Combining Wheelock’s & LLPSI: Weeks 7-9
Overview of Content Covered:
In these past three weeks, we followed LLPSI Cap. VII-IX: dative, lots of pronouns–hic, ille, is, relative and interrogative pronouns – and third declension nouns. I added to this the perfect active. After introducing many of these topics through readings, I asked students to read grammar explanations from Wheelock’s, especially for the perfect active and third declension nouns.
Parts of Class/Activities in the Past Three Weeks:
These are in rough order of how they might appear in a class, although we did not do each of these activities every day. I will only include activities already explained in my previous posts to share updates about my observations or use of the activity in the past three weeks.
Locutiones/similar spoken activity: Since I’ve introduced the Perfect, I added in a slideshow with basic daily activities in the perfect as a way to start the class and learn a bit about each other’s lives. I’ve included the slideshow here. This is perhaps more appropriate for college aged students, but could be modified.
One-word picture: see Keith Toda’s blog post on this. I used the word “pastor” as my starting word (LLPSI Cap. IX) and asked students to add to the picture in Latin. I drew what they told me, while asking probing and clarifying questions, and re-capped the whole picture at the end. Very fun, and gave the students agency in storytelling.
Reading out loud: I’ve taken a slightly different approach to this activity based on my observations and what students have asked for. I now spend more time reading out loud to my students and narrating the story to them. I still ask them to read, but after a couple students told me they found it easier to focus on the story when I read out loud and they look along in the book, I’ve taken up the following approach for some stories:
I use a story that I have assigned them for reading already, and for which we have done a pre-reading activity.
I use this method for one lectio of an LLPSI capitulum at once. Otherwise the activity becomes too long and students lose focus.
I tell my students, in Latin, that I will read the passage, slowly at first, pausing to explain or to give them English definitions, and then reading on. I will then read it again at a normal speed.
The first time we read, I pause to define words or phrases they might have trouble with, then re-read the section I paused to explain. For example: Pastor in campo sub sole–under the sun–ambulabat. Pastor in campo sub sole ambulabat.
I pause periodically to make sure there are not additional questions on vocab. I try to do this at times in the story which are not action-packed, as students get invested in the narrative and don’t want the flow to be interrupted.
After finishing the first-read through, I read the story again with no pauses, at a normal pace.
After this, we may translate a bit, do a post-reading activity, etc.
Bingo for Vocab Practice: I used this to review Cap. I-IX vocabulary. I chose 25 words from the chapters that I thought needed review, and put them in a set on myfreebingocards.com. The website creates the bingo cards and a sheet of individual terms for you (I printed two sheets of terms: one for me to cut up and pull out of a hat, and one to mark). In class, I pick words at random out of a hat, and give them a latin definition for each word.
Midterm: I structured the Midterm like a long quiz, with three sections: A 200-ish word passage followed by 8 comprehension questions in English, a grammar section which asked students to find forms in the passage written above, and a translation section which asked them to translate 4 sentences from the passage. I included an extra credit section at the end which asked them to write at least two sentences in Latin to add onto the story (thank you to my dear friend Ilse van Rooyen for sharing this idea with me). Students had 50 minutes to complete it, and most took the whole time. All students scored well; there were no issues in the comprehension section, minimal issues in the grammar sections, and although translation posed a couple more challenges, I was pleased with their performance.
Successes:
Asking students for mid-semester feedback and addressing that feedback with students.
I sent a google form to students asking for feedback about class activities and homework assignments which have been helpful and enjoyable vs. unhelpful and unenjoyable, suggestions for future activities, and accuracy of assessments. I got some very helpful feedback from students, including:
playing more games
more simultaneous auditory and visual input, like listening while reading along
fewer Nova Exercitia Exercises, citing the fact that the instructions are confusing
Some feedback/requests, however, I decided not to include, mainly providing translations of slides and stories. I decided not to do this for two reasons: first, because although English translations can be a helpful learning tool, I’d like to create meaning in L2 (Latin) as much as possible while reading. In doing so, I can offer more opportunities to define, circumlocute, circle, and generally provide input in Latin. I don’t hesitate to give English definitions of words when necessary, though. Secondly, producing those translations would simply be too much added work, taking up time that could be used to prep more effective activities.
