translating vs reading

I had a rant on Latinteach this a.m. Well, not really a rant, but a passionate bit of writing. Well, I'm listening to opera, go figure, so passion goes hand and hand with it.

Just a random question, that really doesn't need answering, but does anyone ever pay attention to the music I list? Pretty eclectic sometimes... My youngest, age 11, actually is interested in opera because of the music memory program at school. My Greek grandfather and his son/my uncle were opera buffs, so I believe it may be in the blood. On the advice of JBuller, classicist and dean somewhere down in Florida, I bought an opera's greatest hits for my son, and I find I'm enjoying it.

So anyway, back to Latin. Here's what I wrote this a.m.:

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>Unfortunately, as long as the College Board expects students to
>"translate as literally as possible," we are at cross purposes. And,
>as long as we have administrators who expect passing scores on the AP
>exam, we will "translate as literally as possible," warts and all.

I don't disagree with this--how could I? But it doesn't mean that during class translation is the only tool we use.

It doesn't mean that we hunt the verb, it doesn't mean that every day we say "get out your translations", it doesn't mean that. AP only controls us if we let it. We can teach our students to be good readers of Latin AND high performers on AP tests at the same time. I'm sure of it.

My AP student that I inherited is used to working off of photocopies, of writing the meaning of every single word above the Latin, of taking the Latin apart. Because I can't work with him every day in my 3-way split class, this is a hard habit for me to break. But I encourage him that what he SHOULD be writing/drawing if he does anything, is phrasing marks and arches, and if necessary, write vocab in the margins.

In an ideal world I would have recordings of the passage for him to listen to (or I would just be there) and every single day I would read from the beginning of Baucis and Philemon, the story he's working on, so every day he would see it all together, as a passage, as a reading, as a story, as a piece of art--and not the word for word glossing.

My niece took two AP classes from the marvelous Mrs Jo Green here in Austin.
(My niece was the incredibly brainy type who skipped whole grades and graduated early--early, and with two AP classes....) ANYWAY... I remember asking her one day about a certain Catullus poem, and she immediately spouted it off IN ENGLISH.

That was when it first struck me. When even the brightest of our students study their ENGLISH translations so that they can regurgitate their English on the tests, we are doing something wrong.

For the last two years I taught the sea serpent scene in Vergil to my 8th graders. Every day I was reading all or portions of it in Latin to them, very dramatically (demonstrating what good stuff it was) and I was probably very close to having it all memorized because I was reading it so often!

I can still hear in my head....
parva duorum
corpora natorum serpens amplexus uterque implicat

AND BECAUSE I KNOW MY MORPHOLOGY and actively use it when I read, forcing myself to metaphrase if I begin to get lost, I can translate that accurately.

When I work with my AP student, I am working on teaching him phrasing, teaching him how to pay closer attention to the morphology, and thus how to create meaning more easily and accurately so that when he DOES have to do some sort of translation, he can.

Instead of "write out a translation of the next 20 lines" we should be teaching them--especially by modelling--to read through those lines, ALL THE WAY THROUGH, two or three times if necessary to get a feel for the phrasing, and to let certain things jump out at us--whether it's a participle or some sort of nominative or something like parva duorum corpora natorum, or that the verb is 1st person singular or suddenly jumped to present tense OR WHATEVER. Maybe mark the phrases, form the connections, then look up vocab if needed, etc. AND IN THE END, READ THE WHOLE DARN THING AGAIN. And read it all over again the next morning before class. And you know what? That would probably take less time than writing a translation, and give them a FEEL for learning how to READ REAL LATIN, instead of just quickly jigsawing together another bunch of Latin words.

My apologies for going on for so long. I guess I just feel that some of us are so lucky to have gifted students, truly gifted students who long to learn how to do things right, who look around at their colleagues in Spanish and French who are reading whole stories, and want to know why they can't do that too.

We need to teach the reading skills. The more we focus on that, the better their written translations will be. English teachers know this. How do you improve vocabulary and writing? GET STUDENTS TO READ MORE!! But we aren't doing this in Latin, are we???

Well, I have to go to school now to face 300 benchmark essays from my English classes. I felt I had to do something for Latin first.

***
And off I go to Dripping Springs. I've been listening to a recording of Wuthering Heights in the car (by Patricia Rutledge) and it is sooooo incredibly well done that I can hardly wait to get back to it.

Wish me luck with the English; it keeps me from Latin so the faster I face it and get over this mountain, the sooner I can get back to Latin.

translating, or not...yet again

More on this thread from Latinteach....

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> Let's be honest: I teach high school Latin. I am not going to get to
>teach the authentic authors until students reach Latin III and IV, if at
>all, because my predecessor used the Cambridge text series. I worked hard
>to remove that text series from my new district, and I am now happily
>teaching LFA again.

I can respect you wanting to use LFA, but what a bizarre comment about
Cambridge. With my 8th graders--mind you, still Latin 1--I read Vergil,
real Vergil, the sea serpent scene. If reading *real* Latin is truly your
goal, you can find things that students can read early enough.


