sight reading/Vergil/AP

[ginlindzey]

There was a post on the Cambridge list about AP sight reading issues.  The teacher said she thought it was the hardest skill they have to learn...all of which put me into deep thought mode.

I have, through posts here and conversations elsewhere as well as looking through a notebook of AP quizzes and tests I got at last summer's AP workshop, been thinking about the structure of my tests.  Good, bad, I dunno.  In some ways too easy perhaps.  Or, more likely from the scores, too hard.  I think I'm on the right track with the structure but still need to tweak it some more.  But that's another discussion.

What got me thinking about this person's request is that sight reading should be nothing more than we usually do--if we are truly reading Latin in word order, if we are truly trying to develop our reading skills and not just get good at decoding.

I was making myself do a little sight reading last night... it's not uncommon for teachers to be afraid of sight reading too.  AND WHY IS THAT?!  Because most of us were not taught how to read but how to decode, how to parse every single word for the grammar and piece it back together.  Dexter Hoyos's _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ that CANE sells (which I should probably reread) has changed how I view what we should be about.  

WHY should sight reading be so hard?  Let's face it, the passages picked are most likely not ones of the most difficult vocabulary.  The test designers are more interested in whether you can READ the Latin.  BUT ARE WE TEACHING THIS SKILL???

We should be.  We should be building up to it with all that we do--with warm-ups, with exercises, with quizzing and testing.  If we teach our students how to be readers of Latin, then reading the 1800 lines or so of the Aeneid should be doable.  But if all we are doing is teaching them how to (according to one respected source, one I respect as well, I might add) copy out every line skipping five lines, writing the meaning over the words in one line, the syntax in the next, and a running translation in the third, leaving the fourth for corrections, all we are teaching is that IT TAKES FOREVER TO READ VERGIL.  That it is SLOW, TEDIOUS, and EXHAUSTING, with little reward.  There's no time to ENJOY what you read, to DELIGHT in what you read, or even feel like you could read ahead.

Do we ever teach students to reread?  To spiral?  I'm trying to, but it's easier said than done, but it must be done.  It MUST be done....  

What about performance?  I was looking at the projects that were included in my AP notebook, and was surprised that there was nothing regarding the PERFORMANCE of Vergil.  Maybe I missed something.  But, sheesh, should it all be about golden lines and synchesis and chaismus?  It's not like during a recitation Vergil that he paused and said--"notice the nice use of synchesis I have here"!  

And it's a STORY.  Damnit, it's a GREAT STORY told well.  Can we treat it like that without constantly resorting to the English???  

Anyway.  I'm sure I could say more but my son has interrupted me about 12 times so far so I've lost my passion and direction on this. ha.  I guess I just think that if students are struggling to sight read that we aren't teaching them the skills to READ, and that's where the problem really lies....

Comments

audience reaction to Aeneid

[(Anonymous)]

Of course Vergil didn't need to hit his audience over the head to get them to appreciate his poetic skills--their paedogogoi had already done that for him when the audientes essent pueri. The would have been thinking(in latin or Greek of course) "oh wow! what a keen chiasmus!" Even as the noble audience of the boy Mozart could appreciate not only the wonderfulness of his music, but also the skill and artistry with which he performed.

One basic problem with modern kids--they haven't been taught to appreciate great writing in any language.....and they don't have the time to learn, being busy with TV, video games and not so great writings.

ken

Re: audience reaction to Aeneid

[ginlindzey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but Ken, I don't have to know anything about Mozart to like Mozart. My younger son loves Mozart, but I guarantee he knows little about music.

Vergil wouldn't not have ONLY been read for noble audiences. Mind you, Vergil wouldn't have been the one reading if the audience wasn't noble! But this became the equivalent of the national song!

You can appreciate something written in a complex way WITHOUT being able to write that way yourself or identify the chiasmus!

I was talking with a friend the other day who works a lot with students (he's a counselor), and we were discussing how in English classes now students have to annotate everything, disecting the meaning out of every last word. You know, like we unfortunately do with Latin. I guarantee you that you don't have to know what kind of dative or what kind of ablative something is in a line of Vergil to appreciate the line!

We do a disservice to our literature. After all, we don't read Shakespeare this way, do we????

Re: audience reaction to Aeneid

[(Anonymous)]

As a properly brought up young lady;-), you may not need guidance to enjoy Mozart, but can you say the same about kids whose sole contact with music is rap? Some may, others may not.

When I was teaching 10 graders English(10th graders are the ideal age for students IMHO), some "got" Julius Caesar right away, some couldn't follow the movie(their favorite scene was the assassination).

One question, "why are the men wearing dresses?"

Needless to say, those who couldn't get the movie couldn't read the words much less annotate them. Yet they were good kids, pleasant people.. The school tracked the kids--mine were "average". "basic" classes learned how to fill out forms--a useful skill, but gee! And with 40 kids in a class.

ken