Latin prose composition perhaps sounds a bit odd. The chapter focus might officially be on uses of the subjunctive in relative clauses, but many students will be getting proportionally more marks taken off for stupid mistakes like missing the accusative case, bungling up adjective agreement, or forgetting to use a plural verb form. Ive also found that writing can be motivating because students see the products they make as evidence of their learning. As you might imagine from those example sentences, Latin Prose Composition is not a very enjoyable activity among students. In Germany grammar school students had to write a >800 words Latin essay as part of their final examinations (Abitur) until 1890 when the Latin exam was watered down to the translation of a German text into Latin. Composing for a purpose is not just more enjoyable for you, it is also more helpful to everyone else who is also looking for meaningful interaction in the language, at an appropriate level of difficulty. Some learners want to become good at writing in Latin for the sake of writing creatively in Latin, Some learners want to write because they believe writing is part of knowing a language, When writing is paired with reading activities, learners may be more attentive to the input, Learners can be more motivated when they create products along the way, because they can see their progress, Interaction boosts acquisition because the negotiation for meaning helps make input more comprehensible. So to get back to our list of desired outcomes for doing writing tasks, which of these could Latin Prose Composition help? Next, read the sentence to be translated carefully.
If I want to take any ol' piece of English writing and make a Latin translation for it, there are obviously several things I have to keep in mind: Correct diction/word choice (I wouldn't want to use a Latin word that doesn't mean what I want it to mean in Classical Latin). Thanks! Most current textbooks are geared toward the latter approach. They want to have a similar set of capabilities as any competent speaker of a language, and that includes being able to write. 0000002785 00000 n All you need is a list of appropriate question words and the knowledge of how to form a question in your target language.
But I am confident that these will be more motivating and better for your overall language development than struggling alone with artificial Latin Prose Composition exercises.
The traditional exercises in Latin Prose Composition books are not designed to be seamlessly integrated with reading tasks in this manner. But what about 3)? Here is a list of question words for Latin: While were at it, heres a similar list of question words in Ancient Greek: If you see a list of target-language questions in the comments section and no one has responded yet, you can reply and try to answer them all in the target language (which often just requires you to re-use the sentences from your source material). Finally, there are two free compositions with the opening sentences provided. Here you can discuss all things Latin. This is much more satisfying than wrangling a trite English sentence about soldiers into Latin. This is similar to Two Truths and a Lie but more open-ended, because you can write as many or as few vrum/falsum statements as you wish, and they could all be true or all false if you want to mess with your audiences expectations. Minkova also has a separate text that she wrote on her own that is also quite good. This format is incredibly discouraging.
Does it help the learner who wants to be a creative writer? I've read a good deal of Latin (and will be reading a good deal more! This article has been reviewed in accordance with our editorial policy. Minkova and Tunberg invite students to consider the Latin text as a serious medium of expression more than as a source of grammatical illustrations or a puzzle to be translated into English.
Thus if you wanted to use this text in coordination with a class in Cicero, for example, you could easily do this by selecting the seven chapters that contain excerpts from Cicero and perhaps ignoring the others. A good Latin prose composition book will feel and function a little bit like a checklist: you can tick off one thing after another. And if you get any of the V/F labels wrong, the original poster can reply and help you understand it better! Civilization and Culture of the Greeks and Romans, Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek, Re: Beginning with Latin Prose Composition. Start using Latin actively, in a guided manner. 0000015637 00000 n It tells you how far away from perfect you are. They do not really discuss this point although they do suggest in the Preface that their manual is something different (being an introduction to prose writing).
Dont rush. The more time you spend working on expressing your OWN thoughts in Latin, the better you will get at all of it. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Classical worlds, medieval culture and ancient Christianity, Minecraftium: A beginner Latin CI video series, A living Latin project: LingQs 60 Mini-Stories, Latin prose composition: Books and Method. Let's just say I'm glad that I'm not a pre-1890s German grammar school student that sounds tough! 0000003348 00000 n by Nesrad Thu Dec 17, 2015 2:36 am, Post The sentences paraphrase the text of More. Remember, almost every English sentence is written so that it has to be translated with the grammar or syntax that that specific chapter teaches. Lots of dictionary work. Change). But they're real Latin, by one of the great masters of Latin prose. To use a Latin prose composition book is fairly straightforward: Read the explanations and examples found in each chapter thoroughly. You can complete these activities without a teacher or a classroom: you just need a place to write comments online. First, you might practice the accusative with the infinitive, then the ablative of comparison, next indirect questions, and soforth. It is very strange for the active Latin movement to prescribe something which would be weird to do in a living language. This is completely natural and to be expected, as grammar features are not neatly acquired in the same order as the grammar curriculum presents them. But for the benefit of self-learners, I will provide here four easy writing activities which can be done with even fewer resources than Latin Prose Composition. 0000014368 00000 n Disp. That list will give you everything you need, no more noless. 0000006081 00000 n However, for the sake of consistency, I will continue to refer to E2L exercises as Latin Prose Composition, but always in capitals and quotes so that you know I dont mean to imply this is really a composition task in any other sense of the word. I should have mentioned Caesar. Let it soak in that you have actually written similar sentences, which means that you are on your way to writing a Latin in the same style that the Romans did 2000 years ago.
