I've just been doing a little bit of study on the different ways Latin is taught. I personally am most familiar with the grammar approach, which I think is the traditional way and the way most homeschoolers learn Latin. In the homeschool Latin class that I took for 3 years, the magistra combined a pure grammatical text with Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina. I thought that Orberg's approach was the 'reading method' but apparently it is called the direct method. That is, no translations. You figure out what the words mean and the grammatical constructions from context, illustrations and patterns written in the margins. It is actually a really fun way to learn Latin. Apparently the reading method is the kind that books like Ecce Romani and Cambridge Latin use. And again, those are fun ways to learn too. I don't yet grasp what the TPRS method is. But I am just beginning my own pedagogical study.
My impression is that the tried and true grammatical approach, even though it is sometimes dry, probably has the highest rate of success. And I think it speaks more to the purpose of why most students nowadays want to learn Latin. Learning Latin this way goes right to the heart of grammar, of how language is constructed. This is the element that helps with learning all other languages. Also, the grammatical approach seems to emphasize learning derivatives, which is helpful in expanding one's vocabulary, especially for things like the SAT or for building particular knowledge of specialized vocabularies in science. Also, learning Latin this way lets you practice very logical thinking. Whenever you translate a Latin sentence you have to use critical thinking skills. I think this is another reason educated people in the past seemed so smart. They had honed the habit of very exact thinking by doing their Latin translations.
I think back in the day when more people in the Church and in Academia spoke Latin, everyone had the experience of grinding through that Latin grammar as children. Now though that the Classical studies departments have shrunk and people kind of put Latin in the closet in the Roman Catholic Church for the past couple of generations, the reading or direct method became more popular. You really had to simulate Latin as a more 'living' language because you really couldn't find very many pockets of people who engaged in as in the days past. That's my theory of why these newer methods arose.
Anyway, here is a wonderful website that explains the different pedagogies.
The more well know textbooks that use the grammatical method that I have used are:
Wheelock's - this is the most popular textbook out there I think. It is college level. Years ago when I decided I wanted to learn Latin I joined an on line group of people who were all going to self-study using Wheelock's as the text. The plan was to do a chapter a week and meet to discuss all the exercises and see what we got right and what we got wrong. Well, I only made it through the first two chapters. I discovered that everybody else in the group was fluent in at least one other language other than English, already, and several knew various different languages. Some were even language teachers. I recall that one person was a Spanish teacher at a school. Also, these folks were either retired and had lots of time on their hands or they had a real facility with languages. I, on the other,hand, was completely ignorant and was in the process of having babies, taking care of toddlers and homeschooling young children. I didn't have the time, mental capability or the energy to work through a college level text on my own like that at that speed.
But that said, I was proud to own Wheelock's. Sometimes I would take it out and thumb through it and think: some day! Now that I am doing Studium Latinae, I do regularly dip into Wheelock's and at a very slow pace have been working through some of the exercises and translations. Wheelock's is very well organized but it goes fast!
Henle's Latin: One semester we decided to try Henle's Latin with my oldest son. Henle is a Catholic Latin text for high schoolers. We either used the Mother of Divine Grace syllabus or the Memoria Press one. One goes much faster than the other. I now can't remember if we chose the slower one because it suited us better or the faster one because if you go too slow in Latin it is just boring and you don't get any true sense of accomplishment. But we burned out after a semester. My son just wasn't into it at that point. Though later when we started taking classes, he did get into Latin and enjoyed it.
There's a lot of good things to say about Henle. For one thing it is a nice old Catholic text. I love that aspect of it. Also, Father Henle must have been such a grammar guru. The best thing about the series is his grammar reference book that spells out all the Latin rules. This is so very helpful. And he really brilliantly presents and makes easier a lot of confusing grammatical things. For instance, he came up with a brilliant way to figure out how to tell if a 3rd declension word is masculine, feminine or neuter. He's just really good at clarifying grammatical concepts. The thing that I think is a little frustrating about Henle is that he really pushes the grammar aspect and I think too drastically limits the vocabulary so that you work a long time doing many exercises with the same words over and over again - for months. And then you still can't read much Latin at all. So that's a drawback.
Using Latin - this is an out of print text that my daughter used when she took Latin in 6th, 7th and 8th grades. This was also an old high school textbook. It is very well laid out. This is the book that introduced me to the idea of declensions and the ablative case. Woo Hoo! Heady stuff! Tried and true but sadly out of print.
There's another popular text out there that a lot of people used and enjoyed. Jenney's First Year Latin. I am curious about this one, but, alas, have no experience with it.
Anyway, enough about these traditional Latin texts. Another interesting website that I stumbled upon is this one.
A new phenomenon that learning Latin as a living language has inspired is the Immersive Latin Camp. These are often summer camps for students. These are becoming more and more popular it seems to me. Here's an article in Slate magazine (of all places) about one person's experience in one of these camps.
Around here, Christendom College occasionally hosts a summer camp for an immersion Latin experience. It looks like the one though was in 2012.
And I just found about this fun sounding camp for kids in 1st through 7th grade.
Here's another program where you go to Rome and spend the summer learning Latin! Wouldn't that be cool?
I am realizing that 7 Posts are not enough for me to talk about learning Latin. And I am not even a Latin scholar. Truly I missed my calling as a Latin nerd.
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