Teaching Latin: Contexts, Theories, Practices

Steven Hunt

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350161375
• eBook ISBN: 9781350161405
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient Languages
• Index: History

Building on and updating some of the issues addressed in Starting to Teach Latin, Steven Hunt provides a guide for novice and more experienced teachers of Latin in schools and colleges, who work with adapted and original Latin prose texts from beginners' to advanced levels. It draws extensively on up-to-date theories of second language development and on multiple examples of the practices of real teachers and students. Hunt starts with a detailed look at deductive, inductive and active teaching methods, which support teachers in making the best choices for their students' needs and for their own personal preferences, but goes on to organise the book around the principles of listening, reading, speaking and writing Latin. It is designed to be informative, experimental and occasionally provocative. The book closes with two chapters of particular contemporary interest: 'Access, Diversity and Inclusion' investigates how the subject community is meeting the challenge of teaching Latin more equitably in today's schools; and 'The Future' offers some thoughts on lessons that have been learnt from the experiences of online teaching practices during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Practical examples, extensive references and a companion website at www.stevenhuntclassics.com are included. Teachers of Latin will find this book an invaluable tool inside and outside of the classroom.

1

Latin Language Teaching and Learning

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Chapter Outline

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Teaching methods

Teaching grammar

Vocabulary learning

Translation

Comprehension questions

Duolingo: A new way to learn Latin?

Teaching methods

Most teachers probably use a mixed-methods approach, pulled as they are in different directions by their own learning experiences, teaching preferences and the institutional demands that are made on them. They also pay attention to the needs of their students. A brief resume of the more common methods used in Latin teaching today is given below, but the next four chapters in this book are designed to introduce further ideas for teachers to interweave into practice. Some of them are uncommon; others, such as speaking, are gaining significant interest in the modern classroom; others I present as more provocative. It is a remarkable and encouraging notion that teachers maintain a passionately lively discussion about teaching and learning a supposedly dead language.

Deductive methods: ‘Grammar-translation’

In deductive methods, the method usually conforms to the Presentation-Practice-Feedback paradigm. Course materials are generally presented sequentially: (1) the student is presented with a description in English about the new grammar feature and a list of new Latin vocabulary, which they are often told to memorize; (2) they translate a series of practice sentences from Latin to English (and sometimes English to Latin); (3) they translate a more extended Latin passage into English (and sometimes one from English into Latin). This Latin passage often has an explanatory title and introduction in English, a vocabulary gloss, and sometimes an illustration. The passage may act as a summative assessment of the previously learnt grammar and vocabulary, and as a kind of reward for the effort of all the previous practice. It is usually of a length that allows completion in the classroom, and contains no unfamiliar words (or at least, nothing that cannot be intuited) or unfamiliar grammar. Teachers use their judgement whether to allow students access to dictionaries or grammar supplements. Feedback usually takes place on completion of the translations, either immediately after completion or, more often, after it has been taken in and marked by the teacher. For further details of grammar-translation activities, see Singh (1998) for the high-school and May (1998) for university-level.

The traditional grammar-translation method of teaching Latin places explicit grammar instruction at the heart, in the belief that knowing about the grammatical features of the language will transfer to being able to comprehend it elsewhere in continuous and previously unseen texts. The evidence for the effectiveness of this is not good. Skehan (1996) points out there is no research to show that it delivers reading and speaking fluency. In a review of research, Lichtman and VanPatten point out (their Italics) that ‘explicit teaching, learning, and testing of textbook grammar rules and grammatical forms should be minimized, as it does not lead directly or even indirectly to the development of mental representation that underlies language use’ (2021: 17). Ellis, Basturkmen and Loewen (2002) note that explicit grammar instruction only helps students perform well on discrete-point grammar tests. So, while the grammar-translation method might help students learn grammar, there is no research evidence that it might lead them easily to comprehend a language, let alone translate it. There are those, myself included, who will say that the grammar-translation method served us well. But it has to be said that we might be the exceptions which prove the rule; aside from which, although we perhaps know Latin grammar very well and can rattle through our charts and tables, we could not at the time and probably still cannot just read and comprehend unadapted Latin very easily. Kitchell (2000) lays the blame for this lack of ability to do the thing that we are supposedly teaching the student to do on their lack of cultural knowledge which they might use as a support for making rational deductions about a text. I think it is more than this. Grammar-translation is fixated on morphology rather than meaning, and often comprises (I am looking at several of the commonly used grammar-translation coursebooks here – Wheelock’s Latin, de Romanis, Latin to GCSE), lists of vocabulary, charts, isolated words and phrases, short, disconnected sentences, and passages ‘for translation’ made clunky by the constrictions placed on them by the need for testing the newly introduced grammar. None of these are conducive to helping students how to read fluently, because the very point of them prevents it. Indeed, it is more likely that those of us who were taught by this method gained the ability to read and comprehend Latin through long exposure to Latin texts as university students and Latin teachers long after we left the classroom. To me, it seems odd to ignore the decades of research into second-language development and despite the evidence continue to use a method which ‘has no theory’ (Richards and Rodgers 2009: 7) and which does not easily and quickly lead to proficiency for most participating students. Yet, grammar-translation remains popular amongst Latin teachers, most likely because of its predominance in university-level courses.¹ This method is the one often privileged by university language teachers and seems to wash back into the school system and exert a disproportionate influence over the type of teaching of the vast majority of students who never, in fact, get there.²

Inductive method: ‘Reading-comprehension’

In more inductive methods, such as those of reading-compression coursebooks,³ there is usually more flexibility. Extended Latin passages make up the bulk of each section, usually with glossed vocabulary, supplementary grammar notes and often with supporting images and historical/cultural notes. The teacher uses their professional judgement on how to use the passage with the students.⁴ Reading of the passages is carried out in the classroom, with considerable teacher guidance and support and/or peer collaboration. The teacher models the process of reading, while checking and supporting the students’ language development, developing their cultural knowledge and providing feedback en route, as much as possible with reference to the original Latin. Most frequently, the language of the discussion takes place in English, although Latin may be used. Grammar and vocabulary are dealt with as the need arises: so-called ‘pop-up’ grammar should focus on one thing at a time. The vast majority of teachers use the students’ first language for discussion, although this does not preclude the use of Latin if the teacher is confident. Written translation, as in the deductive model above, may also be set as part of the process of study, provided that the passage set is short enough for everyone to complete in the time allocated. Feedback usually takes place immediately. The teacher should use their professional judgement as to the type and quantity of support needed for differentiation. For further details of reading-comprehension activities (US-based), see Perry (1998) for high-school and Gruber-Miller (1998), and (UK-based) Hunt (2016).

Both grammar-translation and, to an extent, reading-comprehension methods employ a fixed text as the central element for teaching and learning. It is assumed that the text is sufficiently interesting both narratively (to hold the student’s attention) and grammatically (to test student mastery in the former or to teach new material in the latter). Teachers need to use the passages common in both methods as intended by the writers of the coursebooks in which they are found. Providing students with extraneous activities such as crosswords, word searches or vocabulary games encourage the superficial learning of discrete lexical or morphological items at the expense of learning how to pick up on the hints and cues which a continuous narrative provides, to understand how the words in a sentence are linked together and how one sentence links with another. Treating a readin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Latin Language Teaching and Learning
• 2 Listening
• 3 Reading
• 4 Speaking
• 5 Writing
• 6 Access, Diversity and Inclusion
• 7 The Future: Is It Digital?
• Appendix 1: Abbreviations
• Appendix 2: Resources
• Appendix 3: UK/US Education Systems Compared
• Index
• Copyright