Using Error Correction with Sequencing in a Latin Classroom

When building a foreign language lesson plan, Brandl has a simple chart to follow: Input: instructional period, giving students the tools to do the intended task Assimilation: Working on examples of the task and putting the new informational to practice. Includes language exercises verbally, reading and writing. Application: Students putting the information practice by themselves, possibly through homework or in class work in the communicative language.

This chart is an easy enough outline to follow for lesson planning. Although when I first read through this chart I was confused with the terms “input” and “assimilation” but after I read over what these words meant. When writing up a lesson plan on a particular Latin chapter in The Essential Latin Textbook I found the chart to be helpful in breaking up a class period for instruction and work time. Another concept I cam across with Brandl was the error correction methodology. For foreign language there are a lot different ways to go about correcting students in a verbal setting. There is positive and negative feedback, I am big supporter of positive feedback, encouraging, praising, confirming and repetition for the benefit of the rest of the class; such feedback is essential to inform students when they saying something right and that they are grasping the material. It encourages myself as a future teacher to make effort to listen an pay attention to my students not only when they make a mistake but also when they correctly speak the language.

The way in which I would implement this practice the most is during the assimilation point in Brandl’s chart. After giving my students the new information, based off of earlier material they have already learned, I would have them put it into practice. For example, if I instruct my students on verb and noun agreement I would give them a phrase and ask if my construction of the phrase was correct, if not, then why was it wrong and how I should have constructed the phrase.

Puella ambulant.

It should be: Puellae ambulant, or Puella ambulat; depending if I want the noun to be plural or the verb.

After my students tell me what is wrong I would have them write the wrong and the write phrase down. This sort of self correction encourages my students to take on the role of teaching and put the material into their own words. After this sort of exercise I would have my students form a series of phrases using the new and old vocabulary then partner up and correct each others sentences. This sort of exercise would also allow them work with both English and Latin.

Another exercise that I could work use correction in would be doing a “mad lib” type exercise, having my students create a story using past and new concepts. Written correction is something I would see in grading homework or tests, which is kind of hard to do in a language classroom, I want my students to hold onto the knowledge for the long term instead of cramming the night before for a test. I would probably do pop quizzes, without warning, so that my students are always mindful of the material. The homework would most likely be only to assess how well my students are grasping the material, it would probably be a way to tell what my students need to look at more. i would circle or mark the wrong answer and point them towards what they need to look at, and leave them to try and determine the problem and solution. On quizzes I would just give them the correct answer and have them write it out multiple times with the explanation as to why my correction is the solution.

My end goal in all this is to make sure my students are getting the information and placing into their long term memory. I want to see my students succeed in “knowing” the language, verbally, written, and in reading.

image: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Communicative-Language-Teaching-in-Action-Putting-Principles-to-Work/9780131579064.page

A Student’s and Future Educators Take on Wheelock

The Wheelock Latin textbook, the 7th Edition to be exact, is the textbook that I used in my beginning Latin classes in college. The book is a monster of grammar and Latin exercises. I have come to lovingly call it my Latin grammar bible. Odd, yes, a bit of an exaggeration, I don’t think so.

This text is an excellent source of Latin grammar, it explains each new term and form easily. If I missed a day in class and needed to know what was discussed, I just read through the chapter and actually understood the information. I have found in the past with other Latin textbooks such a feat was harder to employ, due to the fact that most Latin textbooks write their grammar explanations in less understood terms. Wheelock uses simple language and on point examples that I found the text easy to read through and grasp. The book is set up in a grammar based fashion, with all of the chapters centered around the featured grammar concept, the vocabulary would be somewhat random and the examples were usually only sentences that were not from an actual Latin text. I like how the grammar plays such an important role in the text and how centered the book is around it. I came to understand a lot of concepts because of how the book was set up.

Yet this is also the disadvantage for the textbook, Wheelock is so centered on the grammar, a students doesn’t get much on culture or communicative aspects of the Latin language. I find that I lost out on a lot of the cultural facets because this textbook didn’t really give any attention to it. Another part of the culture that was lost in the textbook was the use of literature or prose or even poetry to use for practice with the grammar and vocab. Instead of being exposed to Roman culture through literary means the textbook used random sentences to drive their grammar point through, even the vocab fell short. There were no vocabulary themes, which would have made memorizing vocab easier and more likely to be locked into long term memory.I have found in other language classes and their textbooks they tend to have vocabulary lists that are themed, based on a reading in the chapter that coincides with the featured grammar term. I feel these are the better suited textbooks for beginners in any language, spoken or not. Another part of the Wheelock text that was a bit of a disadvantage was the amount of grammar concepts covered in a chapter. The text is definitely more deductive than inductive, and in some instances this makes for more well rounded understanding, yet I cannot help but think that the text could benefit form being a little more inductive. Some of the chapters had so much information is was overwhelming and I harder time grasping all of the information. Yet when I broke up the chapters into smaller units I had an easier time understanding and fully comprehending the concepts.

If given a choice I think I would use Wheelock in a high school setting in addition to another textbook with a more literary and thematic schema. I would use Wheelock in my explanation of new grammar concepts and for additional reading on the subject, even using the exercise sentences for in class practice. From what I can see about the textbook is that the writers really knew their grammar, enough to write in an easily understood way. Wheelock is a good text to use in college, and it would make for a good textbook in high school, but it would definitely need to be supplemented with another textbook or a reader so that students could get a better idea of the Roman culture aside from the grammar of their language.

image: http://cicimg.com/wheelock.html

Latin Textbooks and How They Measure Up to the Standards

Comparing the dated textbook (1988), Traditio: An Introduction to the Latin Language and Its Influence by Patricia A. Johnston, to the more recent Disce! An Introductory Latin Course by Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr. and Thomas J. Sienkewicz, one can obviously see how different the two are.

