Penguin Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 The title says it all: How important is English-to-Latin translation? Our textbook (LNM Level 1) has "Translate into Latin" exercises, but these are a really small percentage of the course. From what I can tell about the Big Latin Tests (NLE, AP, SAT), one "only" needs to be able to translate Latin-to-English. Recognizing derivatives seems quite important to the Big Latin Test people. Does composing in Latin become important later? How about in university Latin classes? I am setting up an Anki deck for long term retention, and I am trying to decide if it is important to drill the vocab from English-to-Latin. Yes? No? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 I think that it is really important for full understanding of the language. Watching Calvin's scrunched up facial expressions as he tried to do it convinced me that it was hard in a really, really good way - intensive problem solving for children who don't care for maths. There's a lot of it in Latin Prep. I'll ask C tomorrow when I speak to him whether he still does it at university. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 21, 2015 Author Share Posted February 21, 2015 Thanks, Laura. It never even occurred to me NOT to think it was important until I started making the Anki deck. But I only have experience with modern foreign languages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 21, 2015 Author Share Posted February 21, 2015 Aside: Wow, Galore Park has really changed their website since that last time I looked at it. The blurb of the Latin Prep book touts its alignment with the Common Entrance Exam, so I took a quick peak into the syllabus of that exam. It seems like the Big Latin Test people in the UK think that English-to-Latin is important enough to put on their Big Latin Tests :lol: . We did Getting Started with Latin last year. I could take some of those sentences and have him translate them English-to-Latin for more practice on that aspect. Maybe LNM does more in Levels 2 and 3 - idk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Galore Park, which was a small publishing house started by one enthusiastic bloke who has now retired, has been sold to a big educational publisher. As of now, most of the books predate the handover, but the website has changed. The old GP website was quirky and difficult to search. The new one is corporate and difficult to search! GP serves a very specific clientele in the UK (private schools, particularly those that feed into the posh private 'public' schools such as Eton and Harrow) so I don't know how well served they will be by being subsumed into a larger organisation. The common entrance exam is to get you into those schools. The big exams more commonly taken in state schools (public in the US sense) - GCSE, etc. - don't include English to Latin last time I looked. I would expect good teachers to offer E-L translation to their good pupils anyway.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 I used GSWL for English-to-Latin. I lagged a few lessons behind so we could use it to review vocabulary at the same time. I agree with Laura that it was clearly hard in a good, thoughtful way. We started BBoLL this year and I haven't seen that in there, so I'm thinking I may add it in myself one day a week along with flashcard review or history our some thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reefgazer Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 DD and I are only in the early stages of Latin study, but that scrunched up face you talk about when you mention English to Latin translation is what I see with us. I feel my face contorted 17 different ways to Sunday when we're working on English to Latin translation, lol. I think that it is really important for full understanding of the language. Watching Calvin's scrunched up facial expressions as he tried to do it convinced me that it was hard in a really, really good way - intensive problem solving for children who don't care for maths. There's a lot of it in Latin Prep. I'll ask C tomorrow when I speak to him whether he still does it at university. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamato4 Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 We used Henle which has quite a bit of English-to-Latin translations. I've found that's it has tremendously helped me and my dc with translating from Latin to English. It's also helped us practice those many, many verb conjugations. The ps my two dc are in never do any English-to-Latin translations and they do say even the Latin 4 students have a hard time with noun and verb endings. Just our experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G5052 Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 I think it's valuable. When I taught Henle 2 locally, I assigned some with each set of homework. They complained, but IMHO there's some value to that. My oldest said that doing that with Henle gave him a really good foundation in Latin. He did Henle, then Wheelock's, and then up through AP Latin with Lukeion. Once you've finished Latin grammar (usually Latin 1-2, sometimes Latin 1-3), the class is usually just Latin to English as you dig into Latin literature and poetry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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