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NEW FIRST STEPS IN LATIN TEACHER’S MANUAL NEW FIRST STEPS IN LATIN TEACHER’S MANUAL Lee Pearcy Mary Allen Thomas Kent Michael Klaasen Mary Van Dyke Konopka Alexander Pearson Department of Classical Languages The Episcopal Academy Focus Publishing Newburyport, Massachusetts 2001 Copyright © 2001 The Department of Classical Languages, The Episcopal Academy ISBN 1-58510-026-9 This book is published by Focus Publishing, R. Pullins & Company, Inc., PO Box 369, Newburyport MA 01950. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording, or by any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Part One: Introduction 1. Latin and Grammar This textbook is based on two propositions: that learning Grammar is important, and that learning Latin is a good way to learn Grammar. It is designed for Middle School students (that is, young people aged 12-14) whose teachers accept those propositions and know Latin well. Why is it important to learn Grammar? And for that matter, why write “Grammar” with a capital letter? Grammar (with a small g) is a description of how a particular language works, and in this sense we say that each language has its own grammar. In English, for example, it is ungrammatical to put a word strongly marked as an object before its verb if a word strongly marked as a subject follows the verb, and a sentence like “Him saw I” is ungrammatical, although “Him I saw” is not. Latin has no such constraints on the order of marked words, and eum vîdî ego and eum ego vîdî are both grammatical. The two languages have different grammars. Capitalized Grammar, on the other hand, describes how language in general works. In this sense we can speak of a universal Grammar, common to all users of human languages, and we can say that Latin and English have the same Grammar (S. Pinker, The Language Instinct 1994, 230-240). Learning Grammar gives human beings a window into the processes by which their minds interact with the world. They become aware of themselves thinking, and they become better at it. The categories and terminology that have been developed to describe Latin grammar make a reasonably good fit with the categories and terminology of Grammar. Nouns, verbs, their modifiers, subjects, predicates, and many other concepts traditionally used to describe Latin seem in fact to be applicable to language in general. Even the distinction between vocabulary and syntax, which plays so fundamental a part in the layout of lessons in this book, seems to be wired into the neural circuits of the human brain. Learning Latin is a good way to learn Grammar. Since all languages are equally grammatical, it may seem that learning any language would develop understanding of Grammar. In fact several circumstances make Latin a better-than-average choice as a tool for helping young adolescents learn about Grammar. Because Latin has no living native speakers, nearly everyone who uses Latin must come to it by exercising powers of analytic and synthetic reasoning. Learners in the grammar-translation method, which this book uses, organize and master the elements of Latin, and they use these elements to build structures of meaning. Before these acts become unconscious, they take place at the level of consciousness; a student learns to recite the declension of puella before being able to respond automatically with puellae as the plural of puella or making either the subject of a sentence. Young adolescents of middle-school age are beginning to develop their ability to analyse, synthesize, and think in abstract terms. Latin at this age can be a powerful tool for the development of their intellectual powers. Latin, also, has evolved into a special kind of language. It is a classicised, regularized form of the living, untidy language of the Roman street and forum. The Romans themselves began to eliminate 1 the inconsistencies of their own speech, and generations of teachers and grammarians have continued the process. Romans before Cicero’s generation had no difficulty in saying audîbô or audîbis (Plautus, Captivi 619), but they quickly settled on audiam and audiês as the standard forms of the future indicative. Even though we know that Cicero wrote servos for servus, we choose not to follow his practice, and yet in our texts of Donne we may find “Goe, and catch a falling Starre,” just as Donne wrote. Unlike Latin, English preserves historical spellings alongside its currently standard ones. Latin grammar books tell us that “Stems in -quo, like equo-, change qu to c before u. Thus, —ecus (earlier equos) equi, equo, ecum (earlier equom), eque” (Allen and Greenough, New Latin Grammar par. 46, n.1). We write equum, and so do our grammar books. The regularization and standardization of the Latin enshrined in textbooks make it easy for young students to recognize patterns and to use these patterns to construct in their minds the basic grammar of the language, and so of language in general. Latin has advantages over any living language as a tool for learning about Grammar. Learning Latin will often, as many English-speakers have observed, help students to understand the grammar of English, but that synergy only partially justifies the effort needed to learn Latin. Latin and English have in fact very different grammars, and many of the categories and terminology of Latin grammar do not fit English very well. 2. Learning Latin with First Steps The middle-schoolers for whom this textbook has been designed are passing through a time of intense, concentrated intellectual growth. They encounter mathematical concepts like variables and equations, literature that demands careful analysis of plot and character, and abstract grammatical concepts like subject and predicate. Learning these new things can easily make learning itself mysterious. Learning Latin gives these young adolescents an opportunity to become aware of their learning as it happens. In addition to learning the language, they learn an elaborate, articulated vocabulary for describing it, and with the help of their teachers they use this grammatical vocabulary to develop conscious strategies for organizing and controlling the facts of the language. Knowing this, we have kept in mind those for whom learning, especially where language is concerned, may not come easily. Intelligent young children often develop unconscious strategies to cope with specific difficulties in processing language. Studying Latin, we believe, helps these students in their adolescence by giving them conscious strategies to supplement their unconscious repertoire. For many students, learning Latin is like learning to read again. They must once again associate phonemes with symbols, learn rules of sequencing, and extract meaning from marks on a page. In some cases, difficulties and learning differences which students experienced and overcame when they learned to read their native language resurface as they try to learn Latin. These students can use Latin as a tool to become better learners, and First Steps in Latin has been designed to help them and their teachers. While these features will make learning Latin easier for 2 all students, they are especially important for students with learning differences: Elimination of distractions. First Steps has deliberately been made austere. Everything in the book is important. A student does not have to decide what is important to learn and what can be skipped. Nothing can be skipped. Focus on one skill at a time. Traditional grammar describes language in terms of single elements and categories. When language is taught by the grammar-translation method, instruction focuses on one aspect at a time, and in the student’s mind deliberate analysis