Re: VIRGIL: Latin and 12 year olds
Dear Jameel I teach Classics at Winchester College, which might be one of the schools your bright 12-year-olds are trying to get scholarships to. I'd be interested to know why they find Latin unappealing - in my experience the very bright tend to be switched off by the lack of intellectual rigour in courses such as the Cambridge Latin Course, which de-emphasises the analytical, 'mathematical' aspect of the language. What I think is most exciting for this type of group is getting difficult things right - which I know will make me sound a total dinosaur. But I expect they enjoy Maths for that reason! Do e-mail me personally with any concrete details which might help me give more targeted advice. Caroline Butler Dear all, I am a Classics graduate faced with a challenge. I have recently agreed = to tutor some very bright 12 year olds in Latin in order to boost = scholarship opportunities at various schools in GB. The reason their = parents have sought outside help is that Latin at school has not proved = appealing enough! My job would be to enthuse as well as to edify. Do = any of the mantovani have any experience in teaching this age group or = have any ideas which might serve to catch the attention of a bunch of = kids convinced that Latin is uncool? I have only a handful of ruses but = I think I'm going to need a whole lot more. Thanks=20 Jameel Jesani --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
RE: VIRGIL: Latin and 12 year olds
I was originally taught Latin from the Cambridge Latin course and loathed it. We all knew that it was making up weakly fictional events to peddle history to us and despised it for its palpable designs upon us and its palpable failure to be honest about those designs. Then in the fifth form (I was about 14) a most excellent dinosaur took us over (David Miller), who wore sandals even on the coldest of February days and made us learn subjunctives on the hottest of June days. He told us when he thought we weren't thinking and got cross with us unless we thought about the construction of sentences (his limbs would writhe with pain). He gave us lots of verse to translate. I wouldn't do the kind of thing I do it if weren't for him. The standard argument against this sort of rigour is that it is hard on the less motivated or less able students. That didn't tally with my experience: anyone who tried he encouraged and anyone who tried at all and could grasp that there was a logical pattern underneath what they were reading respected him greatly and the language. Colin Burrow, Fellow and Tutor, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB1 4AR tel: 01223 332483 web: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Caroline Butler Sent: 04 November 1999 08:20 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: VIRGIL: Latin and 12 year olds Dear Jameel I teach Classics at Winchester College, which might be one of the schools your bright 12-year-olds are trying to get scholarships to. I'd be interested to know why they find Latin unappealing - in my experience the very bright tend to be switched off by the lack of intellectual rigour in courses such as the Cambridge Latin Course, which de-emphasises the analytical, 'mathematical' aspect of the language. What I think is most exciting for this type of group is getting difficult things right - which I know will make me sound a total dinosaur. But I expect they enjoy Maths for that reason! Do e-mail me personally with any concrete details which might help me give more targeted advice. Caroline Butler Dear all, I am a Classics graduate faced with a challenge. I have recently agreed = to tutor some very bright 12 year olds in Latin in order to boost = scholarship opportunities at various schools in GB. The reason their = parents have sought outside help is that Latin at school has not proved = appealing enough! My job would be to enthuse as well as to edify. Do = any of the mantovani have any experience in teaching this age group or = have any ideas which might serve to catch the attention of a bunch of = kids convinced that Latin is uncool? I have only a handful of ruses but = I think I'm going to need a whole lot more. Thanks=20 Jameel Jesani --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
Re: VIRGIL: Latin and 12 year olds
DearJameel: the very bright tend to be switched off by the lack of intellectual rigour in courses such as the Cambridge Latin Course, which de-emphasises the analytical, 'mathematical' aspect of the language. What I think is most exciting for this type of group is getting difficult things right - which I know will make me sound a total dinosaur. . . Caroline Butler Dear all, I am a Classics graduate faced with a challenge. I have recently agreed = to tutor some very bright 12 year olds in Latin in order to boost = scholarship opportunities at various schools in GB. The reason their = parents have sought outside help is that Latin at school has not proved = appealing enough! My job would be to enthuse as well as to edify. Do = any of the mantovani have any experience in teaching this age group or = have any ideas which might serve to catch the attention of a bunch of = kids convinced that Latin is uncool? I have only a handful of ruses but = I think I'm going to need a whole lot more. Eons ago when I was 14 I began the study of Latin under the tutalage of Catholic nuns. As prurient as it now sounds, the promise of reading parts of major classics which exposed such things as Dido and Aeneas were wont to do was a major motivation at our all-boys prep school. I suppose that (even in the UK?) the same factor would be useful if merely hinted at as a future reward for plowing through amo, amas, amat, vocabulary lists, and Gaul is divided into three parts. Even in 1999 I find my current crop of 14-year olds able to navigate the whole of the _Odyssey_ in prose English for the same kinds of titillation. The very bright also are convinced of the appeal in becoming a member of a small elite group of American English speakers who can read Latin and modern foreign languages. For the latter I call up daily newspapers on the net in French and Portugese, etc. so they can see headlines from around the world in our corner of it. (My classroom computer is projected large for the whole classroom to see at once.) For the former I use modern language cognates with Latin to show its usefulness in vocabulary study and the promise their developing knowledge holds for high scores on the SAT, etc. I also show my freshmen the allusions such characters as Mercutio make to classical couples (when chiding Romeo about Roseline) demonstrate how a character they regard as obscenely cool knows his Latin and Greek. John Dwyer --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
RE: VIRGIL: Latin and 12 year olds
Dear all, I am a Classics graduate faced with a challenge. I have recently agreed = to tutor some very bright 12 year olds in Latin in order to boost = scholarship opportunities at various schools in GB. The reason their = parents have sought outside help is that Latin at school has not proved = appealing enough! My job would be to enthuse as well as to edify. Do = any of the mantovani have any experience in teaching this age group or = have any ideas which might serve to catch the attention of a bunch of = kids convinced that Latin is uncool? I have only a handful of ruses but = I think I'm going to need a whole lot more. Thanks=20 Jameel Jesani Hey Jameel, My high school Latin teacher used to always turn on the radio at the start of each class. Whatever was on we had to translate into Latin. Some days it was a commerical, some days the weather report, and some days it was music. It was a nice way to keep students from feeling that Latin was confined to a book. Hey, and you never know when you will need to break out some Beetles lyrics in Latin. Sarah --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
RE: VIRGIL: Latin and 12 year olds
I attended a high school in Covington, Kentucky called Covington Latin School. It is an accerlaterated college prep school, and thus most freshman (all of whom take Latin--2 years is required) are either 11 or 12 years old. You might ask the freshman latin teachers there if they have any suggestions that you can use to make Latin an exciting subject to your students. I seem to remember always looking forward to Friday's latin class, which was always a history/culture day/mythology day... The school can be reached by email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or on the WWW at http://home.fuse.com/cls/homepage.html I believe the two latin teachers are still Ms. Kelly Kusch (who teachs Latin I, II, III-Cicero/Catullus, and IV-Vergil) and Mr. Dennis Whitehead (who teaches only Latin I). Dear all, I am a Classics graduate faced with a challenge. I have recently agreed = to tutor some very bright 12 year olds in Latin in order to boost = scholarship opportunities at various schools in GB. The reason their = parents have sought outside help is that Latin at school has not proved = appealing enough! My job would be to enthuse as well as to edify. Do = any of the mantovani have any experience in teaching this age group or = have any ideas which might serve to catch the attention of a bunch of = kids convinced that Latin is uncool? I have only a handful of ruses but = I think I'm going to need a whole lot more. Thanks=20 Jameel Jesani __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
