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I come back to this theme from time to time, and so I visited it again this a.m. on the Ecce Romani list. Here's what I wrote:
***
I've been overwhelmed by school (and should be grading English benchmark
essays right now) and only just now noticed this note.
Reading Latin in word order INDEED can be taught and taught effectively by
using a reading card and metaphrasing.
I have written about this at my blog site. Although my examples are from
Cambridge, I use these same techniques with my Latin 2's and 3's who are
using Ecce 2 (in different places).
Here's an entry on Reading Cards:
http://ginlindzey.livejournal.com/15614.html
I've probably written more about it on the blog over the last couple of
years, but that's the first one I saw.
The point is, Romans understood Latin in the order in which it was written
and so can we. We need to break the incessant need to puzzle it out in
English word order, which does ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD when trying to read more
advanced Latin.
For instance, I have this one kid that was reading AP Ovid/Catullus at his
previous school. He continued to read Ovid with me, but didn't like the
Amores and since I didn't think his grammar was good enough to do well on
the AP test, we've blown off the rest. Instead, I've just this week stuck
him on the story in Ecce 3 on the murder of Clodius. In looking ahead I
showed him how Asconius's version had shorter sentences, but that the first
page of the Cicero version was only one sentence. HOW do you deal with
that? YOU MUST LEARN TO READ IN WORD ORDER.
But you also need to learn to read the whole sentence or passage through,
multiple times if necessary, in order to see the way words and phrases go
together, especially participles and all the stuff nested in between.
My Latin 2's are just now hitting participles in ch 33, while the 3's have
just finished ablative absolutes. I tell them how most kids hate
participles and the reason why is because they are strung out on how to
translate them into Englsh--something which VARIES according to context!
Then I tell them how much I like them, how cool and compact they are, and
how easy to read IF YOU READ THEM IN WORD ORDER.
Students want to thrust vocab meaning immediately into their translations
before they take in morphology. A reading card makes them stop and look at
just morphology. For instance, take this sentence form ch 33:
amIcO cuidam in popInA occurrI.
Most of them totally missed it the previous day when they were working
independently, even though I did make mention about occurrO taking the
dative object. So the next day for a warm-up I made them metaphrase it.
Metaphrasing uses a place-holding sentence like this: someone verbed
something to someone.
amIcO: Dative > Someone verbed something to the friend.
amIcO cuidam: Dative > Someone verbed something to a certain friend.
amIcO cuidam in popInA: prep phrase > Someone verbed something to a certain
friend in a bar.
amIcO cuidam in popInA occurrI: verb taking dat object which changes things>
I met a certain friend in a bar.
Now, in practice if we had been reading this passage together in class (this
is in a 3-way split class), I would have read the sentence a couple of times
and told them what I was noting each time. For instance, the next day (or
could have been the same day) we looked at 33b together and did the odd
sentences. This is #5:
servI A GaiO iussI frusta pullI frAtrI eius dedErunt.
I was having them copy just the participial phrase down and then we were
translating together the whole sentence. So I read it outloud once and I
think the first thing I said is, "aha, dedErunt, they gave, so there's a
dative here, we expect that, don't we? Let's read it again." And so we did
a couple more times. At some point I stopped at A GaiO and we discussed how
an abl of agent tells us to anticipate that a passive verb is coming,
something we get almost immediately with iussI. Then we wrote the
participial phrase down and translated the rest of the sentence in word
order.
We had, "The slaves, ordered by Gaius,..." so after that we *knew* frusta
had to be accusative. "The slaves, orderd by Gaius, verbed scraps." And if
we keep reading in word order there is virtually no question whatsoever as
to the case of pullI--genitive is such a natural meaning in word order.
And as for the rest, well, it was the dative and dedErunt which we had
already noted.
Reading in word order has to constantly and ACTIVELY be taught, I am
convinced, by both modeling reading and rereading sentences AS A WHOLE as
well as metaphrasing it word by word when the sentences seems trickier.
Reading and rereading are so important for vocabulary acquisition as well as
internalization of grammar. Lists of vocab words will never be enough, will
never work.
In an ideal world where split level classes did not exist, I would spend at
least 1 day a month reading something substantially easier than what
students are currently working on in order to develop that ability to read
in word order, reading paragraph after paragraph, page after page, NOT word
by word, line by line.
***
I think when teachers start debating textbooks, as they are doing right now on Latinteach, many of the diehard grammar types will talk about how colleagues at the university level will complain that students using reading based texts never seem to know their grammar.
Guess what? They are often right. Yes, they are because too many teachers using reading-based texts don't know how to reinforce grammar without resorting to drill and kill or tedious written transformation drills out of context.
WHEN you read in word order, and especially if you metaphrase from time to time and force students to consider carefully what they truly have in front of them, you do reinforce grammar. You also reinforce WORD ORDER, IDIOM, and the Roman mindset for listening, reading and writing. You aren't just doing morphology.
What you absolutely MUST avoid, ABSOLUTELY MUST AVOID, is letting students just guess the meaning from the pictures and what sounds good with the vocab.
YES, do prereading of the vocab beneath a story. With Cambridge, the word is glossed in the case it is being used--SO TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION TOO! If I see versipellem, then I know it's probably "somebody verbed the werewolf" and not the other way around.
Morphology can't be separated from words, words can't be separated from phrases, phrases can't be separated from clauses, and clauses can't be separated from sentences. Communication doesn't come in fits and bits. We don't learn vocabulary in isolation in English, and we certainly don't study grammar seriously until we are actually using those phrases and clauses in our language already. We dissect language to understand it.
Must go grade English benchmark essays....
***
I've been overwhelmed by school (and should be grading English benchmark
essays right now) and only just now noticed this note.
Reading Latin in word order INDEED can be taught and taught effectively by
using a reading card and metaphrasing.
I have written about this at my blog site. Although my examples are from
Cambridge, I use these same techniques with my Latin 2's and 3's who are
using Ecce 2 (in different places).
Here's an entry on Reading Cards:
http://ginlindzey.livejournal.com/15614.html
I've probably written more about it on the blog over the last couple of
years, but that's the first one I saw.
The point is, Romans understood Latin in the order in which it was written
and so can we. We need to break the incessant need to puzzle it out in
English word order, which does ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD when trying to read more
advanced Latin.
For instance, I have this one kid that was reading AP Ovid/Catullus at his
previous school. He continued to read Ovid with me, but didn't like the
Amores and since I didn't think his grammar was good enough to do well on
the AP test, we've blown off the rest. Instead, I've just this week stuck
him on the story in Ecce 3 on the murder of Clodius. In looking ahead I
showed him how Asconius's version had shorter sentences, but that the first
page of the Cicero version was only one sentence. HOW do you deal with
that? YOU MUST LEARN TO READ IN WORD ORDER.
But you also need to learn to read the whole sentence or passage through,
multiple times if necessary, in order to see the way words and phrases go
together, especially participles and all the stuff nested in between.
My Latin 2's are just now hitting participles in ch 33, while the 3's have
just finished ablative absolutes. I tell them how most kids hate
participles and the reason why is because they are strung out on how to
translate them into Englsh--something which VARIES according to context!
Then I tell them how much I like them, how cool and compact they are, and
how easy to read IF YOU READ THEM IN WORD ORDER.
Students want to thrust vocab meaning immediately into their translations
before they take in morphology. A reading card makes them stop and look at
just morphology. For instance, take this sentence form ch 33:
amIcO cuidam in popInA occurrI.
Most of them totally missed it the previous day when they were working
independently, even though I did make mention about occurrO taking the
dative object. So the next day for a warm-up I made them metaphrase it.
Metaphrasing uses a place-holding sentence like this: someone verbed
something to someone.
amIcO: Dative > Someone verbed something to the friend.
amIcO cuidam: Dative > Someone verbed something to a certain friend.
amIcO cuidam in popInA: prep phrase > Someone verbed something to a certain
friend in a bar.
amIcO cuidam in popInA occurrI: verb taking dat object which changes things>
I met a certain friend in a bar.
Now, in practice if we had been reading this passage together in class (this
is in a 3-way split class), I would have read the sentence a couple of times
and told them what I was noting each time. For instance, the next day (or
could have been the same day) we looked at 33b together and did the odd
sentences. This is #5:
servI A GaiO iussI frusta pullI frAtrI eius dedErunt.
I was having them copy just the participial phrase down and then we were
translating together the whole sentence. So I read it outloud once and I
think the first thing I said is, "aha, dedErunt, they gave, so there's a
dative here, we expect that, don't we? Let's read it again." And so we did
a couple more times. At some point I stopped at A GaiO and we discussed how
an abl of agent tells us to anticipate that a passive verb is coming,
something we get almost immediately with iussI. Then we wrote the
participial phrase down and translated the rest of the sentence in word
order.
We had, "The slaves, ordered by Gaius,..." so after that we *knew* frusta
had to be accusative. "The slaves, orderd by Gaius, verbed scraps." And if
we keep reading in word order there is virtually no question whatsoever as
to the case of pullI--genitive is such a natural meaning in word order.
And as for the rest, well, it was the dative and dedErunt which we had
already noted.
Reading in word order has to constantly and ACTIVELY be taught, I am
convinced, by both modeling reading and rereading sentences AS A WHOLE as
well as metaphrasing it word by word when the sentences seems trickier.
Reading and rereading are so important for vocabulary acquisition as well as
internalization of grammar. Lists of vocab words will never be enough, will
never work.
In an ideal world where split level classes did not exist, I would spend at
least 1 day a month reading something substantially easier than what
students are currently working on in order to develop that ability to read
in word order, reading paragraph after paragraph, page after page, NOT word
by word, line by line.
***
I think when teachers start debating textbooks, as they are doing right now on Latinteach, many of the diehard grammar types will talk about how colleagues at the university level will complain that students using reading based texts never seem to know their grammar.
Guess what? They are often right. Yes, they are because too many teachers using reading-based texts don't know how to reinforce grammar without resorting to drill and kill or tedious written transformation drills out of context.
WHEN you read in word order, and especially if you metaphrase from time to time and force students to consider carefully what they truly have in front of them, you do reinforce grammar. You also reinforce WORD ORDER, IDIOM, and the Roman mindset for listening, reading and writing. You aren't just doing morphology.
What you absolutely MUST avoid, ABSOLUTELY MUST AVOID, is letting students just guess the meaning from the pictures and what sounds good with the vocab.
YES, do prereading of the vocab beneath a story. With Cambridge, the word is glossed in the case it is being used--SO TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION TOO! If I see versipellem, then I know it's probably "somebody verbed the werewolf" and not the other way around.
Morphology can't be separated from words, words can't be separated from phrases, phrases can't be separated from clauses, and clauses can't be separated from sentences. Communication doesn't come in fits and bits. We don't learn vocabulary in isolation in English, and we certainly don't study grammar seriously until we are actually using those phrases and clauses in our language already. We dissect language to understand it.
Must go grade English benchmark essays....
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