ginlindzey

My Latin 3's are mystified that I can, at a glance, toss away possible translations of a word, in particular verbs that could possibly be present indicative, present subjunctive, or a 3rd or 4th future indicative--without, you know, having memorized the principal parts of every verb in existence (like we did).

So today I put aside the story in Stage 38 that they were supposed to be reading, and backtracked to look at the conditional clauses using future perfects (in the protasis) and futures (in the Apodosis). I was trying as well to explain how easy it is to tell future perfect indicatives from the newer perfect subjunctives. That is, if the verb is in this particular type of conditional, I know to expect future perf ind & future tense verbs, NOT subjunctives, etc. (Ok, in great measure because we haven't gotten to conditionals using subjunctives yet!!!)

Here are the sentences I pulled out from CLC for them:

Future More Vivid: future perfect, then future. (If he verbs [will have verbed], he will verb.)

• nōs Chrīstiānī, sī vītam pūram vīxerimus et eī crēdiderimus, ad caelum ascendēmus. (Tychicus, p 258, stage 31)
• nisi [tū] vitiīs tuīs dēstiteris, poenās dabis. (vitium = sin) (Tychicus, p 258, stage 31)
• sī tē apud mē ille invēnerit, poenās certē dabis. (in aulā Domitiānī I, p 260, stage 31)
• sī Paris effūgerit, vōs poenās dabitis. (in aulā Domitiānī II, p 262, stage 31)
• sī mē in hāc rē adiūveris, magnum paemium tibi dabitur. (ultiō Epaphrodītī, p 274 Stage 32)
• sī mē vel Domitiam hōc locō cēperint, certē nōs interficient. (exitium I p 279 Stage 34)
• sī prōditōrēs effūgerint, vōs omnēs pūniēminī. (exitium I p 279 Stage 34)
• sī tū eum audīveris, certē delectāberis. (ex urbe p 4 State 35)
• sū tē mox vīderō, valdē dēlectābor. (ex urbe p 4 Stage 35)
• nisi cāveris, mī Glabriō, tū quoque sīcut pater meus, damnāberis atque occīdēris. (vīta rūstica p 8 Stage 35)
• nōn crēdam nisi lēgerō, Catulle. (epigrammata Martiālis IV p 29 Stage 36)
• sī Hibernōs superāverimus, nōn modo pacem in Brianniā habēbimus, sed etiam magnās dīvitiās comparābimus…. (epistula p 42 Stage 37)
• sī tamen tū mē adiūveris, sēcūrus erō. (amīcī principis p 44 stage 37)
• sī cōpiae nostrae trans mare in Hiberniam ductae erunt, magnō perīculō obicientur. (cōnsilium Domitiānī I p 46 Stage 37)
• sī Hibernia quoque ab Agricolā victa erit, totam Britanniam in potestāte nostrā habēbimus. (cōnsilium Domitiānī p 47 Stage 37)
• haec est sententia mea, quam sī dissēnseris mūtābō. (Imperātōris sententia p 60 Stage 38)
• sī hīc captus eris, interficiēris. (prīdiē nūptiārum p 64 Stage 38)

I followed this set with these because of the similarities:

Priusquam – future perfect indicative = until (notice similarity to the Future More Vivid Conditional)

• ego numquam iterum tībiīs cantābō priusquam perierit Salvius. (honōrēs p 283 Stage 34)
• nihil dīcam priusquam Epaphrodītī sententiam audīverō. (amīcī principis p 44 Stage 37)

And then we got to these few perfect tense subjunctives.  I pointed out that so far these were only coming up in indirect questions; NONE were in conditional clauses, thus it was easy to distinguish.

Perfect Subjunctives: used in indirect questions and other typical subjunctive clauses

• nōn satis cōnstat quot hostēs perierint; … (epistula p 42 Stage 37)
• nescio enim quārē Domitiānus nōs arcessīverit. (amīcī prīncipis p 43 Stage 37)
• intellegere nōn possum quārē illa in mātrimōnium nōndum collocāta sit. (Imperātōris sententia p 60 Stage 38)
• scio quō ille ierit, num occīsus sit. (prīdiē nūptiārum p 64 Stage 38)

Anyway, I dunno.  I was told the discussion did help.  However, it's the week before spring break and I'm not sure whether ANYTHING helps. hahahahaha.

