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GSWL then what?


Flowergirl159
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Just finishing up with Getting Started with Latin with my oldest, and need to decide on what to do next for Latin.

 

I have just purchased Henle, it hasn't arrived yet, but I was hoping to use that for myself to teach her, OR use it as a supplement.

I thought I could use Visual Latin, but it seems expensive. Is Visual Latin worth it? I live overseas so downloads or cheaper resources are best as postage and the exchange rate make a lot of curriculum very expensive for us.

 

Does Henle work on its own?

 

Is Visual Latin worth the cost?

 

Is there something else that might suit us?

 

Will need this in February. DD will be 11yrs old and in grade 6

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Lively Latin is available as a PDF download, so that saves on shipping costs.  The videos for each chapter are online, too.  I believe both books would get you up through the first year of high school-level Latin.  I like it because it offers a lot of review after GSWL, but goes a lot further, and my daughter can do most of it independently.  It also includes Roman history and mythology, and English vocabulary exercises.  I don't mind printing it all out because I have a laser printer. 

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I highly recommend Lingua Latina after GSWL. Take it slow, but it is a very effective (and dare I say enjoyable?!) way to learn a whole lot of vocab and grammar. I had no Latin background but have learned along with DS over the last 4 yrs (we did GSWL for 1 slow year, and then Lingua Latina so far for 3 slow years, with bits of Latin Alive (a grammar-translation program) thrown in for good measure). (Lingua Latina does not need to be taken as slow as we have gone, but we started when DS was only 6.5, and we don't have a whole lot of time to devote to it.)

 

* Lingua Latina is a direct approach and is **superbly** written as such, though we do also explicitly discuss grammar, using the College Companion by Neuman (invaluable resource for Lingua Latina).

* We also do all of the exercises in Exercitia Latina (we do everything orally together, though we write out our answers to all of the free answer questions, just so we really think through all of our cases and such). (If you buy the Exercitia, also get the Answer Key.)

* We also add all of our new vocab to Anki and review it at least 4-5 times a week. This is an investment of time but is well worth it, imho. Without review, the vocab would get totally daunting. So far we have learned 900+ words, which I think is pretty fabulous for a 9 yr old (and he really *knows* them, not just kinda sorta knows them, iykwim).

* We also chant declensions, conjugations, pronouns, etc. on a semi-regular basis. Writing up a regular recitation for us in on my Gigantic To Do List but I have not yet gotten around to it :p

* For fun this year we have also added the Colloquamur as well as Cambridge Latin just for extra reading practice. The grammar is super easy for us, but there is a bit of new vocab, and we enjoy reading straight through the text and generally understand it all the first time through. It is just a fun little add-in for us; we don't study it at all. I'm also going to add in other fun reading practice once I have time to figure out what would be right for us.

 

Visual Latin, which you mentioned, was (I recall) originally designed around use of Lingua Latina and is still correlated with it (I think they offer a reading schedule). I like the teacher (and so does DS), but really we have not needed it (we have vol 1 of it). Our instruction generally comes from the College Companion and reading and rereading the Lingua Latina chapter... and then looping back again and again even as we make progress through the text. 

 

Edited by tranquility7
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We used Lively Latin also. However, there are so, so many choices, you may want to poke around Cathy Duffy's reviews first to get a feel for what you definitely do or don't want. While to parts? Secular or not? Presumably not, since you ordered Henle, but that kind of thing.

 

You might also be able to find which ones are a good lead-in to Henle, if that is where you want to end up. That might require a lot of background reading and ninja internet search skills.

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After finishing GSWL, we moved to Latin Alive with our oldest. She was 11 & in 6th when she started Latin Alive 1.

 

She enjoys watching the dvd's and learning independently, and I love that I don't have to try to keep up with her. I felt like it was also a good choice, because Latin Alive covers the content of Wheelock's over 3 years instead of 2. So she is covering the content of high school Latin 1 & Latin 2 at a slightly slower pace over the course of 3 years, and *hopefully* it will be easier to transition her to online classes down the line since she is following the Wheelock's syllabus.

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  • 2 months later...

I chose Visual Latin and am so happy with my choice. The teacher on the videos is fun and entertaining. And we both learning so much! After the first weeks worth of lessons, my daughter told me that she felt like she learnt more in a week with visual Latin than in a whole year with GSWL. I highly recommend Visual Latin :)

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Yay! Glad you are enjoying Visual Latin. Remember to take a look at Visual Latin's reading schedule for Lingua Latina, because once you have gotten far enough in Visual Latin, you and your DD will enjoy reading the first few chapters of it. It is super fun and very rewarding (and you will be amazed how quickly easily you and your DD can learn a bunch of vocab that way)!

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