Beware the Ides of March!

It's March 15th, the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated.

In remembrance, National Public Radio ran this rather amusing story about how the Roman senators might have celebrated aftewards.

It's National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week!

National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week is always the first full week in March. Sponsored by both the American Classical League and the American Philological Society, this week is dedicated to encouraging those who study Latin to consider teaching it.

If you need materials to promote Latin, there's quite a bit of free material available.

• Materials Useful for Promoting Latin from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South Committee for the Promotion of Latin
  

• Downloadable Posters from the National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week Site

• SAT Score Brochure and Other Latin Advantage Materials from Bolchazy-Carducci

Rules for Reading Latin

When you read Latin, do you first look for the verb, then try to find the subject, and then try to piece together the rest of the sentence? This method works well enough when you're still reading Latin from a textbook. However, once you start reading real Latin, you'll find that it is a slow and laborious process.

Several years ago, Dexter Hoyos, a professor of Latin at the University of Sydney introduced his Rules for Reading Latin Prose. Ginny Lindzey has designed a wonderful poster where you can download these rules for easy reference. You can find this poster as well as many other printable classroom materials on the Downloadable Materials page the National Committee to Promote Greek and Latin website. You'll understand these rules even better if you get Professor Hoyos' manual, which available from CANE Instructional Materials for less than $10!

Should the Study of the Classics Be Revived?

The IRIS Project was the subject of a previous blog entry. Earlier this week, Lorna Robinson, the founder of the project and editor of IRIS Magazine, was interviewed on the British Broadcasting Company's Radio 4. Visit the Woman's Hour website to hear the program.

5th National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week

Mark your calendars because National Latin Teacher Recruitment week is coming soon!

This year NLTRW is March 5-9, 2007, which is the first full week in March! The National Committee for Latin and Greek has put together a terrific website where you can find all sorts of promotional items, including downloadable articles, posters, brochures, and bookmarks. There's an informative F.A.Q., a list of universities which provide training for Latin teachers, and lots of ideas you can use to help inspire future Latin teachers.

Also check out Anima Altera, where you can purchase some fabulous t-shirts designed specifically for NLTRW!

The Iris Project

The IRIS Project was created by Dr. Lorna Robinson, a Classics professor from the United Kingdom. The mission of the IRIS Project is to promote access to Latin, Ancient Greek and Classical Civilisation in state sector schools across Britain. Project organizers are setting up free workshops, pilot courses and theme days for schools. The IRIS Project hopes to ensure that the languages, myth, history, religion, literature of the Classical World are accessible to students from all socio-economic backgrounds. IRIS Magazine, described by the editor as a "a Classical magazine with a new and eclectic slant" is one of the major outreach initiatives of the project. The magazine is aimed at a secondary school audience and includes articles, poetry, puzzles, games, recipes and reviews. Overseas subscriptions are available.

Articles of note in the Spring '07 issue include Africanising the Classics (focusing on post-apartheid South Africa), Reinterpreting the Past in Popular Culture, and Modernising Monsters: Classics and Computer Games.

Latin, the Classics and Black History Month

In celebration of Black History Month, Bolchazy-Carducci is sharing three scholarly articles from the Classical Bulletin 76.2. Racial Ideology and the Classics in the African-American University Experience by Michele Valerie Ronnick; A Source for Ideology: The Classical Education of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Trudy Harrington Becker; and Socrates as a Model of Civil Disobedience in the Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. by William C. West.

Another outstanding resource for Black History Month is the 12 Black Classicists website, which was originally designed by Michele Valerie Ronnick as an accompaniment to the travelling photo exhibit of the same name. The photo exhibit debuted in 2004 and is currently being displayed (February 2007) at Trinity University in San Antonio. The website includes biographies of 12 prominent and historical African American Classicists as well as media, coverage, exhibit photos, and a bibliography. Michele Valerie Ronnick is an associate professor of Classics at Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan. She is the editor of The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader from the Collected Black Writings Series. She also wrote the introduction to The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship. You can visit Professor Ronnick's website here.

Harry Potter Kai He Tou Philosophou Litho

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has been translated into over 60 languages, including Ancient Greek and Classical Latin. (When it was translated into American English, the publishers even decided to change the title!)

To find out more about the Ancient Greek translation, you can visit Andrew Wilson's Classics Pages, where you will also find some vocabulary and notes to accompany your reading. If you want to know just why Andrew decided to translate Rowling's work, you should read this article from the Opinion Journal.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

Everyone is eager for the new Harry Potter book to be released but we'll all have to wait a few more months to find out if Harry lives or dies. In the meantime, do you realize how much Latin is in Harry Potter? A lot!

Latin teachers Ginny Lindzey and Clint Hagen have written a wonderful article Just Charming: Tapping into the Latin Magic of Harry Potter. In this article, Lindzey and Hagen explore the Latin and Classical connections in the series. They also give a few ideas to teachers on bringing Harry into the Latin classroom.

Wikipedia has a nice compendium of Spells from the Harry Potter series.

How to Teach Latin?

Over the years, the study of Latin has become associated with the endless rote memorization of noun declensions and verb conjugations. However, are other approaches to the study of the language and different textbooks reflect different methods. This is a very brief overview.

The Reading Method

The Reading Method is a very popular and effective way to learn Latin. Students learn Latin by reading carefully written stories that gradually build up from simple sample sentences to complex selections. Students learn to develop their reading skills through metaphrasing and grammatical expectation. The focus is upon building reading fluency through extensive reading. Grammar is important but the focus is upon the purposeful use of that grammar toward the end of reading a classical text in its original language.

Popular Reading Method courses include the Oxford Latin Course, the Cambridge Latin Course, and the Ecce Latin Course.

The Direct Method

Proponents of the Direct Method believe that Latin should be understood as a language, not a complex code. The Direct Method is an immersion method. It is sometimes called the Nature Method. Students learn Latin in Latin without the interference of their native language. Grammar is taught in the target language. Speaking, listening, writing and reading (not translating) Latin are important components of the Direct Method.

The most popular and readily available Direct Method course is Hans Oerberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, which has become very popular in the United States. Piper Salve is a popular Direct Method Latin course published in Germany. Principia and Pseudolus Noster are part of a two part British series, now out of print.

The Grammar Translation Method

Still, many consider the study of Latin Grammar to be the most important focus of learning a Classical language. The Grammar-Translation method gives grammar the center stage and translation has a supporting role. Students learn declensions and conjugation, paradigms and syntax and apply that knowledge toward the translation of Latin texts into the English language. In a very formal Grammar-Translation course, forms are taught first and only simple syntax. After students have mastered the declensions, conjugations and other morphological paradigms, they then begin to examine syntax more closely. The ability to translate from Latin to idiomatic English is the goal of the Grammar-Translation method. For some very conservative proponents of the Grammar-Translation method, the ultimate goal is a better understanding of the English language. Most Grammar-Translation teachers, however, have the ultimate goal of learning to read and translate Latin with precision and accuracy.

The most famous Grammar-Translation textbook is Wheelock's Latin. Other well-known Grammar-Translation series are Jenney's Latin and Latin for Americans. These three textbooks have been used by Latin students for decades.

A more recent Grammar-Translation textbook is John Traupman's Lingua Latina (not to be confused with Oerberg's Direct Method textbook by the same name.) Galore Park's Latin Prep and So You Really Want to Learn Latin are increasingly becoming popular as well.

Salvete omnes!