The Benefits of Experimental Research in Investigating Latin Reading Strategies
By Rebecca Boyd (George Washington University)
Latin educators in the United States have agonized over Latin reading instruction for over a century. William Gardner Hale published “The Art of Reading Latin: How to Teach it” in 1887, and in each decade that has followed Latin educators have explored how students can become successful readers of Latin.
Mind the Gaps: Between Theory, Goals, and Practice in Teaching Latin Students to Read
By Jacqueline Carlon (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
The scene is a prestigious exam school, in a college prep class for the students’ third and final required year of Latin study, to the relief of virtually all of them. They have not thrived in the program, and yet this third-year curriculum will require a death march through Cicero’s First Catilinarian. Accurate translation is the goal – not reading. Indeed, these students have not been taught the skills necessary to read the text. Are they able to communicate with the text? How does word-for-word translation serve to grow their language skills? What’s the takeaway for them?
Encountering Latin as a Human Language: The Linear Approach for Reading
By Nava Cohen (Northwestern University)
“Studies suggest that word processing . . . strategies cultivated in a first language . . . [have] a major impact on the cognitive processes that are used in reading a second written language” (Akamatsu, 2006). As a result, when students enter a classical language classroom, their existing expectations about language often lead them to treat Latin like a disordered version of English, and they are likely to conclude that the goal of the course is to transform Latin into English by whatever means necessary.
From Syntax to Story: Concepts and Design Principles for Latin Reading Activities
By Suzanne Adema (Leiden University)
Latin students are caught in a Catch 22: they have to unravel the complex structure of sentences to comprehend Latin texts, while text comprehension is an important tool to unravel these sentences (Pennel-Ross 2008). Due to their struggle at the sentence level, students cannot really understand, experience and enjoy Latin narrative texts (cf. Janssen, Braaksma, Rijlaarsdam 2006). Their teachers need resources to take them from syntax to story.
The Comprehensible Cosmos of Orbis Sensualium Pictus: John Amos Comenius’s Vision for Joyful Latin Reading and Learning
By Evan Dutmer (Culver Academies)
Jan Amos Komenský (1592-1670), better known as Comenius, is widely considered to be one of the first and most important systematic European educational reformers. His student-centered pedagogy is generally held to be among the first ‘progressive’ teaching models adopted on a wide scale in the Early Modern era. He is best known for his Orbis Sensualium Pictus (“The Visible World in Pictures”), thought to be the first picture book intended for children in the European tradition.
Reading in a Multisensory Environment: The Visual Latin Reading Library
By John Gruber-Miller (Cornell College)
What does it mean to read Latin? The challenges of finding classical texts that are accessible and comprehensible for third- and fourth-year Latin students are well known. Even at this level, few students have the lexical, syntactic, and generic knowledge to comfortably read canonical texts with a degree of facility (Gruber-Miller and Mulligan 2022). This question becomes even more vexed when attempting to find suitable readings for beginning readers. How can teachers find novice and intermediate level Latin texts that are easy to read without frequent recourse to a dictionary?