Friday, January 06, 2017

Aural/Oral Activities in Latin for the New Millennium, Second Edition

Second Edition Coming Soon


When our late founder Dr. Ladislaus “Lou” Bolchazy decided to commission an introductory Latin series, he chose Terence Tunberg and Milena Minkova not only for their expertise in Latin pedagogy but also for their international renown as proponents and practioners of active, spoken Latin. For nearly two decades they have offered a summer seminar, the Conventiculum Latinum Lexintoniense, at the University of Kentucky, designed to introduce enthusiasts to the use of spoken Latin. Variations on the conventiculum are offered at various locations across the United States. Tunberg and Minkova thoroughly enjoy serving as instructors for such programs and regularly present on the subject of actively using Latin in the classroom. When chatting to one another, their language of choice is Latin!

Latin for the New Millennium celebrates active Latin. Each chapter of LNM 1 includes a conversation among a group of American high schoolers who chat about an everyday topic like “discussing homework” and “in the cafeteria.” These dialogues present a rich vocabulary of everyday terms and invite students to act them out. In LNM 2 the same students now converse about the chapter reading or the chapter’s unadapted Latin passage from Nepos’s Life of Atticus. These dialogues grow longer and more complex as the students build their confidence in reading Latin.

The Teacher’s Guide offers a bounty of aural/oral activities and exercises. Tunberg and Minkova took pains to make the exercises and activities teacher-friendly with special care for the teacher less confident about incorporating spoken Latin in the classroom. Dictations enhance students’ listening skills, drills build their confidence with a grammar concept, and activities and dialogues encourage spoken Latin. The authors have crafted four to five aural/oral exercises for each chapter of the student text.

Dicīte Latīnē!

No comments:

Post a Comment