experience --

 

1) Plenty of Latin teachers honestly don't know what they are doing. Even the ones who do know their Latin may not be teaching at a level that prepares students for national exams. Do NOT assume that just because your student is taking Latin 3 he will succeed on the NLE Latin 3 exam or the SAT-2. Check out the teacher's record -- do students of that teacher routinely take the NLE or the SAT-2 or the AP exam and do well? (And if the teacher asks, "What's that?" you know to move on.....) If your goal is the SAT-2 and/or the AP exam, don't waste your time with teachers who don't have the same goal for their students!

 

2) It is HARD to switch to a more rigorous Latin provider in high school. Switching to a more rigorous provider (Lukeion or Lone Pine, for example) may require repeating one or more years of Latin..... My kids had to repeat Latin 2 even though my kids were the top two students in a well-reputed Latin class (that now thankfully seems to be defunct). So do any switching to a more rigorous program in 8th grade if possible!

 

(I should title this post "Learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before!")

[G5052]

We have a LONG sad relationship with Latin, but please learn from our experience --

 

1) Plenty of Latin teachers honestly don't know what they are doing. Even the ones who do know their Latin may not be teaching at a level that prepares students for national exams. Do NOT assume that just because your student is taking Latin 3 he will succeed on the NLE Latin 3 exam or the SAT-2. Check out the teacher's record -- do students of that teacher routinely take the NLE or the SAT-2 or the AP exam and do well? (And if the teacher asks, "What's that?" you know to move on.....) If your goal is the SAT-2 and/or the AP exam, don't waste your time with teachers who don't have the same goal for their students!

 

2) It is HARD to switch to a more rigorous Latin provider in high school. Switching to a more rigorous provider (Lukeion or Lone Pine, for example) may require repeating one or more years of Latin..... My kids had to repeat Latin 2 even though my kids were the top two students in a well-reputed Latin class (that now thankfully seems to be defunct). So do any switching to a more rigorous program in 8th grade if possible!

 

(I should title this post "Learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before!")

 

Exactly, exactly.  Thankfully I "got" this when my oldest was in middle school.  As I noted earlier in this thread, I ran NLE group testing locally for four years, and only a handful in that group placed.  My own children were the only ones who earned medals.

 

I was a contract Latin teacher there myself (purely an amateur, believe me), and got pressured into low expectations by those over me.  And I knew that those in my class would do poorly on the NLE before the class even started.  When the scores came back, one parent was furious with me over this, but thankfully I had given them all a syllabus that explicitly said that the class would not necessarily prepare them for national exams or success with Latin elsewhere.  No way could a student in my Latin 2 class there have done well with Latin 3 from one of the quality online providers.

 

Anyway, we moved on.  Lessons learned. 

[chiguirre]

If a Latin program didn't prepare students to take the appropriate level of NLE in the appropriate year, it wouldn't be rigorous enough for my tastes.

I can see your point, but I do disagree a bit. FFL concentrates on memorizing conjugations and declensions. T breezed through the grammar and was quite a bit ahead of the game compared to the level tested on the Intro test. BUT, FFL doesn't do much with reading or Roman culture. For that, Cambridge is much better. BUT, if you only did Cambridge, I'd guess that learning the conjugations and declensions cold would be much harder unless the teacher added a lot of drill. What I learned from the experience is that I'd prefer a school year program that emphasizes grammar and memorization and then I'll add Cambridge over the summers to pick up more reading and culture. It would be harder for me to enforce the memorization than it is to buddy read an interesting passage and discuss it. YMMV

[8filltheheart]

I can see your point, but I do disagree a bit. FFL concentrates on memorizing conjugations and declensions. T breezed through the grammar and was quite a bit ahead of the game compared to the level tested on the Intro test. BUT, FFL doesn't do much with reading or Roman culture. For that, Cambridge is much better. BUT, if you only did Cambridge, I'd guess that learning the conjugations and declensions cold would be much harder unless the teacher added a lot of drill. What I learned from the experience is that I'd prefer a school year program that emphasizes grammar and memorization and then I'll add Cambridge over the summers to pick up more reading and culture. It would be harder for me to enforce the memorization than it is to buddy read an interesting passage and discuss it. YMMV

 

I'm with GGardner on this pt.   The intro level test is very simple.   Cultural questions appear for sure up through level 3.   Mastery of grammar should be evident in all Latin programs.   We don't approach Latin with the NLE in mind, but my kids have medalled every single yr.   FWIW, Latin Prep was plenty of prep for my kids for Intro-level 2 (not so for being prepared for level 3 and we have switched for that pt)  and it is an interesting, fun, and engaging.