Is latin a living language? In a sense, it is! With the proper approach, language of ancient Romans becomes much more than a set of grammar rules. It turns into a gate to different world(s). Marcin Loch (PhD), lecturet of Latin in Liberal Arts and Science program, explains how to open that gate.

LAS is a unique program, with an exceptional offer of classes, extraordinary students and lecturers. The Latin language class, which is its part, is also unusual. It differs significantly from other Latin courses in our education system (where the so-called grammatical-translation method prevails). This class isn't about learning theoretical knowledge about the language and culture of the ancient Romans. It's about learning Latin in practice.

Instead of translation

The textbook for this class is Lingua Latina per se illustrata by Hans H. Ørberg, developed using the contextual induction method.

Fundamentally, new content always appears in a context which is suggestive and understandable for the student. The basic rule is: legere, agere neque convertere umquam! Therefore, we don’t focus on constant translation and flipping through a dictionary, but on reading and listening comprehension, as well as developing receptive and productive competences.

Translation into English plays a minor role in the course, and is reserved for complicated sentences and pieces of content. It’s used only when other options for explaining a given issue, word or sentence are exhausted. The main task is to work with written and spoken Latin texts adjusted to the abilities of students. That way, the student acquires and develops a whole range of language competencies related to specific cultural topics. The undoubted advantage of the course is constant contact with a large amount of Latin text (extensive reading). It is not metalinguistic knowledge that is assessed, but its practical application. Tests after each chapter of the textbook consist in filling gaps in sentences with appropriate forms of words given in a box. If the student solves such tasks correctly, the tutor receives a wealth of information:

a) the students understand the sentence and its context;
b) they understand its meaning by inserting the appropriate word in the right place;
c) by creating the correct form, they prove that they have mastered a specific inflexion.

Latin lives in the internet

The above-mentioned textbook is becoming more and more popular worldwide (it’s written only in Latin and available regardless of the student's mother tongue). It grants many practical benefits both for the students and the teacher. These include the possibility of using many auxiliary materials accessible for free on the Internet. The most important of these are interactive exercises that take students a few minutes to complete. After finishing, students immediately receive information about the mistakes they’ve made. It allows students to make corrections themselves, and as for the teacher, it removes the necessity of marking a large number of identical tests (which, of course, doesn't mean that we only perform such tasks) and is extremely helpful in the era of distance education. Ease of access and execution of such exercises (students don’t have to rewrite them or browse a dictionary to solve them) and immediate access to feedback on their progress and mistakes positively influence their motivation to learn (it should be noted that it’s a topic almost completely disregarded in didactics of classical languages).

Moreover, on the Internet, we can also find a range of other teaching resources unavailable for all other Latin textbooks. On YouTube, there are, among others, "screen adaptations" of readings (short movies in Latin presenting scenes or themes from the textbook). It’s possible to compose tests and listening comprehension exercises for them. There are also audio recordings of each chapter (students can listen to them even before going to bed or when shopping) and even songs (composed using only this linguistic content that the students have already learned in accordance with the handbook’s progress). Not to mention memes, comics or games that allow students to consolidate their vocabulary or practice grammar points.

Latin course in 60 hours

Our language course at LAS provides only 60 hours of instruction - it's approximately one-third of the time needed to reach the target level of Latin using the proposed method. After completing the class at the fifteenth of the 35 chapters of the textbook, students will have read selected original texts (such as the first sentences of Bellum Gallicum or Carmen de Passere by Catullus), learn about 750 words most frequent in classical Latin texts, mastered inflection and morphology in such areas as the noun, adjective, pronoun, verb in the active and passive voice of the present tense, selected participles, adjective and adverb gradation, learnt basic and strategic (most frequently used) expressions and syntactic structures (such as the accusative and infinitive, the nominative and infinitive, interrogative sentences, relative clauses, causal clauses,etc.) within cultural themes such as the topography of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century AD, social relationships of the master-slave type, division of roles within family and society, a room plan of a Roman villa, trade and exchange of goods; body parts, health and disease, main deities and their cult; the equipment of aRoman soldier and military campaigns; the calendar, the times of the day and the year, and the seasonal changes in nature.

After the course

This kind of curriculum may be considered “the first introduction” to Latin, as it covers the novice level of proficiency. It allows students to continue the course (e.g. in the form of optional classes) and can be a foundation for another class that wouldn’t start at the beginner level. With this approach, a student experiences much satisfaction from working with a Latin text. It's no wonder - texts are easy to understand without a dictionary or translation; students don’t perceive Latin through the prism of their mother tongue, they develop a positive attitude to the Latin language and discover it as a useful and attractive means of communication, allowing them to learn about "new worlds" (i.e. the world of Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, etc.).

We hope that this form of classes will arouse cognitive passion in students, encourage (or at least not discourage) them to learn Latin, show them the best way to become fluent in Latin, allow them to develop good habits in self-education and learning foreign languages.

Reading room

Podtytuł i śródtytuły pochodzą od redakcji.Obraz: G. P. Pannini, Galeria obrazów starożytnego Rzymu (1758), Wikimedia Commons