I was replying to a comment but my reply got so long I thought I'd move it up to a real entry.... (see http://ginlindzey.livejournal.com/38894.html?nc=2)

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Well, all I can say is that over the last few years I've realized that our biggest problem with Latin in this country is NOT ignorant administrators, NOT the ignorant public, but rather the teachers. Not all of course. Truly, not all. Perhaps not most? But too many. Too many use morphology to weed out kids so they teach just the select top kids in the school. What a luxury! This also means they often weed out the kids who do NOT learn like the teacher and thus never stretches the teacher to understand more about TEACHING.

The art of teaching/pedagogy is not taught extensively before certification, as one would like, because most professors really aren't into it themselves. Like so many teachers, they just want the students who have already mastered forms and are willing to do whatever it takes to puzzle together meaning, never once checking to see if students are hunting/pecking meaning or reading in word order.

Teachers are not trained to teach AP and unless one takes the time to go to an AP workshop they are left to figure it out on their own. Often it is seen as just too much work or the teacher really has no desire to push the pace or whatever. Or their students aren't up to the task, or so they say.

So, how do you get students that are up to the task? What was done in the past? Well, in the past it was memorize forms your first two years and do tons of stupid, mind-numbing exercises and then in third year you would meet with PASSAGES. Now we have readings up front and teachers who don't know how to use such books well or don't know how to reinforce morphology without going back to old drill and kill.

When I teach I always have in my mind's eye that these students might one day be in AP (however unlikely it was for my previous students--but then, half did end up in an AP class that was really not AP at all). I've vowed to teach pronunciation at the beginning of EACH YEAR so that by the time they are actually IN an AP class dividing words into syllables and figuring out accents before one scans will nto be any big challenge whatsoever. That's simple. BUT I have to be doing that EACH YEAR until they are in AP.

Combined classes are common. That isn't really anyone's fault, just how scheduling goes. But why not have different goals for each group? Extra work for one, research or whatever? Essays? Something.

Oh, and speaking of essays... why not start training them to write essays where the supports are found in the Latin sooner than AP? I have a writing exercise that admittedly I haven't used in a couple of years because of the students I had (bad excuse) and running out of time/shorter class periods. (When you go from a 50 minute hour to a 45 minute hour you lose 18 days worth of class...it does add up.) But I had this writing exercise about why the student liked a particular character in the book. I had the FUNNIEST answers one year.

My point is that there is so much about AP that you could work into your earlier Latin courses so it doesn't all come as shock and overload once you are actually teaching AP.

If you want to build up more confidence in reading passages at home, for instance, then teach different ways to tackle reading passages on one's own. What would you tell your AP kids? Do you want them to keep a running vocab list? Make a note of problem lines? Only write out an English translation for a line that gave them particular problems? Never to write out a translation? To write a summary? To write a summary in Latin??!!! Then you should be training students to do this when the Latin is EASY in book 1 of the course.

Having problems with students doing the assignment early on? Then figure out WHY. Are they scared to make a mistake? Do they get stuck on one word and give up? Are you demanding perfection? Are they demanding perfection of themselves? WHAT?

I keep thinking that if we train our level 1 students well enough, understanding ALL of their disconnects, everywhere they go off the track while the natural A students move on smoothly, we can bring more students up the the advanced levels, and if we do that, we won't have a problem with filling AP classes or having split level classes.

We need to teach intensive and extensive reading skills. I firmly believe that. I truly, truly do. We need to teach disambiguation skills. We need to teach better ways of expanding vocabulary, and I don't know what those are yet, but I've been working on ideas. I do know one thing for sure: all the review games in the world, all the quia.com drills we can write, etc, will not improve the way kids learn and retain vocabulary. I think there are more answers in Rassias and TPR for vocab.

And I'm reminded that I've been relaxing "too much" (haha) this summer when I've never even taught out of Ecce before and should be thinking up where I'll be taking the level 2 kids (and level 3?). Level 1 I'm going to use CLC. But.... the Ecce kids.... heck, I don't even have a file of materials. I know there are vocabulary issues with Ecce because there are no master lists... so which words? Heh! All of them...

Just food for thought....