Description and Objectives

Many students in this semester will be coming from the composition class in which we expressed our thoughts slowly, carefully, and with precision.

The focus of this class will be picking up idioms and increasing our reading speed and comprehension levels. There exists no better method for this than by forcing oneself to express one’s thoughts impromptu in Latin.  Working across genres similar to the ones explored in Prose Composition, we will read stories and speeches in class and then discuss them in a seminar style. The focus will be less on prepared presentations, and more on ad hoc discussions, some of which the boys will lead without written notes. Since speaking is thinking on your feet, many of the boys will grow in the challenge to bring a conscious and often conscientious process down into the level of an automatic habit. This is the essence of language-learning and encourages the boys to go from thinking about and working with the language to thinking in and doing work through the language.

Textbooks

Hans Ørberg. Lingua Latina. This classic textbook written entirely in Latin begins with very simple sentences and is designed to be read for comprehension rather than translated.

ISBN 10: 1585102016 / ISBN 13: 9781585102013

 

Course Requirements

The course grade will be based on the following grades:

• six (6) tests. These tests are designed to take about 30 minutes.
• ~weekly ad hoc quizzes to review morphology, vocabulary, or grammar.
• daily memorization and recitation of one line of Latin poetry per day.
• daily in-class participation, including reading aloud and extemporaneous conversation.

Successful Students

Successful students in Spoken Latin will:

• go beyond minimum requirements. It may be useful to think of speaking Latin like learning a new piece of music. Only by practicing every day can you develop the ease and speed necessary to do it well, without having to think or analyze between notes.
• listen to Latin every day
• take advantage of the additional resources below.

Additional Resources

 

• The Society for Classical Studies hosts a page with links to a number of podcasts featuring active Latin use for discussion of topics ranging from Cicero’s speeches to descriptions of the local geography of the DMV. Also on the SCS page you will find the Latinitium series of videos as well as the Finnish radio station that broadcasted daily news headlines in five-minute pieces from 1989–2019. All media in Latin.
• This Latinitium video on why you should not read too many books is a great place to start
• The Latinitium App is the best app for listening to easy, medium, or difficult levels of Latin.
• The Prendergast exercises are one way to build up your control of an idiom. The books are old, and thus difficult to read, but printing off just a few pages will give you weeks of memory work to practice with. We’ll be using these in class.