STANDARD COURSE OF STUDY
STANDARD COURSE OF STUDYPURPOSE
General
In recent years, educators have been focusing a great deal of attention on the basics of reading and writing as key elements in every student's education. Latin has played an important role in helping students develop literacy skills and English vocabulary. Changes in methodology and materials are ensuring that all students can obtain some level of success learning vocabulary, sentence patterns and studying about Roman-Greco daily life, customs, and mythology.
Latin teachers throughout North Carolina have identified the purposes for Latin study as follows:
- To develop the ability to read and understand a written passage.
- To show the relevance of Latin and the Greco-Roman culture through its influence on modern languages, literatures, and cultures.
- To understand language in general and especially the student's own language(s).
- To understand and appreciate culture in general and especially the students' own culture(s).
- To foster vocabulary expansion.
- To become life-long learners.
- Benefits of Latin Study
The benefits of Latin study have long been documented. Students develop skills and strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, analyzing new sentence structures and comprehending written sentences. Latin study also helps cultivate such mental processes as alertness, attention to detail, memory, logic and critical reasoning.
Literacy Skills and Vocabulary Expansion
Latin contributes to the literacy of students and helps them better understand their native language because it teaches them how language works, it introduces them to grammatical structures far different from English, and it helps them focus on and appreciate the uniqueness of English.
Moreover, Latin vocabulary is easy for speakers of English to acquire because over 65% of all English words come from Latin. So many Latin words have entered the English language, both in everyday language and in technical vocabulary that the study of Latin can help students organize and understand this vocabulary.
Hence, students can lay a solid foundation for language study and at the same time improve their English skills
Acquisition of other languages
Latin equips a student with the strongest single foundation for mastering other languages. Working with Latin broadens the student's connection to structures possible in languages other than English.
Links to other cultures
A background in the classical civilizations connects Americans with the customs, values, and ideas that our culture has in common with Eastern and Western Europeans and with North and South Americans. There are many shared concepts in government, religion, art, literature, and economic systems among these cultures.
The study of the rich and varied culture of the Greeks and Romans, which included exotic customs and constant change leads to acceptance of the views, ideologies, religions and economic systems of foreign peoples
(Adapted from "Why study Latin?" National Committee for Greek and Latin)
Role of Grammar
Grammar plays an essential role in the teaching of Latin. However, the study of grammar per se is not one of the long-term goals of the Latin curriculum. Grammar serves several purposes. It can be used for communication, for understanding one's own language, and as a means for talking about language.
Grammar for Communication
Grammar is a tool for the communication and the comprehension of ideas. Grammatical concepts are taught and applied in context within activities that are designed to guide students toward mastery of the objectives.
It is essential for teachers not to mistake the mastery of grammar for mastery of a particular level of reading proficiency. The memorization of rules and the ability to manipulate patterns out of context are not automatically transferable to reading and writing tasks.
Grammar for Understanding Own Language
Grammar is also a tool for understanding the student's own language. "Latin with all its inflections forces students to focus their attention on language and grammar. It opens their minds to the existence and purpose of grammar" (Luschnig) Students reinforce their understanding of their own grammar while learning the syntax of the Latin language. The study of another language gives them "a grammatical frame of reference. It is easier to learn grammar and what grammar is for when one has something to which to compare it. Without the study of a foreign language, a person cannot fully know his own." (Luschnig)
Traditionally, Latin instruction has highlighted the grammatical connection and the comparison between the two languages. Teachers routinely ask their students to think and discuss how grammatical concepts are conveyed in English, therefore, leading learners to higher levels of thinking such as analyzing and inferring.
Grammar for Talking about Language
Finally, grammar is a tool for talking about language and about how language works. Latin provides students with the needed terminology, which can be used with other languages (including one's own language) to see how they work. Most of our grammar terms are derived from Latin and while they do not always apply to English (e.g., declension), they provide labels for various concepts. Therefore, Latin study enables students to take the language apart and to analyze it.
In addition, through the study of another language, students discover that all languages do not work the same way and that some elements (gender, declensions, word order, etc.) present in one language may not exist in another. "They cease to make naïve assumptions about other languages and cultures solely based upon knowledge of their own." (SFLL p. 53)
Translation
Translation is an important component in the study of Latin. It has value when it is connected to reading and writing and when it can be used as a way of assessing comprehension. However, translation should never be seen as the only means to this end. There are many other ways to determine the reader and writer's level of comprehensions, such as displaying information on charts or graphic organizers, graphically representing an event, or enacting a scene.
Reading and translating are not synonymous. In the former, the readers are active participants interacting with the text as they construct meaning. Successful readers resort to a variety of strategies in order to monitor their own level of comprehension. They may be involved in scanning and skimming and may need to use special "fixup" strategies to make sense of an unknown work. They look at the whole before making sense of the parts. In addition, their rendition of a text is likely to be affected by the mood of that passage.
In translation, students are interested in the individual parts of a sentence and attempts to reconstruct the whole from the individual parts. Students, whether they are engaged in translation from English to Latin of from Latin to English, are involved in structural analysis of both languages. "Translation is an artful skill: sometimes what passes as a ' literal translation' from Latin or Greek into English is not English at all." (SCLL, p.42)
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