![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The first part of the following is from a conversation/email I was having with one of my very first students from 1988. The email came from out of the blue, and we ended up in a discussion about reading Latin. Her words will have > in front of them, mine will be the rest (as I'm sure you can tell). She said:
>It's just that I don't get people who simply can't
>remember endings.
Some people don't have much in the way of phonological awareness. My students, for instance. If they have never learned/mastered how to sound out a word in English, they are totally lost. They wait until they've seen the word/heard it so many times that they have immediate recognition. But to sound out a word they've never heard (in ENGLISH as well as in Latin) is beyond them--and it terrifies them. They won't do it. They try to get away with not saying it, but I usually force the issue.
Now here's what happens. If they can't sound out words, they can't think in syllables. If they can't see syllables, they can't see the morphology. I teach a lot of "rigorous reading" techniques and even give extra credit for such things as circling tense indicators and personal endings, but--as the set of papers I was just grading demonstrated--I can talk about the tense indicators, we can do examples, etc, but if they have to see it for themselves on their own, most of the time they can't or won't. They think it's too much effort and assume guessing will be good enough to get by, and that's all they want to do (get by).
So part of it is mastering the endings, but more of it is even noticing that they are there or perhaps having the ABILITY to notice they are there.
>That's interesting that you call hunting for the word
>and reading them out of order "decoding." That makes
>sense I suppose, but I wonder if, cognitively, the
>brain cares or not whether you read the end/middle of
>the sentence first or not, as a procedure.
YES! OH YES!!! OH YES IT DOES!
When I quit teaching you guys way back when, part of it was because I felt I was doing something wrong. Really wrong. Everything seemed fine on the surface, but it wasn't. And I couldn't figure out what. When I read an article about sight-reading vs decoding by Dexter Hoyos, I figured out what was wrong.
You want to read something good on reading Latin, get his book, _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ from here: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~glawall/cane.htm (look toward the bottom of that page).
How will you ever read at a normal speed if you are forever looking for the main verb 10 lines down in Caesar's sentences?
How about this--find the main verb:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.
52 words long. Main verbs are 41-42 and 44.
Did you hunt for those main verbs, or did you read it in word order? (And did you recognize the preamble to our constitution?)
Does
>reading and comprehension require reading in the right
>direction? Do you truly get a more genuine
>understanding of the meaning by being able to read in
>the direction the Romans wrote? If so, why?
How many articles do you want on the subject??? :) Where to begin, where to begin...
>What if one were REALLY GOOD at reading the verbs
>first and putting the sentence all together in the
>wrong order? (Granted, he/she wouldn't be able to read
>aloud in any sort of way that would be good for other
>Latinists.)
A periodic Latin sentence has everything in the order of the narration in prose (for the most part). This is one reason why the glorious ablative absolute comes first because its action has already happened.
But here, take these lines from Vergil which I'm going to try to recall--
post ipsum auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem
corripiunt spirisque ligant ingentibus.... (I think that's right...)
Here's what's happening. The ipsum is referring to Laocoon, the dude that said, "I fear Greeks bearing gifts" while pointing at the wooden horse. Post is referring to what has just happened in the previous sentence, which is that his little boys were just attacked by twin sea serpents (for his blasphemy about the Trojan Horse). It happened so fast he could hardly do anything. The previous line had the snakes gobbling them down in seemingly one bite right at the end. Think poor little mousy being constricted by a ball python.
So here he is, IPSUM auxilio subeuntem--he himself going up with help--ac tela ferentem--and bringing weapons--CORRIPIUNT--THEY (the twin snakes) SNATCH. That is, even in Vergil we've got coming first the things that are happening as time unfolds--the direct object (Laocoon) who is desperately trying to run up and save his kids but WHILE he's doing that (those present tense participles) the snakes get him too and bind him (LIGANT) with their huge coils.
You think these lines would hit the brain in just the same way if you picked around? IMPOSSIBLE! The density of Latin is just amazing to me--so much packed into so few words. I LOVE THIS STUFF!!!