precedes deliberate synthesis. The grammar-translation method presents the morphology, lexicon, and syntax of a language separately. In the grammartranslation classroom, activities target one aspect of language, and often one cognitive skill, at a time. Dictation, for example, targets auditory processing, and quizzes on forms test a student’s memory. This individuation of linguistic concepts and cognitive skills makes it possible to identify the particular concepts and skills with which students have difficulty. A teacher can then tailor classroom activities and assignments to reinforce the difficult matter. Students who have difficulty with a specific skill can become aware of this learning difference and work to remedy it. Repetition and Review. Repetitio mater memoriae. All students benefit from constant review of concepts, formulas, and data. As far as possible, we have tried to make First Steps in Latin beneficial by making it repetitious; for example, the rule for forming the perfect stem is always given in the words, “The perfect stem is found by removing the final –î from the third principal part.” This sentence appears five times in First Steps. We have also tried to make sure that in the heart of the book (Lessons IX-XXVII) every word presented in vocabulary appears in a sentence at least once within every five chapters. Consistency. We have also taken great pains to make the format of each lesson consistent, so that paradigms, explanations, vocabulary, and exercises always have the same general appearance and structure. Students will find it easy to know how to approach each lesson and to consult previous lessons. A Reference, not a Text. Because middle schoolers learn from their teachers and from each other, not from their textbooks, we have designed First Steps in Latin to be used as a book for reference and consultation, not as a textbook. First Steps will work best when students turn to the left-hand pages after the new grammar of a lesson has been presented and drilled, not before. 3. Teaching with the Grammar-Translation Method and First Steps There are three ways to teach Latin: the oral-aural method, the reading-in-context method, and the grammar-translation method. None of these methods is essentially superior to the others; it is important to note, however, that each of them has somewhat different aims, and that each of them does different things to the minds of students. 3 The three methods and the teachers who use them differ in the value and weight they give to the four skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. All give reading first priority and acknowledge that learning to read Latin is an important goal of studying the language, but they place varying degrees of emphasis on the remaining three skills. First Steps in Latin emphasizes learning to read Latin sentences but gives nearly equal weight to learning to write them, and each lesson includes as many or nearly as many English-to-Latin sentences as Latin-to-English. Listening, whether to dictation exercise or to Latin spoken in the classroom, ranks third, with speaking a distant fourth. Oral recitation, however, plays an important part in the grammar-translation method. In addition, the grammar-translation method places great emphasis on developing in the student a systematic understanding of language and an ability to describe language accurately. Parsing, diagramming, writing synopses, and other activities promote this understanding. The grammar-translation method can in fact be defined by this emphasis. As its name suggests, in the grammar-translation method no form, lexical item, or syntactical rule is used until it has been explained. Grammar precedes translation, and students construct their knowledge of Latin by deduction. Most good Latin teachers use techniques from all three methods, and the following general observations about teaching with First Steps will be familiar to many. What may seem novel is our insistence that the consistency and repetitiveness of the text be reflected in the consistency of a teacher’s practice. Middle schoolers are creative thinkers. They learn best, we believe, when their creative thinking occurs in a framework of clear, consistent expectations. Learning Latin, also, involves paying attention to detail. Details become easier to organize and master when they are consistently presented. Good Latin teachers also use Latin. The more Latin heard, spoken, written, and read, the better. Ten examples are worth a hundred explanations. Consistency. The more important an activity, the more important it is to do it in exactly the same way every time. Every Latin class should begin and end in the same way. Some teachers begin every class with a review of forms or vocabulary; others begin with spoken greetings in Latin. The choice of activity is less important than its consistent presence. Every time a student or teacher manipulates the language, that manipulation should follow a clear, explicit order. Following this practice will help students develop a sense of the basic framework of Latin. The construction of a noun or adjective, for example, should always be given in the order CASE, NUMBER, GENDER; verb tenses should always be listed in the order PRESENT, IMPERFECT, FUTURE; PERFECT, PLUPERFECT, FUTURE PERFECT; verbs should always be construed in the order PERSON, NUMBER, TENSE, MOOD, VOICE. Students should follow these orders in oral recitation, written exercises, classroom games, and every time they describe a substantive or verb. 4 Repetition. Latin classes never leave the first chapter behind. Learning Latin is not a linear process; instead, it resembles a recursive spiral, in which a return to first principles precedes every advance in knowledge. Some of every Latin class should always be devoted to review of previous work, and every test should include questions on material that the students have already learned. To some extent, the recursive structure of grammar and the design of First Steps make some repetition inevitable, but a good teacher will build in more. Speaking. Language is sound in the air. This statement is true even of Latin, a language with no living native speakers, and true even when Latin is taught with reading and grammatical understanding as its principal objectives. From their first Latin class, students should be taught to pronounce Latin carefully and accurately. Many teachers focus on the consonants characteristic of Latin, the hard c and semivocalic v. It is more important, we believe, to do everything possible to help students master the vowel sounds and accentuation of Latin. A student who becomes accustomed from the beginning to say ámô, ámâs, ámat, not amó amás amát, and to pronouncing the differences between long and short i and long and short e will find it harder to confuse dūceris with dūcēris or to suppose that mīseram means “an unhappy girl.” Even in a grammar-translation classroom there is a place for spoken Latin. Middle schoolers enjoy learning and using Latin greetings, commands, and requests. Plays and skits, Latin oral reports, and other activities can reinforce a student’s knowledge of Latin phonology as well as of other aspects of the language. Even a teacher who does not want to speak Latin in the classroom should make sure that no Latin is ever translated, analyzed, or discussed until it has been read aloud, with correct pronunciation. Listening. Learning to hear and to comprehend Latin as it is read or spoken can promote the important skill of understanding a Latin sentence as it unfolds. If students are to read Latin fluently, they cannot approach a sentence as a snarl of words to be untangled by “looking for the verb.” Instead, they must learn to process a sentence in its Latin order, clause by clause. Responding to spoken commands in Latin can help students develop this skill. Dictation (or dictâmen) is another important tool of the grammar-translation method. From the earliest stages students can be asked to listen to a word or short phrase, write it down, and translate it. Successive sentences should repeat a single pattern, and students should gradually become accustomed to longer and longer sentences. Writing. By a paradox of a kind not infrequent in education, giving students practice only in reading Latin is not the best way to teach them to read Latin. Writing Latin has been a traditional and effective part of learning to read Latin by the grammar-translation method. Active command of vocabulary and syntax comes into play mostly in the act of translating sentences and longer passages from English into Latin. A typical chapter in First Steps includes nearly as many English-to-Latin sentences as Latin-to-English. Students should become accustomed as soon as possible to using idiomatic Latin word order and to looking for varied ways of expressing the same idea in Latin. 