> I am still remediating--my upper level students who used Cambridge know
>little or no grammar, which appalls me, and I have students continually
>remarking "So that's how the verbs work!"

Why blame Cambridge and not the previous teacher? My students can conjugate
a verb, identify tenses correctly as well as noun endings. I use Cambridge.
The difference: *I* teach the students; my textbook is my tool. That's all.

>working with the Latin language. Are they ever going to speak it? No.
Are
>they ever going to use it? Yes--every day, in myriad ways.

Wonderful. We all know the benefits of Latin. But are you creating a
lifelong learner, who will want to read real Latin on his or her own? Is it
ok for us to dismiss this as unimportant? Is it ok that advanced students
still never develop a feel for READING the language, but can only parse it,
decode it, tear it apart only to reform it in English? Is improved
vocabulary and English grammar skills enough? If it is, well then, ok.
Some of us want more because as students we wanted more and never got it.

>
>
>who enjoys translating Latin
>who enjoys teaching Latin

No one doubts this nor is criticizing this. My 3rd year students had a
teacher for the past two years that had them learning all their charts,
declining all their nouns, conjugating all their verbs, doing each chapter
as it came in Ecce, etc. And even though I can hardly give the 3's enough
of my time, I had a parent contact me the other day to say her son had
learned more with me in two 6 weeks than he had learned with the previous
teacher in two years. Why? Not because I'm making them memorize more charts
or write out better translations. I'm teaching them how to THINK about
Latin, how to understand the Roman "head"--the formation of the sentence,
the phrasing and the flow, why participles work as they do, what's brilliant
about them--not just memorize, regurgitate, and put it back together in
English. Somehow.

Our discussions of reading and oral Latin aren't trying to be critical, but
to demonstrate there are other approaches, approaches that help develop a
students ability to conquer more than just 20 lines of Latin at a go. If
only I had been shown some of these things as an undergraduate... I think
that all the time--when I was young and had the time to learn and understand
more. We are just discussing these other approaches and the successes we've
had with them.

***
Now, I'm not trying to criticize this teacher, who feels very passionately about what she does and loves what she does. Grammar and translation. The old standby's.

Frankly, I feel sorry for the teachers who do NOT want more from Latin. How did they NOT want more themselves when they were learning it?

And I feel sorry for the people that hide in Latin for fear of actually having to use a foreign language to converse! Latin isn't a place to hide from language failings. And I confess I'm really bothered by people who say they took Latin so that they didn't have to speak outloud. Get over it. You never grow as a person or a scholar if you don't stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. You can make excuses; I think you should make an effort.

Oral Latin isn't so hot? Do you practice ever at home? Why? No time? Don't want to? Don't think it matters? Geez...those are the excuses we get from our students. Paaathheeeetiiiiic.

You teach Latin--do you ever READ any at home? You know, for pleasure? Why? Is it just a job to you? Or does Latin INSPIRE you? Does it BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO you? If it doesn't, then don't gripe out the rest of us being so totally fired up about new teaching practices, new ideas, better ways to teach Latin as a whole language, one that meets the needs of a wide variety of learners, taught in a way that inables a larger number of students to succeed, with morphology consciously reinforced in context.

Me, I canNOT imagine getting any pleasure out of sitting at home, on my own, writing out TRANSLATIONS of Latin. Unless there were something CREATIVE about it.

That is, I'm currently working on a double dactyl translation of a Martial epigram. I haven't gotten very far; I'm usually too tired to be creative when I'm working on it. But let me give you an idea of what I mean from this old translation I did a few years back:

Pontilianus

Higgledy Piggledy
Pontilianus, ac-
quaintance of Martial and
Rather a pest;
"Send me your book!" M said
epigrammatic'ly
"Risk reciprocity?
Surely you jest!"

Now THAT is a translation. A fun one, a good one, an effective one. Translation is an artform, not the stercus our students produce. No offense.

Boy, I am on a rant.

I didn't mean to rant. But for some reason this reminds me of when, a few years ago, colleagues told me that my problem with my classes (with the quality of students) was that I didn't have my counselors trained right. You know, to weed out the kids who weren't honor students.

What utter crapola. By all means, let's only have students that could learn on their own with a good book.

You know what? I think I'd rather have the kids that others haven't been able to teach anything to. I want the challenge to see if my methods work, because I believe--I truly believe--that the only way to build strong Latin programs is to teach the Latin 1 class in a way that you feel that the rest of the program depends on ALL OF THEM being able to move forward. And you teach Latin 2 the same way. And you watch for the pitfalls and find ways to keep them from falling. You constantly teaching them how to put it all together.

What you do NOT do is tell them to memorize all the forms and the ones who can manage that should be able to put it all together, and if you can't do that, get out of Latin.

JN of Davidson said in another note that she sees far too many students who only know "get out your translation and let's correct it"--yes, let's focus on the English. But she's right; that's the mentality. And it's one that should stop.

And I should stop. Can anyone tell how tired I am?????

If I've offended you by this rant, my apologies. But if so, is it truly because you think I'm wrong, or is there any suspicion of doubt in your mind, in the farthest recesses of your soul that I might be right?