My 8th graders are attempting (attempting is the crucial word) to write a film scenario over the 20 lines of this scene. Lots of help from me (dragging them through it). But this stuff is DYNAMITE SCIFI!!! It truly is and Vergil wrote it just as well if not better than any screenwriter could have done. My GOSH this is damned good stuff in EXACTLY the word order it was written--especially for the poetic effects. Take it out of word order? WHY BOTHER TO READ IT IN LATIN THEN? Pick up a translation!
***
That's where I left my email conversation with my former student, and that's how I really feel about it. Some of the Vergil stuff has been discouraging with my students but if nothing else each day I find I love this stuff more and more and find Vergil more impressive than the previous day. Each day I am more and more convinced that we do our students a serious disservice if we don't teach reading skills--reading from left to right--as well as accurate pronunciation so we can read OUTLOUD. It's criminal, really, but so many teachers figure their students will never get to real authors that they decide it's unimportant. Or that's the excuse they use, or that they don't have time for it, or that no one else does it, or they don't know pronunciation.
If they don't know how to pronounce Latin, WHY THE HECK NOT? Can't they open their Latin dictionaries and read the pronunciation rules? Can't they PRACTICE THEM religiously? Or is that too much work? And if it IS too much work, then WHAT RIGHT do they have to complain when their own students balk at assignments and decide it's too much work? They don't. Shabby teaching gets shabby results. Well, good teaching sometimes gets that too. ha.
Program closing? Well, what have you done to make your program rich and exciting and vibrant? Latin isn't like codliver oil. You can't just take it because it's good for you. And if you are teaching Latin because of the word building/power and aids for English grammar, get out of teaching Latin. This is mean and this is probably something I'll regret and erase later but, really, get out of teaching Latin. You don't understand what you're supposed to be doing. IT'S A LANGUAGE! A language for speaking and reading and even writing. It's not about damned SAT and GRE scores.
Teach it to read, teach it to read it outloud and to be amazed--BLOODY WELL AMAZED--at the power in Vergil's words or the depth of Catullus's AND CONVEY THAT TO STUDENTS or just leave the profession. Because if you're just a word power teacher in disguise as a Latin teacher and looking around you and wondering why your program is shrinking, it's because you're not teaching it LIKE A LANGUAGE.
And I think I better stop there. That's quite enough passion for one night.
>It's just that I don't get people who simply can't
>remember endings.
Some people don't have much in the way of phonological awareness. My students, for instance. If they have never learned/mastered how to sound out a word in English, they are totally lost. They wait until they've seen the word/heard it so many times that they have immediate recognition. But to sound out a word they've never heard (in ENGLISH as well as in Latin) is beyond them--and it terrifies them. They won't do it. They try to get away with not saying it, but I usually force the issue.
Now here's what happens. If they can't sound out words, they can't think in syllables. If they can't see syllables, they can't see the morphology. I teach a lot of "rigorous reading" techniques and even give extra credit for such things as circling tense indicators and personal endings, but--as the set of papers I was just grading demonstrated--I can talk about the tense indicators, we can do examples, etc, but if they have to see it for themselves on their own, most of the time they can't or won't. They think it's too much effort and assume guessing will be good enough to get by, and that's all they want to do (get by).
So part of it is mastering the endings, but more of it is even noticing that they are there or perhaps having the ABILITY to notice they are there.
>That's interesting that you call hunting for the word
>and reading them out of order "decoding." That makes
>sense I suppose, but I wonder if, cognitively, the
>brain cares or not whether you read the end/middle of
>the sentence first or not, as a procedure.
YES! OH YES!!! OH YES IT DOES!
When I quit teaching you guys way back when, part of it was because I felt I was doing something wrong. Really wrong. Everything seemed fine on the surface, but it wasn't. And I couldn't figure out what. When I read an article about sight-reading vs decoding by Dexter Hoyos, I figured out what was wrong.
You want to read something good on reading Latin, get his book, _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ from here: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~glawall/cane.htm (look toward the bottom of that page).
How will you ever read at a normal speed if you are forever looking for the main verb 10 lines down in Caesar's sentences?
How about this--find the main verb:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.
52 words long. Main verbs are 41-42 and 44.
Did you hunt for those main verbs, or did you read it in word order? (And did you recognize the preamble to our constitution?)
