A New Latin Textbook: “The First Latin Course”
March 15, 2009
I have been asked repeatedly why I chose to distill my classroom Latin lessons into my recently published textbook, The First Latin Course: An Introductory Latin Grammar for Middle School, and College. Those who have asked this are prompted by the number and pervasiveness of Latin books like the Cambridge or Oxford Latin series, Ecce Romani, and Latin for Americans.
My response to these questioners is that I felt compelled to write a new Latin textbook because the most popular currently used Latin textbooks have some unfortunate weaknesses.
The presentation of the Latin grammar of these books is fragmented and atomistic in a way that makes it difficult for students to gain a comprehensive understanding of the language. For example, verbs are presented not in whole and integral tenses, but in pieces, with the third person given here and the first person there, the singular now, the plural then, and so forth. Alternately, nouns (and their modifiers and surrogates) are presented as a patchwork quilt, with the accusative case here, the nominative case there, the genitive case now, the ablative case then, and so forth. This material is scattered through chapters that are more or less widely separated from each other.
I believe—and have found in teaching practice—that a holistic approach is preferable. Therefore, I decided that a textbook was needed that had such an approach and that presented all tenses completely and all cases at once. This is the methodology that I have employed in my textbook.
The advantage of this methodology is that it puts the burden of memorizing up front and allows the student to understand through use what is already at his or her disposal. This has the further virtue of at least approximating a natural language experience. After all, when our children learn their native language, they do not learn it from adults who speak for three months only in the first person, then for three months only in the third person, and so forth.
In addition, most current Latin textbooks rely overmuch on made or invented Latin stories. This delays the student’s encounter with genuine Latin and gives the student a false sense of the nature of genuine Latin. Of course, no book can do without some made Latin, but I decided that the students who used my textbook would encounter genuine Latin sentences from the first chapter on alongside made Latin sentences.
Furthermore, there is blind adherence to accepted translations of Latin words, even though these translations may not be the best or most desirable renderings of those words. I have not felt bound by these traditions and have felt free to render many Latin words anew in a way that reflects their position in the Latin language more transparently. Moreover, many of these traditional translations are infected with a sexism that is inappropriate. In my textbook, all sexist language has been eschewed rigorously.
Finally, our students today do not learn English grammar in a systematic way. In short, our students are grammar-poor. Therefore, I have included in my textbook full and clear explanations of all the English grammar that students need to know.
For these and other reasons that I have elaborated in the prefatory material to the book, I felt that a new Latin textbook would be able to find a place in Latin curricula.
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