5 Composition does not mean only direct translation from English into Latin. Students may be asked to write answers in Latin to simple questions (Quid est in picturâ? Ubi sunt librî tuî?) or to complete sentences in which some word has been omitted. Any activity that encourages students to produce Latin will promote their ability to understand it. Reading. Reading a sentence like the one which opens Cicero’s Third Oration Against Catiline constitutes one of the most complex mental actions that we ask our students to perform. Instruction by the grammar-translation method aims to develop students who can read and understand such a sentence without having to translate or decode it, who can produce an accurate, idiomatic English translation of it, and who can describe completely its grammatical and rhetorical structures. Those complex abilities are made up of individual, easily managed skills. In the beginning, conscious analysis, memorization, and labor precede understanding. A student learns that -tis is the second person singular ending, that it means “you,” that it is added to the present stem of the verb to make the present active, and so on. From these data the student can conclude with deliberation that vidêtis means “you see.” Consistent, repetitive practice makes this process almost automatic, so that the student hears or looks at vidêtis and knows that it means “you see.” That automatic knowledge combines with many other kinds to allow a student to read Cicero’s 47-word period, from Rem publicam through vidêtis. Latin sentences can be long, complex, and occasionally difficult, but learning to read them need not be. First Steps tries to make the process of learning to read Latin orderly and progressive. Students should become accustomed to short, simple sentences in a limited number of patterns before they see variations on those patterns. When a new form or pattern is presented, it can be practiced by varying the sentences in earlier lessons. Reading is, however, an inherently unnatural act. Human beings do not read without instruction. We must learn to read, consciously and sometimes with difficulty. Latin teachers need to be aware of the fundamental cognitive components of reading: sequencing, decoding, auditory and visual processing, and the rest. In the grammar-translation method, some classroom activities isolate one or two of these components. Teachers need to be alert to the Latin student who has difficulty with one or more of these components. Together with reading and learning specialists, Latin teachers can play an important role in helping such students become better students in all subjects, not just Latin. 4. Conclusion Somewhere between the mechanical action of the eye scanning a page and the mind's assimilation of knowledge a miracle occurs. Our understanding of the morphology, vocabulary, and syntax of the language in which we read combines with our expectations and sense of context to process foreign information into meaning. The miraculous moment is brief if we are reading in our native languages, extended if we read in Latin. To read in Latin we must build categories about language and form expectations about context in a more deliberate manner than when 6 we learned our native or second language. As Frank Smith puts it, “’Teaching’ is often little more than telling children that a category exists” (Understanding Reading: a Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read 1988, 12). There is a great difference between Latin and English in the morphology alone, and that difference increases exponentially when syntax becomes involved. The experience is more taxonomical than sequential. We have chosen the grammar/translation method to teach Latin because it exercises uniquely the linguistic skills involved in building categories and forming expectations about individual words, phrases, whole sentences, and texts. When students successfully acquire Latin, their way of approaching language changes permanently. Our grammar book aims to emphasize that change because we believe that this approach to language is a unique and valuable contribution to culture. 7 Part Two: Some Basic Tools Learners and teachers working together must share basic tools. Teachers must be masters of the tools, and students must work to learn how to use them. Experienced teachers who use the grammartranslation method have a large tool kit, but some basic tools appear in every good teacher’s box, and in their students’ hands. 1. Flash Cards Repetition, review, consistency, and focus on one skill at a time are cornerstones of the grammar-translation method. In learning vocabulary, students need a system that encourages them to review and master all relevant grammatical and lexical information about each word in the First Steps lexicon. Flash cards can be an important teaching and learning tool in this process, and in learning morphological and syntactical information as well. Both teachers and students can use flash cards. In teaching with First Steps, we have found it helpful to make large flash cards on 8 ½ x 11 card stock for use in the classroom. These classroom cards can be used for oral drill, vocabulary quizzes, and other exercises. Students make their own cards on 3 x 5 blanks, and making the cards is an important part of learning Latin. Teachers should inspect the cards to make sure that students are following the pattern set for them by the classroom cards. There are three kinds of flash cards, one each for vocabulary, forms, and rules. Each kind should be in a distinctive color. We have used white for vocabulary cards, pink for form cards, and blue for rules cards. VERB 3rd conjugation to lead dûcô, dûcere, dûxi, ductum ductile introduce Fig. 1 Vocabulary cards have the English meaning on one side, and Latin lexical and grammatical information on the other. Cards for verbs have the principal parts, spelled out in full, in the center and the part of speech, conjugation, and derivatives in three corners (fig. 1). Cards for nouns have the nominative singular, genitive singular, and gender in the center on one side and the part of speech, declension, and derivatives in three corners. Cards for other parts of speech follow this basic pattern. Forms cards have the name of a category of forms on one side and a paradigm of endings on the other (fig. 2). 