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The following was a rather lengthy reply to a discussion on the Latinteach list about teaching reading theory and using TPRS in the Latin classroom.
>>>Ginny L, you especially -
what
is being done to preserve and carry on this pedagogy (that the other
languages have employed for quite some time, I might add)?
***
Me especially, eh? Me... because I'm always bold enough to speak out about something that may well be unpopular with others... (as I ponder whether I've spoken out one too many times lately and whether I might be fired)...
ahem
Here is the big picture where we as a profession need to think outside of the box. With the exception of a few programs with MAT's (like UGA and UMass), most future teachers are going through certification in Latin on their own or maybe with one other person in the program. How many were in your methods class? It was just myself and another guy when I was working on mine. It hasn't changed much.
Consider how as secondary teachers we have to watch our programs like hawks (see a recent plea for help on this list) because of small enrollment. Can you imagine how you argue for a class for one or two people? My understanding is that the professors are not compensated for one or two students well, and yet we all know that a class of two can take as much prep as a class of 50, if done well. These same professors are expected to keep up their research and publishing, and sadly pedagogy is not what academia is looking for in regards to publishing for the most part. They jump through hoops just like we do and we need to respect that fact and find a way to work with it.
Time is a factor for professors, and also a frustration with the idea that what they do is sometimes at odds with what we do. For instance, courses in any given classics department are, in the target language, usually about a specific author--Vergil, Cicero, Plautus, Catullus, etc. Their goal is to read X number of lines, have some essays and a few tests. Very few professors are in on the ground level of language acquisition; they are dealing with students who have the basics.
We are dealing with the basics and we lately we are opening our minds to better ways of dealing with the basics. We are reconsidering our goals: is it to make students who can write better English and know the difference between whom and who, or is it to create students who can read as opposed to decode a given passage of Latin? Is chanting declensions and conjugations as the Latin teacher does at the beginning of Dead Poets Society what we want from our students? I have had parents who could chant amo, amas, amat but heaven forbid I put a passage of Latin in front of him.
So here we are totally reevaluating how we approach language acquisition because we are TIRED of OUR OWN COMPLAINTS that students don't retain vocabulary well or moan every time they see a passage of continuous Latin. We are exploring TPRS and Krashen and Rassias, we are looking at different textbooks with even more textbooks under development. And many of us are saying to ourselves that if we had just had this information SOONER--if we could just insure that the next group of future teachers is armed with it--life would be better.
But where do we fit it in the tight undergraduate schedule? Is it a course or should it be something incorporated from the very beginning of your undergraduate career?
I have been arguing on the classics list and sometimes at my blog site that we can relieve some of the pressure on the professors to meet the needs of future teachers by offering set authors (Vergil, Catullus, Ovid, Cicero, Horace--which they can't necessarily do because their institutions require variety) by instituting a reading lab 101 and an oral Latin/pronunciation lab 101. Ok, they could be combined.
Here is what I have in mind and what I will keep advocating for until something better comes along. This new 1 hour a week lab will be required for all incoming Latin students with high school Latin under their belts and all student in beginning Latin (at least by the 2nd semester). One of the main textbooks will be Dexter Hoyos's _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ which explicitly explains how one can retrain the brain to go from left to right, how to do what must have come naturally centuries ago. For practice, Oerberg's _Lingua Latina_ will be reader. This text, if you have not seen it, has nothing but Latin and pictures. Repetition and contrast reinforce vocabulary and grammar. The main benefit will be to ensure that EVERYONE has significant practice 1) reading from left to right, 2) reading PAGES if not CHAPTERS of Latin at a go, 3) reading WITHOUT EVER resorting to the glossary or a grammar. This same text could be used to practice pronunciation and fluent reading. It is absolutely criminal that we have new teachers who have NEVER ONCE had a teacher explain the rules for pronunciation. Admittedly this is something I wish CLC had--an appendix with pronunciation rules. The new CDs that come with the text have terribly inconsistent pronunciation and are, I feel, very disappointing and not worth using.
But what are the benefits of such a course? 1) students are exposed to tools that should make the rest of their undergraduate career reading authors considerably easier and thus providing more time for thoughtful contemplation of content instead of grammar; 2) students would become far more comfortable with speaking Latin, questioning in Latin, and talking about a text in Latin; and 3) students are exposed to tools that would allow them to read authors that they will need to know for secondary teaching (Vergil, Cicero, et al.) outside of classtime. Yes, OUTSIDE of classtime. My proposal would also include that departments track future teachers more closely and suggest which authors they should be reading outside of class that would complement the class the student is enrolled in. For instance, if taking Propertius, why not have future teachers read a little Ovid and Catullus outside of class and include those authors in any paper required for the class?