Does
>reading and comprehension require reading in the right
>direction? Do you truly get a more genuine
>understanding of the meaning by being able to read in
>the direction the Romans wrote? If so, why?
How many articles do you want on the subject??? :) Where to begin, where to begin...
>What if one were REALLY GOOD at reading the verbs
>first and putting the sentence all together in the
>wrong order? (Granted, he/she wouldn't be able to read
>aloud in any sort of way that would be good for other
>Latinists.)
A periodic Latin sentence has everything in the order of the narration in prose (for the most part). This is one reason why the glorious ablative absolute comes first because its action has already happened.
But here, take these lines from Vergil which I'm going to try to recall--
post ipsum auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem
corripiunt spirisque ligant ingentibus.... (I think that's right...)
Here's what's happening. The ipsum is referring to Laocoon, the dude that said, "I fear Greeks bearing gifts" while pointing at the wooden horse. Post is referring to what has just happened in the previous sentence, which is that his little boys were just attacked by twin sea serpents (for his blasphemy about the Trojan Horse). It happened so fast he could hardly do anything. The previous line had the snakes gobbling them down in seemingly one bite right at the end. Think poor little mousy being constricted by a ball python.
So here he is, IPSUM auxilio subeuntem--he himself going up with help--ac tela ferentem--and bringing weapons--CORRIPIUNT--THEY (the twin snakes) SNATCH. That is, even in Vergil we've got coming first the things that are happening as time unfolds--the direct object (Laocoon) who is desperately trying to run up and save his kids but WHILE he's doing that (those present tense participles) the snakes get him too and bind him (LIGANT) with their huge coils.
You think these lines would hit the brain in just the same way if you picked around? IMPOSSIBLE! The density of Latin is just amazing to me--so much packed into so few words. I LOVE THIS STUFF!!!
My 8th graders are attempting (attempting is the crucial word) to write a film scenario over the 20 lines of this scene. Lots of help from me (dragging them through it). But this stuff is DYNAMITE SCIFI!!! It truly is and Vergil wrote it just as well if not better than any screenwriter could have done. My GOSH this is damned good stuff in EXACTLY the word order it was written--especially for the poetic effects. Take it out of word order? WHY BOTHER TO READ IT IN LATIN THEN? Pick up a translation!
***
That's where I left my email conversation with my former student, and that's how I really feel about it. Some of the Vergil stuff has been discouraging with my students but if nothing else each day I find I love this stuff more and more and find Vergil more impressive than the previous day. Each day I am more and more convinced that we do our students a serious disservice if we don't teach reading skills--reading from left to right--as well as accurate pronunciation so we can read OUTLOUD. It's criminal, really, but so many teachers figure their students will never get to real authors that they decide it's unimportant. Or that's the excuse they use, or that they don't have time for it, or that no one else does it, or they don't know pronunciation.
If they don't know how to pronounce Latin, WHY THE HECK NOT? Can't they open their Latin dictionaries and read the pronunciation rules? Can't they PRACTICE THEM religiously? Or is that too much work? And if it IS too much work, then WHAT RIGHT do they have to complain when their own students balk at assignments and decide it's too much work? They don't. Shabby teaching gets shabby results. Well, good teaching sometimes gets that too. ha.
Program closing? Well, what have you done to make your program rich and exciting and vibrant? Latin isn't like codliver oil. You can't just take it because it's good for you. And if you are teaching Latin because of the word building/power and aids for English grammar, get out of teaching Latin. This is mean and this is probably something I'll regret and erase later but, really, get out of teaching Latin. You don't understand what you're supposed to be doing. IT'S A LANGUAGE! A language for speaking and reading and even writing. It's not about damned SAT and GRE scores.
Teach it to read, teach it to read it outloud and to be amazed--BLOODY WELL AMAZED--at the power in Vergil's words or the depth of Catullus's AND CONVEY THAT TO STUDENTS or just leave the profession. Because if you're just a word power teacher in disguise as a Latin teacher and looking around you and wondering why your program is shrinking, it's because you're not teaching it LIKE A LANGUAGE.
And I think I better stop there. That's quite enough passion for one night.
Tags:
