which Latin exam for 5th grade?

[Lucy the Valiant]

Help! I am feeling overwhelmed with the choices - I have a 5th grader who has been through Latina Christiana I, and is now almost done with CAP's Latin for Children A (their style is a much better fit for us, and we plan to go directly through A, B, C, and then continue).

 

Which Latin exam?

 

National Latin Exam, Intro level?

 

NJCL's National Latin Vocabulary Exam?

 

ETC's Exploratory Latin Exam?

 

Does it matter?

[forty-two]

Random bits about the National Latin Exam:

 

*If you are ordering the exam for 2015 the order form has to be postmarked by Jan 20.

 

*the Intro to Latin exam covers half of the Latin 1 syllabus; so if you are in year 1 of a two year Latin 1 program, this would be your exam.  I don't know if LC I/II count together as Latin 1, in which case finishing LC I would be half of Latin 1, but for LfC, I think it's all three primers together, so I don't know if Primer A would be enough (an Amazon review said that her son aced a practice intro exam after finishing Primer B).  In any case, here's a link to the NLE syllabi, which outlines the knowledge tested with each exam, so you can see if what you've done covers what's on the intro exam: http://www.nle.org/pdf/syllabi/NLE_Syllabus05_2014.pdf

 

Also, here's a link to old NLE exams - your student could try an intro exam and see how they do: http://www.nle.org/exams.html#previousexam

[Dmmetler]

My DD10 has done the ELE the last 2 years, and will do the NLVE Latin 1 this year, since she maxed out the ELE last year. The main reason we picked the NLVE is that we've done SSL and tried LFC, but at the time, she had almost no retention. We moved to Cambridge, which is weaker on grammar, but strong on vocabulary. I figured the NLVE would be a good fit for her now-because she already knows most of the vocabulary, but really will have to study on the specifics that CLC tends to be weaker on (things like identifying which declension a word is, principal parts, conjugations, etc). I picked Latin 1 because she's about 1/3 of the way through CLC 3-and CLC 1 and 2 are considered Latin 1 in most US high schools. I don't think she'll finish enough of CLC 3 to be considered a solid Latin 2 student, but the Latin 1/2 NLVE and NLE seemed too much like the ELE to be really challenging. I'm also thinking that she'll probably do an online Latin course for high school, and since many of them use the NLE, and you can only take a given level once, I don't want to use up her eligibility and then have her unable to take the NLE when it's part of high school credit.

 

If she hasn't done the ELE first, I'd do that-it's vocabulary based, short, fun, and pretty easy for a strong Latin student to get a certificate or medal for, and she's only eligible for that one through 6th grade.

 

My DD has also done the National Classical Etymology Exam the last two years, and really, really enjoyed it. It's given by the NJCL in November.

 

 

 

[Lucy the Valiant]

Thank you for the advice & info! I think the ELE looks like a good fit for this age; the sample test seemed easy, so that is good. One of the goals here is to expose the kids to tests; another goal is to increase confidence, so I am thinking that easier probably = better in this case.

 

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!

[Half-Elven]

 

 

[Half-Elven]

This is an elementary question...is the reason for taking exams such as NLE to make Latin "official" in your homeschool?  In other words, if your student does not take the exam, then schools looking at transcripts do not "count" the fact that they have taken latin.  Is that the purpose? 

 

OR is it to figure out where your student is at...such as a state standardized exam on reading and math?