Why is it that Latin majors rarely read anything other than what was assigned in class? I can honestly say for me it was because I could only decode and not read, and hadn't an inkling that I could just read extensively in another author without feeling the need to grab a dictionary or grammar to make sure I knew the meaning of every single little word. I had little faith that I could do so with ease and thus was scared to do it. No one ever suggested reading some easier authors. No one ever suggested anything. I just assumed that I wasn't as bright as those who would eventually go to grad school. What a joke. I just didn't have the tools. I just needed Dexter's book.
I also think departments should be made aware of the various conferences offered around the nation. If they cannot provide the complete educational experience we would like--TPRS, Krashen and all others included--then by all means these departments should consider helping future teachers and grad students get to such conferences. If there is no one in the department that is "qualified" (?!) to teach such a reading/pronunciation 101 lab as I have described, then train them up by sending them to such a conference. I have been promoting the Cambridge conference in Atlanta to UGA just this year because I know most universities do NOT prepare future teachers for teaching from a reading based text, and they should one way or another.
My point in all this is that we can't just say, COLLEGES, TEACH THE NEW STUFF. TEACH THE AP AUTHORS. Likewise, colleges shouldn't just say back, SECONDARY, WHAT WE'VE DONE ALL ALONG IS GOOD ENOUGH. WE DON'T HAVE TIME, RESOURCES, OR MANPOWER FOR MORE. We need to find a middle ground, something doable, something that will benefit both camps in the long run. Right now I think my 101 lab idea sounds the most reasonable and the most general with the potential for fantastic results for both future teachers as well as just undergraduates and graduates studying Latin who perhaps have no interest in teaching but want to master the language. Could TPRS be worked into the pronunciation lab? Of course. But we don't have people trained to do that yet in most classics departments, do we?
Here's what must NOT happen. We must not get complacent. We must not get discouraged. Even though we see no changes happening yet that we might like to happen, we should keep discussing these ideas here in cyberspace, in print and at conferences--and also with our students.
Consider National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week--NEXT WEEK. Would you like to see future teachers trained in these new methods? Then tell YOUR STUDENTS what your dream is. One or two will be listening. Even when you might have some real whiners in the class, consider that there may well be one or two who hang on your every word whether you know it or not.
If you build it, they will come.
>>>Ginny L, you especially -
what
is being done to preserve and carry on this pedagogy (that the other
languages have employed for quite some time, I might add)?
***
Me especially, eh? Me... because I'm always bold enough to speak out about something that may well be unpopular with others... (as I ponder whether I've spoken out one too many times lately and whether I might be fired)...
ahem
Here is the big picture where we as a profession need to think outside of the box. With the exception of a few programs with MAT's (like UGA and UMass), most future teachers are going through certification in Latin on their own or maybe with one other person in the program. How many were in your methods class? It was just myself and another guy when I was working on mine. It hasn't changed much.
Consider how as secondary teachers we have to watch our programs like hawks (see a recent plea for help on this list) because of small enrollment. Can you imagine how you argue for a class for one or two people? My understanding is that the professors are not compensated for one or two students well, and yet we all know that a class of two can take as much prep as a class of 50, if done well. These same professors are expected to keep up their research and publishing, and sadly pedagogy is not what academia is looking for in regards to publishing for the most part. They jump through hoops just like we do and we need to respect that fact and find a way to work with it.
Time is a factor for professors, and also a frustration with the idea that what they do is sometimes at odds with what we do. For instance, courses in any given classics department are, in the target language, usually about a specific author--Vergil, Cicero, Plautus, Catullus, etc. Their goal is to read X number of lines, have some essays and a few tests. Very few professors are in on the ground level of language acquisition; they are dealing with students who have the basics.
We are dealing with the basics and we lately we are opening our minds to better ways of dealing with the basics. We are reconsidering our goals: is it to make students who can write better English and know the difference between whom and who, or is it to create students who can read as opposed to decode a given passage of Latin? Is chanting declensions and conjugations as the Latin teacher does at the beginning of Dead Poets Society what we want from our students? I have had parents who could chant amo, amas, amat but heaven forbid I put a passage of Latin in front of him.
So here we are totally reevaluating how we approach language acquisition because we are TIRED of OUR OWN COMPLAINTS that students don't retain vocabulary well or moan every time they see a passage of continuous Latin. We are exploring TPRS and Krashen and Rassias, we are looking at different textbooks with even more textbooks under development. And many of us are saying to ourselves that if we had just had this information SOONER--if we could just insure that the next group of future teachers is armed with it--life would be better.
