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There was a missive on Latinteach that ranted on about how OF COURSE grammar must be the center of all that we do! That students learn English grammar from Latin grammar, that you can't do without it, etc etc.
The old arguments for learning Latin--NOT to learn Latin to read what people who lived 2000 years ago said and thought and felt, but to improve our own SAT scores and English compositions. Oh sure, no question, these are important benefits of Latin, but it's not the reason why you study the language.
The implication was also that if grammar isn't at the forefront of your program, then you don't know what you're doing. I could be reading more into it, but I'm sure she's just been dying to jump in and say so with all of us radical reading-based approach people on the list.
I want to ask her how many students enjoy Latin--and I don't mean enjoy it because Latin is fun or fluff. I mean enjoy learning it, all the aspects of learning. Just the grammar nerds? What about the strugglers? How big are her intermediate and advanced classes?
She also said point blank that she couldn't possibly see why anyone would bother with oral Latin--what's the point? Hey, you can't tell me that speaking Latin in class doesn't enhance comprehension. I've had observers who have been totally impressed to hear me questioning my MIDDLE SCHOOLERS in Latin and them replying CORRECTLY in Latin while we read a story. YOU CAN STAY IN THE LATIN! You don't have to use English, which is good for all the students who are not native English speakers--not just my Hispanic kids but my foreign exchange students and students who have moved to this country in recent years from Russia or some part of Asia.
I can't imagine how small my program would be if I were grammar-front. People ask me all the time how I went from 13 in Latin 1 last year to 75 this year. I know part of it is just personality and charisma. You know that's a factor in teaching--we are artists/performers and that just plays a part of it. But part of it is that I try to reach every student. I don't dumb down my classes so that I can have big classes. I've seen that done. My student teaching was in a school with a program like that--poor Latin grades were disguised with projects each six weeks. As near as I can tell, where my son took Latin last year in 7th grade that teacher only did vocabulary quizzes and a final exam. I don't believe he ever had a stage test, but her students did phenomenally at competition, and I take my hat off to her for that. The thing is, when all you test is vocabulary or even just conjugating and declining, you are only testing lower-level knowledge (rote memory) skills. Translating tests higher level skills like analysis and synthesis. Where's the in between?
And I wonder, how many of us are guilty of waiting to hit hard core stuff until 3rd year, because the 2 year foreign language students aren't up to it? It happens. There are things that I slack on too. God knows I'm not perfect, and I'm not trying to set myself up to be.
But there *IS* a happy medium between die-hard grammar and no grammar. I think I'm hitting that medium, but I think I'm hitting it because so much of what I do *IS* in context--it's WRITTEN in context, READ in context, SPOKEN in context. I don't talk about case, number, and gender until AFTER we've metaphrased some words, putting them in context. It appeals to more people that way anyhow--all those different style of learners. Morphology is nothing in a cold chart. Declining tests nothing more than rote memory. Morphology in context = MEANING. I want enough grammar to get MEANING, ya know?
I think the greatest challenges we face as Latin teachers are finding ways to support grammar in context, to reach as many students as possible, and to make sure that we meet our goals of teaching students to READ LATIN AS A REAL LANGUAGE and not perpetuate the decoding method of interpretting Latin.
There is NO DAMN REASON why we shouldn't be able to read pages of Latin at a go instead of lines. The only thing holding us back is our own mental blocks on the subject. People learning a second language don't always understand every word on the page, but they will read page after page and develop an overall understanding or sense about the piece.
Yes, we can still read for detail, we can still read to pick something apart word by word, phrase by phrase, to milk every creative, artistic detail out of a work. We do this with English sometimes too. But sometimes we just read.
If you teach grammar up front and make it the most important aspect of what you do, what are you communicating to students about why they are studying Latin?
I want mine to read. I want my students to read better than I do. I want my students to pick up Latin AFTER THEY HAVE LEFT THE STUDY OF LATIN and still read it. It can be with facing English, I don't care, as long as they sit there, as I do now, thinking not about the English but the incredible Latin--the words, the phrasing, every little bit of it.
I've been reading in Peter Green's Catullus off and on for a while now. His English is brilliant--clever, raunchy even, almost perfect. But I'm more interested in the Latin, I want to pour over those words, fix them in my mind and in my heart. I just don't want any student of mine in AP Latin in the future to quote me the ENGLISH of a particular Catullus (as if having the English memorized is the key to understanding the Latin and doing well onthe AP test). I want my students walking around muttering Latin, much like Rumpole of the Bailey (character by Sir John Mortimer) quotes Wordsworth and Shakespeare.