8 -A -AE -AE -ÂRUM -AE -ÎS -AM -ÂS -Â -ÎS first declension endings Fig. 2 Rules cards have the name of a rule on one side and a statement of the rule on the other. Rules cards are used only for the very few rules that are so useful that they must be memorized: the rules of agreement or concord, and the so-called “neuter law.” 2. The Synopsis A synopsis is an ordered list of all the forms of a verb in a specified person, number, and for forms that are so marked, gender. Figure 3 gives a sample synopsis form. Few exercises give students more practice in the essential patterns and variations of the formation of Latin verbs. Even advanced students benefit from regular practice with synopses. A synopsis also gives students a view of the basic structure of a Latin verb. Many students, perhaps especially those for whom learning patterns is difficult, find it easier to acquire a new piece of the pattern if they have seen from the beginning the whole pattern, even those parts that they have yet to learn. We have found it helpful to give students the complete synopsis form as soon as they have learned all six tenses of the indicative mood in active and passive voices. Students learn to fill out only the forms that they have learned, but they also learn where those forms fit into the complete structure of Latin verbs. From Latin 1 to Advanced Placement Latin, every test should include a synopsis. 3. Sentence Diagrams A sentence diagram is a visual representation of the syntactical structure of a sentence. Many teachers will remember diagramming as a fundamental part of their English courses in school; for those who have not had much experience with constructing sentence diagrams, a good handbook of English grammar, like Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition, will give instructions and examples. First Steps includes examples of a few basic types of sentence diagrams to illustrate specific points of syntax. Sentence diagrams become useful at several points as students learn Latin by the grammar-translation method. Diagrams can reinforce and explicate new points of syntax when they first appear; they are especially useful, we have found, in explaining different types of modifying structures, like adverbial or adjectival phrases. Diagrams can also be used when students have difficulty with a particular sentence, either Latin to English or English to Latin. Not every sentence need be diagrammed, but it is important to give students regular practice in understanding sentences in this way. 9 Part Three: In the Classroom 1. Before We Open the Book Beginnings and endings are the most important moments in a classroom. The first five minutes and last five minutes of any class can determine the success or failure of everything between, and the first days of a Latin course for middle schoolers can shape the rest of their experience with the subject. Middle schoolers learn from each other and from their teacher before they learn from a textbook. They learn by seeing, hearing, speaking, and moving. The first days of Latin class should engage all these modes and actions and focus them on a single objective: making the students ready to learn Latin by the grammar-translation method. Readiness includes making a first acquaintance with: • • • • The sounds of Latin The Latin alphabet The concept that endings of Latin words affect their use The distinction between stem and ending Experienced middle-school teachers often spend as much as a week in activities designed to reinforce these concepts. The sounds of Latin come first. Even though New First Steps does not emphasize speaking Latin, it is important for students to develop an accurate, consistent pronunciation. Many teachers believe that it is important that the first words that students hear in their first Latin class should be Latin. Salvête, discipulî et discipulae makes a good beginning; what happens next will depend on the teacher’s facility with spoken Latin. After saying Nômen meum est Magister/Magistra N_____________, the teacher may ask one student, Quid est nômen tuum? and elicit the response, Nômen meum est N________________. That student asks another in turn, until the question and answer have moved through the class. John Traupman, Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency (Wauconda, Ill., 2nd ed. 1997) gives dialogues based on authentic classical vocabulary and syntax. Songs and skits in Latin are an effective way to reinforce accurate pronunciation and grammatical concepts. Students enjoy memorizing and performing simple dialogues, even before they can translate or parse what they are saying. Even the least orally-minded teacher should make sure that no sentence is ever translated into English without first being read aloud, carefully, in Latin. The Latin alphabet and practice in reading Latin aloud belongs at the end of the introductory lessons, although even on the first day a teacher can write Salvete on the board and invite the observation that the letter /v/ has a different sound in Latin than in English. Latin labels on the mensae, iânua, fenestra, and other objects in the classroom can make students familiar with the Latin alphabet and serve as well to make games and other activities easier. The concept that endings of Latin words affect their use should be firmly in every student’s mind before opening New First Steps for the first time. Activities during the first days of class can 10 inculcate this concept. Many teachers like to give their students Latin names; it is easy to ask what feature distinguishes the names of boys from those of girls. Simple action verbs like surgô, ambulô, and sedeô lend themselves to several kinds of activities in which movement reinforces learning. The teacher may give simple commands first to one student (Surge! Sede! Ambulâ ad fenestram!) and then to the class (Surgite! Sedête! Ambulâte!). The teacher then asks what is different about the commands in each situation. A more ambitious activity introduces students to the primary personal endings. The teacher puts a chair in front of one student and sits in it. Standing, she says, Surgô. She then gestures to the student to stand, and as the student rises, says, Surgis. Turning to the class and pointing to the student, she says, Surgit. She sits down again and gestures to the whole class to rise: Surgimus. Pointing to them, she says, Surgitis. Turning to one student and indicating the whole class, she says, Surgunt. After this entire sequence has been repeated three or four times, the teacher can initiate a discussion of how and why the words differ. At the end of the exercise, the teacher writes on the board -ô -s -t -mus -tis -nt and sends the students away to learn this paradigm. They are ready to begin New First Steps. The distinction between stem and ending is best presented in general terms as part of the first days’ activities, after students have learned that endings affect meaning. Students need to know the terms “stem” and “ending,” and that part of every word will change depending on its use, while part will remain the same. 2. A Sample Lesson Middle schoolers learning Latin need to read, write, hear, and speak Latin in every Latin class. They need a variety of activities in each class; a good rule of thumb, in fact, is to divide the class period into segments of ten to fifteen minutes each and plan one activity for each segment. Middle schoolers learn best when they encounter variety within a framework of consistent expectations. The beginning and end of each class should be nearly the same every day. Many teachers post an agenda, prefaced by HODIE and perhaps the date or day of the week in Latin, in the same place in the classroom every day. Students soon learn where to look for the day’s work and the next day’s assignment. Students often enjoy having a Latin proverb, motto, or other expression as part of the written agenda. We have chosen to give a sample set of activities for Lesson V, First Declension Nouns. This lesson presents grammatical concepts, a paradigm, and rules of syntax, and it contains several new vocabulary words as well as sentences to be translated. Lesson V is thus typical of chapters in New First Steps. The following activities might occupy two or three class meetings, depending on the class’s ability and the length of each instructional period. 