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Tomorrow morning will be the last day of the conference. It's been enjoyable, it really has. We have come together as a group and had a lot of fun the last couple of days. And slowly people have been REreading. Maybe what I'm doing is rubbing off. After our classes today, we were all sitting in the lounge reading our lines for tomorrow. Well, I considered myself reading, everyone else said they were translating. No matter. I sat off from the group, reading along, often flowing ahead of them but then I would get bogged down a tiny bit and slow up or I'd be listening to them explaining and reexplaining the Latin to other members of the group and forget what I was doing.
And I realized something.... years ago a friend, Donna Jacobson (sp?) and I were in college and in a Livy class together. I knew I was in over my head, that I really hadn't had enough Latin--or rather, didn't know how to read prose. I remember going to a review one night, I think upstairs at the student union (don't know why I remember that....), and Donna was more or less leading it. I remember struggling with long sentences and clauses and whatnot, and it just seemed so easy to her. I'm now where she was, and my companions here are where I was. They are a bright group. They know their grammar and whatnot. But I *see* what the Latin is doing more easily. I truly think a great measure of that is reading in word order and reading whole sections not just one line or two at a go. I read far enough through to see who's doing what to whom, to see that I started a sentence with a nom pl and it ended with one too. In fact, I feel so at home with what Latin is doing with word order for effect and suspense, I've gotten to the point that I really and truly do not want to translate it into English most of the time, because most of the time what's in the Latin is really and truly lost.
Last night we had our Roman meal which we cooked together and then ate with a fair amount of drinking going on during both. I then taught Greek dancing, followed by just all sorts of dancing. It was mainly just me and another woman, basically dancing to whatever was on and not caring that we were out there by ourselves. A great time was had by all.
Tonight we went out for Italian and stuffed ourselves to the gills. When we came back, we read Miles Gloriosus, which complements the Aeneid nicely because the soldier claims to be the grandson of Venus! I had never read Miles and I ended up being given the lead slave role. It's been a loooooooong time since I had a part in a play reading, probably since college. It was a nice transportation back in time.
My card playing has been a big hit--and in fact, this was exactly what I've always wanted: to have a group of adults/teachers who had full command of Latin grammar and such who could take my basic card-playing script and adlib when comfortable. We played the other night and we played again this afternoon when the network was down and couldn't do much in the computer lab.
I have the evaluation to fill out and I have a lot of thoughts that I would like to include. Constructive things. I might be listened to, who knows. After all, we did read the passage as a whole before we started reading today and then read it again afterwards. What it lacked was dramatic performance/emphasis. I know I'm a bit egocentric about reading. As a teacher, I want to read first because I want the students to know what it SHOULD sound like, with emphasis and drama, so to speak. Then when we read together, I read WITH them and we ALL read. And if it isn't dramatic enough, I make them read it again if we have time.
While it is important to call on people individually, this also means others will be left out. Choral reading, I think, is key to building a true comfort level in reading. (I wonder if that's true....)
But my point was, I think last night I actually had made these suggestions about reading before and after to one of the profs. I had had a fair amount of wine by that point and had done a lot of Greek dancing, so my memory isn't the best. If this suggestion was heard and tried, then I really should lay out a plan of action, some real suggestions that might make this a truly superior workshop. It's already way up there because of the size (small) and personal attention.
Anyway. Time to go to bed. I'll have to work on the evaluation in the a.m. And pack. And everything else.
And I realized something.... years ago a friend, Donna Jacobson (sp?) and I were in college and in a Livy class together. I knew I was in over my head, that I really hadn't had enough Latin--or rather, didn't know how to read prose. I remember going to a review one night, I think upstairs at the student union (don't know why I remember that....), and Donna was more or less leading it. I remember struggling with long sentences and clauses and whatnot, and it just seemed so easy to her. I'm now where she was, and my companions here are where I was. They are a bright group. They know their grammar and whatnot. But I *see* what the Latin is doing more easily. I truly think a great measure of that is reading in word order and reading whole sections not just one line or two at a go. I read far enough through to see who's doing what to whom, to see that I started a sentence with a nom pl and it ended with one too. In fact, I feel so at home with what Latin is doing with word order for effect and suspense, I've gotten to the point that I really and truly do not want to translate it into English most of the time, because most of the time what's in the Latin is really and truly lost.
Last night we had our Roman meal which we cooked together and then ate with a fair amount of drinking going on during both. I then taught Greek dancing, followed by just all sorts of dancing. It was mainly just me and another woman, basically dancing to whatever was on and not caring that we were out there by ourselves. A great time was had by all.
Tonight we went out for Italian and stuffed ourselves to the gills. When we came back, we read Miles Gloriosus, which complements the Aeneid nicely because the soldier claims to be the grandson of Venus! I had never read Miles and I ended up being given the lead slave role. It's been a loooooooong time since I had a part in a play reading, probably since college. It was a nice transportation back in time.
My card playing has been a big hit--and in fact, this was exactly what I've always wanted: to have a group of adults/teachers who had full command of Latin grammar and such who could take my basic card-playing script and adlib when comfortable. We played the other night and we played again this afternoon when the network was down and couldn't do much in the computer lab.
I have the evaluation to fill out and I have a lot of thoughts that I would like to include. Constructive things. I might be listened to, who knows. After all, we did read the passage as a whole before we started reading today and then read it again afterwards. What it lacked was dramatic performance/emphasis. I know I'm a bit egocentric about reading. As a teacher, I want to read first because I want the students to know what it SHOULD sound like, with emphasis and drama, so to speak. Then when we read together, I read WITH them and we ALL read. And if it isn't dramatic enough, I make them read it again if we have time.
While it is important to call on people individually, this also means others will be left out. Choral reading, I think, is key to building a true comfort level in reading. (I wonder if that's true....)
But my point was, I think last night I actually had made these suggestions about reading before and after to one of the profs. I had had a fair amount of wine by that point and had done a lot of Greek dancing, so my memory isn't the best. If this suggestion was heard and tried, then I really should lay out a plan of action, some real suggestions that might make this a truly superior workshop. It's already way up there because of the size (small) and personal attention.
Anyway. Time to go to bed. I'll have to work on the evaluation in the a.m. And pack. And everything else.
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