In each of these activities, the student is expected to have some semblance of choice in what they express. Each of these activities is integrated with a reading/listening task, so that the reader is encouraged to use the language and forms that were demonstrated in their source material. Possible/probable is a subjective assessment so different people will naturally reach different conclusions. This negotiation for meaning is a key element of communicative language learning. Its also fun to write silly obviously false statements. I'm not sure about reading letters (Cicero, Pliny)--are these not difficult to understand without a lot of knowledge about the respective author's personal background and less well-known aspects of the ancient society? We need to look beyond our tiny Latin bubble and imagine what other exciting learning possibilities we could find in the broader world of second language pedagogy or have those composition drills killed our imagination after all? Matt immersed himself in Japanese media for 3 years without taking formal classes or doing any active speaking, and when he started trying to speak, he found it only took a couple weeks before he could speak naturally and fluently without much effort.
0000011223 00000 n The store will not work correctly in the case when cookies are disabled. 0000015071 00000 n However, I do have two favorites that are great to use, one after theother. Creativity is completely banished in this type of activity as the learner is literally not allowed to say what they would like, and is forced to try to reproduce someone elses writing. (Or if youre really wanting to stay only in Latin, possibile, impossibile, crdibile, incrdibile.
Thus students must re-read the Latin excerpts very closely and develop their own compositions within that context. When acknowledging that these exercises often use military or political vocabulary, he admits that this subject matter might not sound too interesting.
In this article, Ill go through a few questions regarding Latin prose composition that Ive gotten throughout my years of teaching Latin. supports the meaning and does not result in nonsense! Oh wait, that already is a pedagogical practice! I would actually argue that using strategic circumlocution to best express yourself within your current level of capability is a skill worth training in its own right. <]/Prev 536935>> It's an incredible tool - I'm sure you'll enjoy all of it's features. 0000007153 00000 n The implicit argument is that because Latin Prose Composition has been part of Latin instruction for so long, it must have been retained for a good reason. most of us, if we aspire to it at all, are imitating the style of the major Latin prose writers of a particular period, e.g. Here also the introductory sentence is provided. 0000010661 00000 n No one is trying to say something and no one is listening. 0000016285 00000 n How likely is it for every student to need indirect statement on Tuesday, then expressions of time on Wednesday, followed by uses of the subjunctive in relative clauses on Thursday? Here is an example of what we mean by a Latin Prose Composition exercise; these are the first few sentences for translation in Bradleys Arnold. One way is to try poetry composition: this forces the writer to reach for rarer vocabulary and a greater diversity of expression to fit the special constraints of metre. Students have always felt dreadful about Latin Prose Composition: it is an activity that makes them doubt their abilities. Not all students are convinced that they are learning when they are passively listening or reading something, even if Second Language Acquistion theory might say they are. Update: Here are the takeway points in this article, distilled into a YouTube video: If you want to practice your Latin writing skills, is it still worth the drudgery to work through an old-fashioned course in Latin Prose Composition, or are there more enjoyable and effective alternatives? Writing activities which involve some level of student choice are able to tap into this innate desire to express and be heard. In this task, students are encouraged to model their sentences on examples they find in the reading, and thus make connections between what they read and what they produce. This is very easy to compose because you can actually directly copy three statements from your source material, just change one thing about one of them and boom, you have created an interactive activity for another human being to answer. Lastly, you find the actual exercise: English (or another modern language) sentences to be translated intoLatin.
Check them out in the Agora (there are threads both for. The Roman general was defeated by Hannibal. Pettersson acknowledges that this task is not at all the creative exercise that the name composition would seem to suggest: Latin prose composition perhaps sounds a bit odd. First, reference is given to the sections in the grammars of Allen & Greenough and Bradleys Arnold where detailed explanations regarding impersonal verbs may be found.
