All this week I’ve been talking about how and why you should use hand copying (called copywork) to become fluent in Latin reading. Why is this such an effective method for you no matter where you’re at right now? One reason is that doing this guarantees you’re spending your time reading and understanding real Latin, not the Latin of textbooks. It also means you’re READING – understanding – not just translating. Another reason is that copywork practically forces what you’re learning into your...
3 days ago • 2 min read
Most Latin learners try to learn by studying grammar and memorising vocabulary, and then translating. This is understandable because this is the way most teachers and textbooks give you. And it CAN work – but it’s a LOT of work. But I’m here to tell you there’s a simpler, easier – and faster – way to Latin fluency. I’ve talked about the importance of huge amounts of input before, so I’m not going to go into that in too much detail. But the simple point is that we learn as human beings from...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Yesterday I introduced you to the idea that you can master Latin just by spending a few minutes every day writing out and copying Latin (and the English translation). If you’ve been wanting to master Latin in as short a time as possible, or you want to quickly get to the level where you can read a page of Latin without a dictionary or grammar book – copywork is exactly how I’d do it. Copywork takes all the pressure off learning, because you just focus on the writing, knowing that your...
5 days ago • 2 min read
In the 1960s, Ladybird Books published a series of study cards in history, science, and English. Three decades later as a young homeschooled boy I was given the task of copying some of those Ladybird history cards by hand. These days rote learning and copying get a bad rap, but I actually have fond memories of copying those cards. And you know the funny thing? Over two decades later, I can still remember the stories of Boudica and others that I copied. Why? Well, it turns out that writing...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Came these words from a subscriber last month: ------ “,I keep giving up. When I pick up a book I want to read, say a volume of Vergil, or some passage of history by Tacitus, I find my limited vocabulary is a big barrier and constantly looking up words in a dictionary, or even a translation, is time consuming, frustrating and off- putting. My memory has never been great and the habit of stopping and starting reading (- there have sometimes been years between reading different passages) adds...
13 days ago • 2 min read
Some people study Latin purely on their own steam. The autodidact way. But most of us have studied it, either in school or university (or both). Maybe you even got a full degree in Latin. I did. In fact – I excelled at Latin in university. One of my lecturers – who retired the year I graduated – introduced me to his wife as ‘the best Latin student I’ve ever taught.’ I don’t say that to brag. I say it because it’s sad. Tragic, even. Why? Because after years of self-study in Latin, and 3 years...
19 days ago • 1 min read
The idea sounds great. Have the Latin on one side, and the English on the other. Pretty good, right? It sure could be – but I’ve yet to find a single example where it is. Why? Because bilingual books always assume you’re going to be reading the English only. For example, the Loeb Classical translations – often considered the gold standard for bilingual books – are atrocious for using the English to help you read the Latin. They freely have multiple sentences in the English where the Latin had...
20 days ago • 1 min read
In any language, the two biggest problems you have are learning the way ideas are expressed in that language, and learning the words. The first we call grammar, the second we call vocabulary. The lie of learning is that it’s best to study these and pick them apart separately. That’s how I learnt – and it’s probably how you learnt. But it doesn’t work. If it did, we’d all be fluent, right? Instead – and I’ve proved this with thousands of students over the years – we get students who have...
25 days ago • 1 min read
I teach a week-long Latin intensive every January, as part of a special-interest school. There’s a class for pretty much every grade of Latin ability, from ‘never-seen-a-word-of-Latin-before’ to ‘Trust-me-I-got-this’. Some classes are taught by brand new teachers, some by teachers who have been teaching Latin for 30 years. And the thing that really gets my goat is that at least half of them can’t read Latin properly. They can only translate it – given enough time,. But don’t worry, they’re in...
26 days ago • 2 min read