But where do we fit it in the tight undergraduate schedule? Is it a course or should it be something incorporated from the very beginning of your undergraduate career?
I have been arguing on the classics list and sometimes at my blog site that we can relieve some of the pressure on the professors to meet the needs of future teachers by offering set authors (Vergil, Catullus, Ovid, Cicero, Horace--which they can't necessarily do because their institutions require variety) by instituting a reading lab 101 and an oral Latin/pronunciation lab 101. Ok, they could be combined.
Here is what I have in mind and what I will keep advocating for until something better comes along. This new 1 hour a week lab will be required for all incoming Latin students with high school Latin under their belts and all student in beginning Latin (at least by the 2nd semester). One of the main textbooks will be Dexter Hoyos's _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ which explicitly explains how one can retrain the brain to go from left to right, how to do what must have come naturally centuries ago. For practice, Oerberg's _Lingua Latina_ will be reader. This text, if you have not seen it, has nothing but Latin and pictures. Repetition and contrast reinforce vocabulary and grammar. The main benefit will be to ensure that EVERYONE has significant practice 1) reading from left to right, 2) reading PAGES if not CHAPTERS of Latin at a go, 3) reading WITHOUT EVER resorting to the glossary or a grammar. This same text could be used to practice pronunciation and fluent reading. It is absolutely criminal that we have new teachers who have NEVER ONCE had a teacher explain the rules for pronunciation. Admittedly this is something I wish CLC had--an appendix with pronunciation rules. The new CDs that come with the text have terribly inconsistent pronunciation and are, I feel, very disappointing and not worth using.
But what are the benefits of such a course? 1) students are exposed to tools that should make the rest of their undergraduate career reading authors considerably easier and thus providing more time for thoughtful contemplation of content instead of grammar; 2) students would become far more comfortable with speaking Latin, questioning in Latin, and talking about a text in Latin; and 3) students are exposed to tools that would allow them to read authors that they will need to know for secondary teaching (Vergil, Cicero, et al.) outside of classtime. Yes, OUTSIDE of classtime. My proposal would also include that departments track future teachers more closely and suggest which authors they should be reading outside of class that would complement the class the student is enrolled in. For instance, if taking Propertius, why not have future teachers read a little Ovid and Catullus outside of class and include those authors in any paper required for the class?
Why is it that Latin majors rarely read anything other than what was assigned in class? I can honestly say for me it was because I could only decode and not read, and hadn't an inkling that I could just read extensively in another author without feeling the need to grab a dictionary or grammar to make sure I knew the meaning of every single little word. I had little faith that I could do so with ease and thus was scared to do it. No one ever suggested reading some easier authors. No one ever suggested anything. I just assumed that I wasn't as bright as those who would eventually go to grad school. What a joke. I just didn't have the tools. I just needed Dexter's book.
I also think departments should be made aware of the various conferences offered around the nation. If they cannot provide the complete educational experience we would like--TPRS, Krashen and all others included--then by all means these departments should consider helping future teachers and grad students get to such conferences. If there is no one in the department that is "qualified" (?!) to teach such a reading/pronunciation 101 lab as I have described, then train them up by sending them to such a conference. I have been promoting the Cambridge conference in Atlanta to UGA just this year because I know most universities do NOT prepare future teachers for teaching from a reading based text, and they should one way or another.
My point in all this is that we can't just say, COLLEGES, TEACH THE NEW STUFF. TEACH THE AP AUTHORS. Likewise, colleges shouldn't just say back, SECONDARY, WHAT WE'VE DONE ALL ALONG IS GOOD ENOUGH. WE DON'T HAVE TIME, RESOURCES, OR MANPOWER FOR MORE. We need to find a middle ground, something doable, something that will benefit both camps in the long run. Right now I think my 101 lab idea sounds the most reasonable and the most general with the potential for fantastic results for both future teachers as well as just undergraduates and graduates studying Latin who perhaps have no interest in teaching but want to master the language. Could TPRS be worked into the pronunciation lab? Of course. But we don't have people trained to do that yet in most classics departments, do we?
Here's what must NOT happen. We must not get complacent. We must not get discouraged. Even though we see no changes happening yet that we might like to happen, we should keep discussing these ideas here in cyberspace, in print and at conferences--and also with our students.
Consider National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week--NEXT WEEK. Would you like to see future teachers trained in these new methods? Then tell YOUR STUDENTS what your dream is. One or two will be listening. Even when you might have some real whiners in the class, consider that there may well be one or two who hang on your every word whether you know it or not.
If you build it, they will come.