I discussed the feedback with my students, letting them know which requests I had decided to incorporate, which I had not, and explaining my reasoning. College students possess a high level of meta-cognition about their own learning, so it’s important to clarify methods and rationales.
Gradually introducing pronouns
LLPSI Cap. VIII overwhelms the reader with about five pronoun declension tables at once. It’s simply too much material to cover in one chapter if the expectation is that students can accurately produce forms after finishing the pensa. In reaction to this, I chose to include these words–hic, ille, is, quis? and qui–in my Latin speech from the beginning of the semester. I found that it was fairly easy to use these words in activities, especially while explaining instructions, doing a picture talk, and asking questions. LLPSI also includes forms of many of these pronouns in earlier chapters. So by the time we reached Cap. VIII, students did not seem as overwhelmed as I expected by the multitude of new forms.
I also chose to emphasize and assess recognition of pronouns’ meaning rather than production. This lowered stress levels for the students, and allowed them to focus more on the input they received. From what we translated and what I saw on their midterm exam, they have no issues accurately recognizing these pronouns in context.
Challenges:
The anxiety surrounding what my students are expected to “know”
I structured this course with the knowledge that my students would be expected to finish it having learned the material in the first 20 chapters of Wheelock’s. I want to set them up to leave the course having acquired, rather than learned, as much Latin as possible (using Krashen’s definitions of learning as a conscious action and acquisition as a subconscious one which is the more important pre-requisite to fluency). But I may be their first of many Latin teachers, and it’s quite likely that in a subsequent Latin course, my students will be assessed on their memorization of grammatical forms. In addition, the primary aim of my University’s program is for students to be able to translate Latin texts accurately.
And so I feel a responsibility to: a. teach them the standard English grammatical terms for phenomena which show up in our readings, b. give them exercises in which correct production of forms is required, and c. make sure they can translate accurately. While I have no love for rote memorization or forced production activities, I do think it’s necessary to prepare students for what will be expected of them in most college Latin classes. In general, these classes expect students to memorize grammar charts and vocab, and to be able to work their way through an assigned passage of reading far above their comprehension level. If a student isn’t able to pick out the person, number, tense, mood, and voice of a verb reliably–even if they can understand a paragraph of Cicero with ease!–most college Latin educators will assume they haven’t even taken Latin I.
So, often I do assign exercises for homework which ask students to produce output, knowing that they haven’t had enough input yet. I do this because the conflicting goals of abstract grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension are both at play, and including these exercises as homework while focusing on providing meaningful, comprehensible messages during class time is the best way I’ve found so far to accomplish both goals. But the anxiety of how my students will fare if they continue to study Latin is real, and something that I think deserves more discussion in our community.
Adapting readings to the past tense (both a success and a challenge)
Since I have to cover Wheelock’s 1-20 grammar this semester, I’ve had to insert a number of grammatical topics at different times than the LLPSI curriculum does. So far, the main ones have been the imperfect and perfect tenses. The chapters which introduce these tenses would not be comprehensible to students at this point, as they use too much unfamiliar vocabulary. So I’ve chosen to adapt some of the earlier LLPSI stories and put them into the past tense. Here is a link to my past tense version of Cap. VII. (Note: you may use this in your classroom if you’d like, but I make no promises that it is error-free!)
This has taken some extra prep time, and has led me to question the feasibility of teaching material before the book introduces it. But it has also, surprisingly, created a more natural way of learning different tenses. When we covered Cap. VII, for example, we read through the original story first, followed by the past tense version a couple days later. Since students had already read the present version, they knew the plot of the story and the vocabulary. Reading the perfect version, they were able to receive additional input with little added mental load. And instead of learning feci as the 3rd principal part of facio, they automatically grasped its meaning through context. Based on this success, I will continue to put stories into the past tenses when I have the time.