Traditio is like many other traditional Latin textbooks based purely on grammatical and translation instruction. The book has few pictures, including (and limited to) the cover and a small map. This particular textbook does not talk about culture in historical sense or literary. Each chapter starts with a basic grammar overview of the whole chapter and is then broken down into specific parts. Although an interesting development of the textbook is that the beginning goes into great detail on phonological aspects of the Latin language. Yet typical of any classically written Latin textbook, the first chapter focuses entirely on the verbal system, including not just the present but also other tenses, and states the first two conjugations. Another interesting aspect of this textbook would be that on instruction, a student exhausts a grandiose amount of learning on verbs before chapter 6.

This textbook is an ironically classic example of the common route many Latin teachers take on instruction in the classroom. When looking at the classical language learning standards, the only standards this textbook covers are 1.1 and 1.2. The other four goals, aside from communication, are not at all present in the textbook. These other four goals being culture, connections, comparison, and communities.

The second textbook, Disce!, is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and similar to Traditio, and puts just as much emphasis on phonological instruction. Yet in addition to the written phonological instruction, this particular textbook has an audio component. This feature is important for students to get an idea as to what a Roman accent may have sounded like. With this in mind, students are delving that much further into the Latin culture. This textbook also spends the first chapter explaining the alphabet and two different families one may have seen in Ancient Rome. Disce! breaks up the verbal system even further by focusing purely on one person from one tense in a single chapter. This instruction allows students to fully understand each person in a conjugation and its purpose.

In accordance to the classical standards, Disce! can easily be used to address all five goals. This could be done with little supplemented lessons for goals on communication, culture, connections, and comparisons. This textbook puts a lot of emphasis on the culture, going as far as teaching the students through two pseudo-Roman families.

Between the two textbooks, I would prefer to use Disce! over Traditio due to how much less supplementing I would have to do, in regards to the standards. As well as encouraging my students to have a well-rounded understanding of the Latin language. The visual aspects of the textbook also makes for a more interesting learning experience.

Bloom’s Taxonomy and A First Year Latin Student

A few skills that any Latin student will gain in their first year of Latin would be learning a ton of vocabulary and charts on nouns and verbs which would fall under Blooms Remembering bar. Students will gather many words and learn how to chant noun declensions as well as verb conjugations. With these words and charts students will be able to explain why these words need the specific endings, why a plural feminine word needs a plural verb and adjective. That these endings allow a student to see what role the word plays in the sentence. With this knowledge students will also see and understand how the syntactical form that Latin takes circles back to English. How verbs have to match their nouns as well as the adjectives. By applying this understanding of specified endings and agreement students will have a better grasp on the English language. After memorizing the different forms a noun takes in each case or how each ending changes in a verb conjugation students will be able to pick out from texts which words are connected and in agreement, therefore making translation and understanding the text that much more understandable. Students will only have to analyze a text for these specific endings and they will be able to give a loose translation of the text. With these application skills first year students can then look at these same texts and support their translation with their understanding of the endings and their uses, they can evaluate how the sentence or text should best be translated and give evidence for that decision. With all of these skills first year students should then be able to create their own works of writing, simple but still using endings and vocab and rules and other pieces of knowledge they have gleaned over the year.

In the book I am reading, When Dead Tongues Speak, by John Gruber-Miller, I was surprised how forward he was in naming the different issues a first year Latin may face, or even a senior teacher. The first thing he talks about was how as new teacher himself he was faced with the problem of having a purely grammar based Latin course. Taking Latin for a little more than ten years now I also was in this grammar based mindset for my future students. The problem he stated was that no student could fully grasp the material and the language from such a route, by making Latin so foreign from other languages in that it was not spoken anymore, he set his students up for below par in learning a language. In addition to taking away from students experience, the standards for Latin would also not be met. The standards speak of the need to educate ones students on the culture, the way in which they can apply this new knowledge in their own culture and the like. These standards also brought up some challenges that I will face in my future classroom. How can I teach my students about the culture, using texts and artwork that requires more than 1 years of Latin to decipher. Where can I find simple enough examples for my first year students to use without confusing them with advanced knowledge needed to understand the examples. Another problem being how can I make for them an opportunity to take this new knowledge and apply it to their other studies. maybe looking at poetry that is a predecessor to current or more modern poetry. Aside from the problem of having a grammar based course and addressing the standards other things that I quickly found issues with as a future Latin teacher were how to work with my students different learning skills, some being auditory, others visual, hands-on, etc. How could I take each of these different learning practices and try to reach them all or most in a language. Auditory and visual not so difficult, hands-on, a little more challenging to address. But by running into these problems I also began to think about possible lessons that could meet these needs. Like making a piece of artwork that embodies a Latin saying or Roman ideal. Another problem I came across in the reading was how could facilitate a communal environment with “dead language”. Maybe add some conversational Latin, but where does put my students? They couldn’t go outside the classroom and just start conversing in Latin, no one would understand them! How could I develop a sense of community in the classroom that could translate into other aspects of my students lives. These are the sorts of questions and problems I came across after reading the first chapter in Gruber-Miller’s book but hope to reconcile with further reading and experience.

image: http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy