Plenty of Latin FOR ALL! (provided that you can read it)

Mārcus et Imāginēs Suae Bonae is another recently published Latin novella (the first Latin book sold by TPRS Books!) co-translated by myself and John Bracey.

In a classic classist—not the classiest—Classicist move (probably better as “elitist,” but that phrase was too good to pass up—not unlike Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog), someone began the ole questioning of usage and word choice. No surprises. I’m well-aware that everyone’s a critic, but we could all learn a thing or two from the following video (serendipitously shared by Bob Patrick earlier this week). In sum, the focus of any 10 things shouldn’t be the 1 negative—there are 9 other positive things to make note of:

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“School isn’t even close to an L1 environment:” Why reading is KEY

I’ve heard the argument that “it’s impossible to replicate a native language (L1) environment, so why bother with all this CI stuff in the classroom?” I used to counter this with “we’re trying to get as close to that environment as possible while lowering expectations to a realistic level given how little time (~400 hours) students have with a language in high school.” Sure, that’s all true, but we can do better.

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Read, don’t Translate: Speed Reading

Reading without consciously translating into one’s native language is assumed to be a part of language acquisition, yet is taken for granted and difficult to assess. Through a Speed Reading program, students are encouraged to read chunks of words rather than individual word-for-word-translation. This aligns with how we focus on teaching the most frequent structures rather than isolated word lists. In addition, students find this reading program compelling due to the personal competitive nature.

Take a minute to read the Speed Reading Process (my adaptation of Blaine Ray’s adaptation of Paul Nation’s program).

If you like the idea, all that’s needed to begin is a set of reading passages (perhaps parallel class stories), accompanying document with 10 comprehension questions, and a table showing reading speed per passage. You will need the following files:

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