The old arguments for learning Latin--NOT to learn Latin to read what people who lived 2000 years ago said and thought and felt, but to improve our own SAT scores and English compositions. Oh sure, no question, these are important benefits of Latin, but it's not the reason why you study the language.
The implication was also that if grammar isn't at the forefront of your program, then you don't know what you're doing. I could be reading more into it, but I'm sure she's just been dying to jump in and say so with all of us radical reading-based approach people on the list.
I want to ask her how many students enjoy Latin--and I don't mean enjoy it because Latin is fun or fluff. I mean enjoy learning it, all the aspects of learning. Just the grammar nerds? What about the strugglers? How big are her intermediate and advanced classes?
She also said point blank that she couldn't possibly see why anyone would bother with oral Latin--what's the point? Hey, you can't tell me that speaking Latin in class doesn't enhance comprehension. I've had observers who have been totally impressed to hear me questioning my MIDDLE SCHOOLERS in Latin and them replying CORRECTLY in Latin while we read a story. YOU CAN STAY IN THE LATIN! You don't have to use English, which is good for all the students who are not native English speakers--not just my Hispanic kids but my foreign exchange students and students who have moved to this country in recent years from Russia or some part of Asia.
I can't imagine how small my program would be if I were grammar-front. People ask me all the time how I went from 13 in Latin 1 last year to 75 this year. I know part of it is just personality and charisma. You know that's a factor in teaching--we are artists/performers and that just plays a part of it. But part of it is that I try to reach every student. I don't dumb down my classes so that I can have big classes. I've seen that done. My student teaching was in a school with a program like that--poor Latin grades were disguised with projects each six weeks. As near as I can tell, where my son took Latin last year in 7th grade that teacher only did vocabulary quizzes and a final exam. I don't believe he ever had a stage test, but her students did phenomenally at competition, and I take my hat off to her for that. The thing is, when all you test is vocabulary or even just conjugating and declining, you are only testing lower-level knowledge (rote memory) skills. Translating tests higher level skills like analysis and synthesis. Where's the in between?
And I wonder, how many of us are guilty of waiting to hit hard core stuff until 3rd year, because the 2 year foreign language students aren't up to it? It happens. There are things that I slack on too. God knows I'm not perfect, and I'm not trying to set myself up to be.
But there *IS* a happy medium between die-hard grammar and no grammar. I think I'm hitting that medium, but I think I'm hitting it because so much of what I do *IS* in context--it's WRITTEN in context, READ in context, SPOKEN in context. I don't talk about case, number, and gender until AFTER we've metaphrased some words, putting them in context. It appeals to more people that way anyhow--all those different style of learners. Morphology is nothing in a cold chart. Declining tests nothing more than rote memory. Morphology in context = MEANING. I want enough grammar to get MEANING, ya know?
I think the greatest challenges we face as Latin teachers are finding ways to support grammar in context, to reach as many students as possible, and to make sure that we meet our goals of teaching students to READ LATIN AS A REAL LANGUAGE and not perpetuate the decoding method of interpretting Latin.
There is NO DAMN REASON why we shouldn't be able to read pages of Latin at a go instead of lines. The only thing holding us back is our own mental blocks on the subject. People learning a second language don't always understand every word on the page, but they will read page after page and develop an overall understanding or sense about the piece.
Yes, we can still read for detail, we can still read to pick something apart word by word, phrase by phrase, to milk every creative, artistic detail out of a work. We do this with English sometimes too. But sometimes we just read.
If you teach grammar up front and make it the most important aspect of what you do, what are you communicating to students about why they are studying Latin?
I want mine to read. I want my students to read better than I do. I want my students to pick up Latin AFTER THEY HAVE LEFT THE STUDY OF LATIN and still read it. It can be with facing English, I don't care, as long as they sit there, as I do now, thinking not about the English but the incredible Latin--the words, the phrasing, every little bit of it.
I've been reading in Peter Green's Catullus off and on for a while now. His English is brilliant--clever, raunchy even, almost perfect. But I'm more interested in the Latin, I want to pour over those words, fix them in my mind and in my heart. I just don't want any student of mine in AP Latin in the future to quote me the ENGLISH of a particular Catullus (as if having the English memorized is the key to understanding the Latin and doing well onthe AP test). I want my students walking around muttering Latin, much like Rumpole of the Bailey (character by Sir John Mortimer) quotes Wordsworth and Shakespeare.
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Date: 2008-03-23 09:16 pm (UTC)Anyway...time to go write tests and quia for tests.