11 a. Review. At the end of the previous class, the teacher had told the students to prepare flash cards for the three new vocabulary words in Vocabulary V. As the students enter the room, the teacher inspects their flash cards. When they are seated, the teacher greets them in Latin and reviews orally the words from Vocabulary IV, adding the three new words from Vocabulary V one at a time. b. Etymology. The teacher asks what derivatives students have discovered for the three new vocabulary items. Students who have not been able to find derivatives add them to their flash cards at this time. c. New concepts. The teacher explains that Lesson V is about nouns, and that the class will be thinking about and paying attention to nouns as it moves through the lesson. After making sure that students know what a noun is, the teacher may wish to remind the students that English too expresses different concepts, like number and possession, by changing the ending of a noun. The concepts case, number, and gender should be introduced and explained, although at this point students should not be expected to do more than become acquainted with them. They will learn them during the following activities. d. Sentence manipulation. The class now turns to Exercise V.A, the Latin to English sentences. The objective of working with these sentences at this point is to make sure that students can identify a noun and to give them practice in applying the concepts of case, number, and gender. Before beginning, the teacher may want to point out that all the nouns in Exercise V.A are in the nominative case and that singular nouns in that case end in –a, and plural nouns in –ae. A student reads each sentence aloud, and the teacher asks questions about it. “Is there a noun in this sentence?” “What is it?” “What case is it?” “What number?” “What gender?” Not all the sentences need be done in this way. Translation at this point should be avoided, since it only distracts students’ attention from the objectives of this activity. e. New paradigm. The students must now begin to learn the names of the cases in order, and the endings for first declension associated with those cases in singular and plural. Latin teachers have developed many techniques for helping students memorize patterned information like this. Middle schoolers will not object to rote learning, and they enjoy chanting, movement, and games. Teachers will want to make sure that the new paradigm is presented in ways that make it accessible to auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners; for example, one drill might begin with the teacher writing first declension endings on the board and having the class chant the endings as the teacher points to each one. Then the teacher erases one ending at a time, until the students are comfortable reciting the endings without seeing them. The students then practice reciting the paradigm while standing, clapping, or performing some other action for plural forms, leaning right for singular and left for plural, and so on. After the students have drilled with endings, the teacher must prepare for the next activity by explaining the rule for forming the stem of any Latin noun. The students should then practice forming stems of the nouns learned so far and declining them orally and in writing. A blackboard relay or other game is a good way to practice this skill. 12 f. Sentence manipulation and translation. The class now turns back to Exercise V.A. Again, a student reads each sentence aloud. This time, the reader or another student also translates the sentence into English. The teacher may again ask about the case, number, and gender of any nouns in the sentence; this time, however, students should also practice changing the number of every noun, singular to plural and plural to singular. As this activity moves along, the teacher may want to point out that when the number of a sentence’s subject changes, the number of the verb will change also, and to ask the students to make that change as well. If this is done, at the end of this activity the teacher can call the students’ attention to the first rule of concord in Lesson V; if not, practice with agreement of subject and verb can be the core of another activity. g. English to Latin. These sentences lend themselves to a variety of activities. In the early lessons, the English-to-Latin sentences are simple enough that they can be done orally; in later lessons, each sentence can be given to one student to be put on the board or presented to the class in other ways. Once students have learned to diagram sentences, they can be divided into pairs, and one member of the group can diagram the sentence while the other translates it into Latin. A single English-to-Latin sentence can be the starting point for several kinds of activities: singular-to-plural or plural-to-singular transformations, substitutions, and so on. One student, for example, may translate “The farmer has sung” into Latin; a second student may then be asked for the Latin for “The farmers have sung,” a third for “The girl was singing,” a fourth for “The girls were singing,” and so on. h. Roman culture. What did a Roman epistula look like? How did a Roman send it? How long did it take to reach its destination? How many Romans could read and write? What is the farthest straight-line distance that a Roman letter could travel without leaving the Roman Empire? Questions like these grown naturally out of vocabulary and sentences, and teachers should take advantage of middle schoolers’ curiosity by encouraging them to think about the Roman realities that the words suggest. Good teachers, however, will keep the students’ attention focused on language, not culture. New First Steps is about words and how they work, not about the Romans and how they lived, and the presentation of Roman culture in the classroom should always be in the context of language. i. Homework. Homework should draw on the class’s activities in the period before it is assigned. A carefully given homework assignment can become the review and wrap-up with which many good teachers end each class. (On the importance of such routines, see Jon Saphier and Robert Gower, The Skillful Teacher 1997, 85-100.) Well-devised homework gives students further practice in the skills and concepts that they have done most recently under their teacher’s supervision. Additional sentences for translation, vocabularies or paradigms to memorize, flash cards to prepare, or similar activities reinforce what students have learned in class and play an important part in the transfer of new information from short-term to long-term memory. 13 Homework should never be mere busy work, and the teacher’s inspection of it should be more than cursory. Middle schoolers need to know that accuracy is important, and homework gives them an opportunity to develop habits of accuracy without direct supervision. In constructing a lesson from these activities, teachers should give careful thought to the order in which the activities occur. In the grammar-translation method, students always encounter the rule before the example, the vocabulary before the sentence, and the letter before the spirit. The austerity of this method has advantages. At a crucial period in their intellectual growth, middle-school students learn what a structure of knowledge is. Their knowledge of Latin, acquired by a systematic process of theory, practice, and review, can serve them as a pattern for future learning in many areas. 14 Part Four: Teaching Notes The following section of this manual offers specific suggestions and brief comments on each lesson in New First Steps. Lesson I: Verbs The first lesson lays the foundation for further work on verbs, which are the heart of New First Steps. It assumes that students have had several days of preliminary classroom work like that described in Part Three above. The goals of this Lesson are: • To become acquainted with the terms PERSON, NUMBER, TENSE, MOOD, VOICE; • • • To learn the concept of PRINCIPAL PARTS; To be able to form the present stem of a regular first conjugation verb; To be able to form and translate the present indicative active of a regular first conjugation verb. Students should be told that they will be expected to know terms that are introduced in SMALL CAPITALS. Reinforce the concept of stem and ending by pointing out that in paradigms throughout this book, the unchanged part of the word will be in black and the part that changes, in red. Students will need practice in the three ways of expressing the present tense. Every verb (except, of course, those modified by non) in Exercise I.A should be translated in all three ways; teachers who use Latin in the classroom can use the prompt aliter to elicit the responses. Lesson II: Imperfect Tense The second lesson introduces two tenses, the imperfect and the future. For the most part, students find the future tense unproblematic but find the concept of the imperfect difficult to grasp. The difficulty lies in understanding that tenses are subjective. The imperfect describes the action as the speaker thinks of it, not as it actually is. If the speaker thinks of the action as ongoing, continuous, repeated, habitual, or interrupted in past time, he or she will present it as imperfect. Successful strategies for presenting this concept include: • • • Constant practice in translating imperfect verbs in several ways. In addition to those listed in the lesson, students should become accustomed to the auxiliaries “kept (on),” as in “I kept (on) loving,” and “began,” as in “I began to love.” Graphic presentation of verbs on a time line (Figure 4). Emphasis on “was/were + -ing” as the sign of an imperfect idea in English. It is important to emphasize that “–ing” is an essential part of the expression, in order to avoid later confusion with perfect passives and other auxiliary uses of “was/were.” Students can now begin to practice transforming verbs from present to imperfect to future: laudâmus/laudâbâmus/laudâbimus. In 15 preparation for the next lesson, the teacher may want to emphasize that these are the tenses formed from the present stem. Lesson III: Perfect Tense Many teachers associate the term “aorist” with Greek, where it names a morphologically distinct tense, but it is useful for helping Latin students understand that the perfect tense in Latin describes two distinct concepts: action of undefined duration in past time (the aorist), and action in the past whose effects endure in the present (the true perfect). Students should be told that the perfect is the normal past tense in Latin, and that in translating a sentence like “You sang” from Latin to English they should use a perfect tense. Lesson IV: Pluperfect Tense Students who have mastered the concept of stem, tense sign, and personal ending find no difficulty in learning to form the pluperfect and future perfect tenses. More often they struggle to understand the concepts behind these tenses. Informal English often uses a simple past to express completed action before another action in past time: Haec erat urbs, de quâ poetae scrîpserant, “This was the city about which the poets wrote.” English also commonly uses a present tense to express action before another action in the future: Si poeta vênerit, carmina bona canêmus, “If the poet comes, we will sing good songs.” Accordingly, students often offer “have” or “had” indifferently as translations for the perfect and pluperfect, and they find the future perfect, which has nearly disappeared from all but the most formal written English, as mysterious as “thee” and “thou.” Although in the previous lessons students gained from learning a variety of translations for a single tense, in this lesson they will find their task easier if the teacher insists on the one-to-one equivalence of the Latin pluperfect and the English “had,” and the Latin future perfect and the Latin “will have.” A time line may help students see the relationship of the tenses to one another. perfect pluperfect future present imperfect future perfect Fig. 4 The vocabulary for Lesson IV presents nouns for the first time. Students must learn that there are four essential pieces of information for every noun: nominative singular, genitive singular, gender, and meaning. Lesson V: First Declension Nouns Sample activities for Lesson V have been given above, in Part Three. 16 Lesson VI: Second Conjugation Because the rules of formation for the present system (present, imperfect, and future tenses) are the same for first and second conjugations, Lesson VI gives students an opportunity to review and consolidate their knowledge of these forms. Lesson VI also follows up the distinction between subject and predicate, introduced in Lesson V, by presenting some important grammatical concepts and techniques: • • Direct objects The distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs When they have finished this lesson, students should be able to: • • • • Identify the subject and direct object of a simple sentence, in Latin or English State what case the subject or direct object is Correctly translate simple Subject-Object-Verb sentences Diagram a simple S.O.V. sentence in Latin or English The statement, “If a sentence has a verb in the first or second person, its subject cannot be a noun,” may seem to be contradicted by sentences like Senex multa didici. Senex is not, however, the subject of this sentence (Allen and Greenough par. 282); instead, it is in apposition with the subject contained in the verb didici. Lesson VII: Perfect, Pluperfect, and Future Perfect Tenses Since students have already learned how to form the perfect system of regular first conjugation verbs, this lesson and others like it present no entirely new grammatical information. Teachers should take advantage of this opportunity to review and consolidate the students’ knowledge of verb formation and translation. Gapping (sometimes called “ellipsis”) is so pervasive a feature of Latin that we have chosen to present it in explicit terms early in New First Steps. Students should be encouraged to find examples of it in English and Latin and to use it in the sentences they write. For further comments on gapping, see G. Knudsvig and D. Ross, “The Linguistic Perspective,” in R. LaFleur, Latin for the 21st Century 1998, 29-30. Lesson VIII: Second Declension Nouns Like Lesson V, this lesson deals with nouns. Students have already encountered the rule for forming the stem of any Latin noun, but the teacher may want to emphasize that it applies to all declensions. Students should practice forming the stem of all nouns presented so far. On hearing that “Masculine nouns of the second declension have a nominative singular ending in –us or –r,” some students conclude that the nominative singular ending can be –us or –r indifferently. The teacher will want to emphasize the four essential pieces of information about every noun, first presented in Lesson IV, and to point out that the nominative singular is immutable. Since the vocative differs from the nominative only for second-declension nouns in –us, paradigms in New First Steps at this 17 point do not include it. The vocative will be treated in New Second Steps. Lesson IX: Second Declension Nouns (Continued) Our presentation of the difference between nouns like liber and nouns like puer is pedagogically functional but historically inaccurate. The -e- does not disappear from the oblique cases of nouns like liber but has in fact intruded itself after an original nominative *libros lost its ending (Allen and Greenough par. 45). There are very few nouns like puer, in which the stem and nominative singular are identical. Puer and vir are the only such nouns in New First Steps. The so-called “Neuter Law,” the rule for the nominative and accusative of neuter nouns given in this lesson, is one of the few rules worth memorizing verbatim. If students know it by heart, it can be used to help them distinguish subject from object in sentences like Factum puerum terret. Lesson X: Third Conjugation: Consonant Verbs In the present system, third conjugation consonant stem verbs differ only in detail from verbs of the other regular conjugations. They represent a class of verbs in which a short vowel connects stem to ending, and their present stem can in fact be described as the second principal part minus -re, as in the other conjugations. (For a fuller explanation, see Allen and Greenough par. 174.) We have found, however, that students find it easier to learn the present system of the third conjugation when it is presented as an exception to the general rule. In practice, most successful Latin students probably master the present tense of third conjugation verbs by simply memorizing -o, -is, it, -imus, -itis, -unt as a special variation on the standard endings, like the special endings of the perfect active. Students will need a great deal of practice in learning to differentiate present tense verbs of the second conjugation from future tenses of the third. Many teachers incorporate a thorough review of verbs presented so far into this lesson and the next. Lesson XI: Third Conjugation: Consonant Verbs This lesson gives students another opportunity to review the formation of the perfect system and to practice differentiating the three tenses. Students usually find it self-evident that two or more nouns become plural and require a plural verb, but pointing out the fact and practicing with the first sentences in Exercise A provide an opportunity to reinforce the importance of the First Rule of Concord and the general concept of agreement. In learning Latin, students also learn that the parts of a sentence are inter-connected. Lessons XII and XIII: Adjectives Learning the paradigm of a regular adjective like bonus requires students to review the endings of first and second declension nouns. Every effort should be made to help them see even at this early stage that case, number, and gender are abstractions, distinct from the 18 letters that represent them. If they practice declining nouns with adjectives, including combinations like liber bonus, fîlius noster, and poeta magnus, they will find it easier to understand this distinction and deal with third declension nouns and adjectives when the time comes. Teachers may want to point out that meus, tuus, noster, and vester often, and multus usually, precede the noun they modify, and that when the possessive adjectives appear with other adjectives modifying a single noun, they are not connected by a conjunction. Thus “the large, unhappy girl” is puella magna et misera, but “my large teacher” (Ex. XII.B, 4) is meus magister magnus or magister meus magnus. Students will need a great deal of practice in recognizing that the possessive adjectives agree with the noun possessed, not with the possessor. Students should practice reciting the paradigms of adjectives like bonus-a-um across the genders rather than down the cases: bonus, bona, bonum; bonî, bonae, bonae; bonô, bonae, bonô; and so on. Doing so will help them when they come to learn pronouns. Lessons XIV and XV: Fourth Conjugation: I-Verbs The conjunction quod allows sentences from this point to include subordinate clauses. At this stage, students do not need to know the difference between main and subordinate clauses, but some teachers may want to point it out. Students will need some drill to make them familiar with the use of -que. Repetition of pairs like factum et verbum, factum verbumque will develop this familiarity. The genitive is the case of one noun that modifies another. We have subsumed under the category “possessive genitive” a few uses that some grammarians might class as subjective, but this is a distinction without a real difference (Allen and Greenough par. 343, n. 1). Confusion sometimes arises in students’ minds over the difference between possession shown by a genitive and possession shown by one of the possessive adjectives presented in Lessons XII and XIII. If students have enough practice with possessive adjectives before meeting the genitive of possession, this confusion is less likely to arise. If it does not arise, there is little to be gained by mentioning it. Since the fourth is one of the regular conjugations, learning this new class of verbs should not present much difficulty for most students. Lesson XVI: Third Conjugation: I-stem Verbs Learning these verbs tests students’ sensitivity to vowel quantity, since in the present system they are everywhere identical to fourth conjugation verbs except for their short -i- before the personal ending in the second person singular and plural, third person singular, and first person plural. Donatus and some other Roman grammarians in fact lumped third and fourth conjugation verbs together. Visually minded students may find it helpful to see that in the present tense, these verbs follow the pattern of fourth conjugation only at the corners of the paradigm: 19 → capiô capis capit capimus capitis capiunt ← (Some teachers may be accustomed to calling these verbs “third conjugation IO verbs.”) Lesson XVII: Third Conjugation: I-stem Verbs Like other lessons dealing with the perfect system, this lesson gives students a chance to review and consolidate their knowledge of verbs. By this point, synopses should be a regular classroom activity. Prepositions are introduced in this lesson, but only two are given. In appears only with the accusative case; only in Lesson XXIV will students learn a list of prepositions governing the ablative. If students are encouraged to use the translation “towards” for ad whenever possible, later confusion with the dative of indirect object (Lesson XXXI) may be avoided. Lesson XVIII: Irregular Verb: Sum Sum must be memorized. Students may need help and practice in distinguishing the imperfect and future of sum from the regular pluperfect and future perfect active endings. In the vocabulary, amîcus appears as an adjective, “friendly,” instead of its more common use as a noun meaning “friend.” Teachers may want to point out the substantive use of this adjective to prepare students for the appearance of that concept in Lesson XXV. Lesson XIX: Third Declension Nouns The third declension needs careful presentation, and students should not be expected to be fully competent in recognizing and using third declension nouns until the end of the series of three lessons (XIXXXI) dealing with them. At the end of Lesson XIX, students should be able: • • To decline any of the third declension nouns in the vocabulary To give the case, number, and gender of any third declension noun in the vocabulary, and to give the use of any noun in the Exercises. Throughout the lesson, emphasis should be on nouns and their forms. Lesson XX: Third Declension Nouns Students sometimes mistake neuter nouns like onus and opus for second declension masculines. Drilling with noun-adjective pairs like opus magnum may alleviate this confusion. Practice with pairs of third declension nouns and first and second declension adjectives is a good way to review and consolidate students’ knowledge of the third declension. 