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I had another rant on Latinteach. I'll probably tick someone off but I felt the need to spout off, I guess. I suppose while I do agree that you can teach Latin grammar-trans method as well or as poorly as you can teaching from a reading based text (that is, you can use those equally poorly or well too), I feel that the teacher was complaining about the leap to reading real Latin without realizing anything about the problems of leaping to real Latin. She doesn't, not because she is a bad teacher but because so many teachers really don't understand all that it takes to read with fluency because they don't read with fluency either. She admitted that she doesn't read for enjoyment, so how could her students? Right. What she doesn't admit to--which I admitted to myself long ago--was that shouldn't be ok. It's not ok that we are never taught HOW to really READ Latin. It is not ok. SAY IT WITH ME: IT'S NOT OK!
Anyway, let me just paste here what I posted on Latinteach:
***
>>After all, if I myself don't read this stuff with pleasure, how can I expect
>>my students to do so eventually?
And this is my beef with the current way universities teach Latin. Not all, but most. But rumor has it you can certainly learn to read, REALLY READ Latin, out at Davidson College in NC where Jeanne Newman teaches. Yes, and she has students IN OTHER DISCIPLINES who read Latin for pleasure, because reading EXTENSIVELY is one of their goals. This should be the goal in every university classics department so that they enable their own students to read what they cannot cover. For instance, when smaller departments are restricted in their offerings future teachers often don't get the courses/authors they need to be ready to teach AP Latin. Solution? In great measure, to require a reading lab freshman year so that students will feel confident enough in venturing into unfamiliar Latin without a teacher or syllabus for handholding or guidance. I never had any Catullus that I recall, but thought I'd read some the other night. Wouldn't let myself look up any words that weren't glossed on the facing page, and even then I made myself practice the prereading techniques I teach my students. I might add that I enjoyed the passage I read immensely and found myself rewriting parts of it for some haiku, thus getting myself to think in the language and use the language.
Now why aren't we ever taught to do that? Well, not at most universities. I know Jeanne has students rewrite passage in simpler Latin on tests among other things. I am personally just trying to fix new vocabulary in my head by writing or reshaping the lines to fit a haiku. Or a double dactyl. Whatever.
>>There are lots of folks out there whom I
>> respect as teachers: some use reading approaches - others, grammar
>>translation. From what I can tell, reading approach takes longer to arrive
>>at real literature. On the way, one can keep a broader ability range of
>>student for a longer time, because one takes longer. With grammar
>> translation, on the other hand, one spends less time reading junk Latin, and
>>gets to the good stuff faster. Since not everybody is going to be able to
>>read real Latin - at least not Vergil vel sim.
OH? Why not? Sorry, I'm reading some Vergil with my 8th graders right now who have only just finished stage 15 of CLC. Book 2--Sea Serpents attacking Laocoon. Do I expect them to get every little detail and nuance? No. I'm using the Legamus Vergil reader and it has enough notes to help with most of what they don't know already. I've been warning them about participles for a while and ablatives, so that won't be too hard. We're seeing lots of neuter plurals, which the new edition of CLC introduces sooner anyway. Vocabulary from stage 15--sacerdos, litus, unda, etc--come up in this passage. We're going to write a film scenario and essays. And, yes, I'll be behind in the CLC text but I think reading real Latin early on is important. I read it outloud, we act it out, we say it together, memorize some lines, and ENJOY IT. This is dramatic, exciting ancient sci-fi at its best. WHY only serve it up for the kids that stick with Latin for more than 2 years?
I used to do real Latin poetry for JCL dramatic interps when I was in high school, even level 1, but now JCL powers that be seem to think that it's too much to ask for students to deal with REAL LATIN POETRY from the beginning. And yet, THAT'S what hooked me. That's why I fell in love with Latin. I was exposed to the concept of meter and scanning lines and funky word order and most importantly THE SOUND of Latin being read OUTLOUD, with attention to vowel quantity, ellision, the works. But some fool--sorry, but I do think the person was a damned fool--decided that little Latin 1s couldn't possibly deal with real Latin poetry.
Hogwash.
Bah Humbug too, for that matter.
Reach down inside yourself and ask yourself WHY ARE YOU TEACHING LATIN/WHAT IS TRULY YOUR PHILOSOPHY, because if at the heart of it is the desire to read real Latin, then what's stopping you?
Students can do what you expect them to and arm them to do. Let me add that my students are at a school that is over 80% on the free and reduced lunch program. My best students this year can't touch my best students of 4 years ago. Right now they are as poor as they come, with low expectations and teachers that think everything needs to be a chore, having had mandatory testing beat the creativity out of them.
>>Teaching Latin well is a
>>tough job. All of us can agree on this.
Tough? I suppose so. I think of it more as challenging. Ok, I think of it as challenging on good days, tough on other days.
As for the comment above about grammar-translation getting you to the good stuff quicker, how many students learning in that fashion say, "Great! We're reading/translating today!"?? When you are reading a larger volume of words with a good story line, you do get students that read ahead. I don't ever recall reading ahead myself when I was in high school nor do I recall any of my classmates doing that. There was never anything much to motivate us to read ahead. When reading Unit 3 of CLC last year to help former students (who are now in high school), I was constantly grunting sounds of shock and dismay when Salvius did something else that was outrageous, and it would make me at least scan the next story to see what happened next.
And just how many are sticking around for the good stuff, the real authors? Do the kids that drop after their two required years of grammar-translation ever know what they are missing?
And I'm not trying to put down grammar-translation. It has its place and can be effective especially if reading strategies are taught, both for intensive and extensive reading. And students learning via this method should have access to books with a running storyline to encourage building reading skills early on. Because frankly if you wait until they have ALL the grammar they'll need, the sentences will already be too long for them to read comfortably if you haven't been teaching reading techniques all along, such as metaphrasing or using a reading card, etc. If I were teaching from Wheelocks at college I think I'd have a reading lab to go along with the course and use Orberg's Lingua Latina as a supplemental text.
Right. Shouldn't let me loose at the computer after midnight.
My apologies if I offended, esp if one of you had something to do with dramatic interp for level 1 no longer being Latin poetry.
Anyway, let me just paste here what I posted on Latinteach:
***
>>After all, if I myself don't read this stuff with pleasure, how can I expect
>>my students to do so eventually?
And this is my beef with the current way universities teach Latin. Not all, but most. But rumor has it you can certainly learn to read, REALLY READ Latin, out at Davidson College in NC where Jeanne Newman teaches. Yes, and she has students IN OTHER DISCIPLINES who read Latin for pleasure, because reading EXTENSIVELY is one of their goals. This should be the goal in every university classics department so that they enable their own students to read what they cannot cover. For instance, when smaller departments are restricted in their offerings future teachers often don't get the courses/authors they need to be ready to teach AP Latin. Solution? In great measure, to require a reading lab freshman year so that students will feel confident enough in venturing into unfamiliar Latin without a teacher or syllabus for handholding or guidance. I never had any Catullus that I recall, but thought I'd read some the other night. Wouldn't let myself look up any words that weren't glossed on the facing page, and even then I made myself practice the prereading techniques I teach my students. I might add that I enjoyed the passage I read immensely and found myself rewriting parts of it for some haiku, thus getting myself to think in the language and use the language.
Now why aren't we ever taught to do that? Well, not at most universities. I know Jeanne has students rewrite passage in simpler Latin on tests among other things. I am personally just trying to fix new vocabulary in my head by writing or reshaping the lines to fit a haiku. Or a double dactyl. Whatever.
>>There are lots of folks out there whom I
>> respect as teachers: some use reading approaches - others, grammar
>>translation. From what I can tell, reading approach takes longer to arrive
>>at real literature. On the way, one can keep a broader ability range of
>>student for a longer time, because one takes longer. With grammar
>> translation, on the other hand, one spends less time reading junk Latin, and
>>gets to the good stuff faster. Since not everybody is going to be able to
>>read real Latin - at least not Vergil vel sim.
OH? Why not? Sorry, I'm reading some Vergil with my 8th graders right now who have only just finished stage 15 of CLC. Book 2--Sea Serpents attacking Laocoon. Do I expect them to get every little detail and nuance? No. I'm using the Legamus Vergil reader and it has enough notes to help with most of what they don't know already. I've been warning them about participles for a while and ablatives, so that won't be too hard. We're seeing lots of neuter plurals, which the new edition of CLC introduces sooner anyway. Vocabulary from stage 15--sacerdos, litus, unda, etc--come up in this passage. We're going to write a film scenario and essays. And, yes, I'll be behind in the CLC text but I think reading real Latin early on is important. I read it outloud, we act it out, we say it together, memorize some lines, and ENJOY IT. This is dramatic, exciting ancient sci-fi at its best. WHY only serve it up for the kids that stick with Latin for more than 2 years?
I used to do real Latin poetry for JCL dramatic interps when I was in high school, even level 1, but now JCL powers that be seem to think that it's too much to ask for students to deal with REAL LATIN POETRY from the beginning. And yet, THAT'S what hooked me. That's why I fell in love with Latin. I was exposed to the concept of meter and scanning lines and funky word order and most importantly THE SOUND of Latin being read OUTLOUD, with attention to vowel quantity, ellision, the works. But some fool--sorry, but I do think the person was a damned fool--decided that little Latin 1s couldn't possibly deal with real Latin poetry.
Hogwash.
Bah Humbug too, for that matter.
Reach down inside yourself and ask yourself WHY ARE YOU TEACHING LATIN/WHAT IS TRULY YOUR PHILOSOPHY, because if at the heart of it is the desire to read real Latin, then what's stopping you?
Students can do what you expect them to and arm them to do. Let me add that my students are at a school that is over 80% on the free and reduced lunch program. My best students this year can't touch my best students of 4 years ago. Right now they are as poor as they come, with low expectations and teachers that think everything needs to be a chore, having had mandatory testing beat the creativity out of them.
>>Teaching Latin well is a
>>tough job. All of us can agree on this.
Tough? I suppose so. I think of it more as challenging. Ok, I think of it as challenging on good days, tough on other days.
As for the comment above about grammar-translation getting you to the good stuff quicker, how many students learning in that fashion say, "Great! We're reading/translating today!"?? When you are reading a larger volume of words with a good story line, you do get students that read ahead. I don't ever recall reading ahead myself when I was in high school nor do I recall any of my classmates doing that. There was never anything much to motivate us to read ahead. When reading Unit 3 of CLC last year to help former students (who are now in high school), I was constantly grunting sounds of shock and dismay when Salvius did something else that was outrageous, and it would make me at least scan the next story to see what happened next.
And just how many are sticking around for the good stuff, the real authors? Do the kids that drop after their two required years of grammar-translation ever know what they are missing?
And I'm not trying to put down grammar-translation. It has its place and can be effective especially if reading strategies are taught, both for intensive and extensive reading. And students learning via this method should have access to books with a running storyline to encourage building reading skills early on. Because frankly if you wait until they have ALL the grammar they'll need, the sentences will already be too long for them to read comfortably if you haven't been teaching reading techniques all along, such as metaphrasing or using a reading card, etc. If I were teaching from Wheelocks at college I think I'd have a reading lab to go along with the course and use Orberg's Lingua Latina as a supplemental text.
Right. Shouldn't let me loose at the computer after midnight.
My apologies if I offended, esp if one of you had something to do with dramatic interp for level 1 no longer being Latin poetry.
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