20 Lesson XXI: Third Declension Nouns I-stem nouns are in fact less regular than our presentation of them suggests. Some teachers may be surprised by our use of the form in - s as the regular accusative plural. We have tried to give the forms used by authors that students are likely to read if they continue with Latin, and this form is usual in Vergil and Cicero, and in the best modern texts of them. We have been less insistent about the ablative singular, which also varies. The ablative navi, for example, is at least as common as nave. Cicero even quotes an accusative singular navim (Topica 61). Teachers, and sometimes our students, may find it helpful to bear in mind that the apparent systematic regularity of Latin is a grammarians’ fiction. Lesson XXII: First Conjugation: Present System Passive Voice The distinction between active and passive is one that students have used in their native language all their lives, but now they must acquire those categories. Explicit over-verbalization of the concepts can be helpful to them; the first sentence of Exercise XXII.A, for example, might sound like this: “Rogâbitur, ‘He/she/it will be asked,’ the action will be done to him.” Prompted by the teacher’s “Rogâbit?” the student might respond, “Rogâbit, ‘He/she/it will ask,’ he will do the action.” This lesson also introduces uses of the ablative case. The distinction between agent and means is easy for students to see, but in translating from English to Latin they often trip over the English word “by,” which can render both constructions. Asking them to say which ablative will be used to translate “by your words” or “by poets” may help to reinforce the distinction. Since students will learn six uses of the ablative case, they should become accustomed in this lesson to describing ablatives as, e.g., “ablative singular feminine, ablative of agent.” Lesson XXIII: First Conjugation: Perfect System Passive Voice Students have not yet seen periphrastic forms, and teachers may want to remind them that in Latin as in English, some verbs require auxiliary or helping verbs. Because students know that sum means “I am,” many will be tempted to translate amâtus sum as “I am loved.” Some may find it helpful to know that the fourth principal parts that they have learned are in fact past in tense, and that therefore a past participle + present helping verb = a perfect tense; past + past = pluperfect; and past + future = future perfect. Hence we introduce, without comment, the term PERFECT PASSIVE PARTICIPLE for the fourth principal part. Constant practice, however, is the best way to teach the correct translations and uses of these periphrastic forms. Lesson XXIV: Prepositions Eighth graders seem to have little difficulty with this lesson. It has proved surprisingly challenging to younger middle schoolers, who find it difficult to learn eight little words with somewhat similar meanings. Some strategies for reinforcing the differences between these words include 21 • • Kinesthetic: students follow instructions to sede/sedête or mane/manête in mensâ (or capsâ, or some other suitable classroom object), sub mensâ, ex mensâ, and so on. Visual: some students find a diagram helpful. ab ex in Fig. 5 sub It is worth insisting on the translation “along with” for the preposition cum to head off possible later confusion with the conjunction cum. Lesson XXV: Third Declension Adjectives This chapter presents third declension adjectives. We begin with adjectives of three terminations, although they are less common than either two-termination or one-termination adjectives, because they can easily be assimilated to the pattern of first-and-second declension adjectives, which the students have already learned. Thus students can concentrate on learning one thing at a time: first, in this lesson, that many adjectives use third declension i-stem endings; in the next, that some of these adjectives use the same endings for more than one gender. Of the three uses of adjectives, the substantive needs most attention. Students may be invited to use the classified list of adjectives on p.89 to construct sentences about good, dear, tired, angry, or unhappy men or women. Point out also that English sometimes uses adjectives in the same way in phrases like “the dead” or “the brave.” Lesson XXVI: Third Declension Adjectives Students will need practice not only in declining nounadjective pairs like omnis vir or puella felix, but in recognizing different cases, both of such pairs and of single adjectives. Because their first third-declension paradigm, that of consonant-stem nouns, had –e as the ablative singular ending, students often yield to the temptation to think that omne or breve are ablative. Teachers should emphasize that –i is the ablative singular ending for adjectives of this kind. Students enjoy learning that the family is irregular: mâter, pater, frater, senex, iuvenis, and their dog, canis, though parisyllabic, do not follow the pattern of i-stems. Lessons XXVII and XXVIII: Second Conjugation Passive Voice Since the second conjugation is regular in formation, these lessons present few new concepts and provide an opportunity for review. Emphasize that the change from active to passive form is a 22 matter of changing only the ending; the rules for the formation of tenses remain in force. Lesson XXIX: Fourth Declension Nouns Learning the fourth declension gives students an opportunity to practice the difference between long and short -u-. Teachers should emphasize the distinction in pronunciation. Lesson XXX: Third Conjugation: Present System Passive Voice Before beginning this lesson, students may need to review the active voice of consonant and i-stem third conjugation verbs. In presenting the paradigm, point out that the -i- of e.g. capitur is part of the stem (hence black in our chart), whereas in e.g. dûcitur it is part of the ending (hence red). Point out also the distinction between dûceris (present) and dûcêris (future). Lesson XXI: Third Conjugation: Perfect System Passive Voice This lesson introduces two uses of the dative case: indirect object and dative with adjectives. Because both may be translated using the English word “to,” students often confuse the indirect object with the accusative of place to which. This confusion arises especially in translating from English to Latin. When the preposition ad was introduced in Lesson XVII, students were encouraged to use the translation “towards,” and a reminder of this possibility may be helpful. The verb dare is irregular because its present stem ends in short -a-. Students may need to be asked why dare is irregular, or to have this irregularity pointed out to them. Lesson XXXII: Fifth Declension Nouns The last three chapters of New First Steps provide ample opportunities for reviewing the heart of the first year of middle school Latin: the indicative voice of regular verbs of the four conjugations, active and passive, and nouns of the five declensions. Diês is usually masculine, but it is occasionally feminine, especially when it refers to day as the opposite of night or to a specific day: eârum (sc. epistulârum) in alterâ diês erat adscripta Non. Apr. (Cicero, ad Familiares 3.11); and of course diês irae, diês illa. Lessons XXXIII and XXXIV: Fourth Conjugation, Passive Voice Careful practice with ingens and sapiens will give students a head start on the present participle active, which will be presented in Lesson XIII of New Second Steps. 23