NOTE 1: Although the texts are Latin, the 50 principles outlined in this article apply to any language. Don’t let the title deter you!
NOTE 2: This article is jam-packed with suggestions for specific texts and specific habits. As a result, it is, well, extensive. If you prefer to read offline or want to be able to zoom or simply love the Cambria font, you can download a pdf of the article: Driving With Dido - How I Came To Read Latin Extensively
If you find the article worth sharing, I ask that you share the link to this page rather than the downloaded file. You might also comment on this page instead of using the email address provided in the pdf, so that we can all benefit from your insight or inquiry! For related thoughts, see the description of Intensive and Extensive Reading as well as the posts “Why Your Reading Habit Works,” “The Inescapable Case for Extensive Reading,” and “Don’t Read, Reread!” For recommended texts beyond those mentioned in the article, see the Latin Text page.
Driving With Dido
How I came to read Latin extensively
When I started teaching Latin, I couldn’t read it myself. Now I can—not quite as fast as I read my native languages, but nevertheless in “real time” and with great enjoyment and profit. Seven or eight years ago, it might have taken me an hour to make sense of a page of Latin prose; last year, I read Cicero’s Pro Archia with glee during half a prep period and routinely took the edge off computer lab duty by imbibing multiple chapters of Noctes Atticae or dialogues of Erasmus. On a two-day road trip last summer, I listened with gusto to the entire Aeneid, sometimes using the speed-up feature so as to reach a good stopping point in the plot before reaching a good stopping point on the differently epic Pennsylvania turnpike.
So, what changed? Basically, I discovered some suitable texts and developed some helpful habits. While sharing these in conversations during the last two years, I have been asked many times to describe them in writing, which entreaties have finally resulted in this article. It follows a middle road between narrative testimony and naked list of texts, with the result that the core feature of this document is a set of specific texts I read in my first several years of learning Latin, each of which represents a genre or a type of reading pursuit and is accompanied by specific Key Points about reading habits or reading selection. The narrative introduction and interludes can be skipped with little loss, but I include them because many a conversation partner has found the context they provide enlightening.
What follows is not a prescription, or even a strong suggestion, but merely a description of a particular person’s path. Nor does it address all types of or motivations for reading; it focuses on the experience of Extensive Reading for the enjoyment of a text and the building of one’s fluency. I hope you find something of use!
How It Began
About a year after graduating from college, while attending graduate school in a different field, I decided it would be fun to learn Latin.
I couldn’t have named a single Latin textbook other than the German publisher Langenscheidt’s Via Nova, of which I could get my hands only on volume I, so I sought the reference section at Barnes and Noble and bought the only Latin textbook there: Wheelock’s Latin, 6th rev. ed., along with Wheelock’s Latin Workbook. Thus began the journey whose phases are roughly outlined below.
Phase 1 – “This Is Not Reading”
Wheelock’s Latin was written for soldiers, and I obeyed its instructions as dutifully as one. I learned the exact pronunciation propounded in the introduction, except that I substituted Italian vowels for the American approximations in the textbook. I think I am one of the few users of the book who actually followed the instruction on p.5 to read each sentence aloud from beginning to end and to read for comprehension before attempting a translation. (My general practice was to read each sentence or passage first silently twice, then aloud, then silently again, and then to write a translation.)
Wheelock’s Latin has 40 chapters. I read all the chapters and completed all the exercises in the textbook and workbook in 40 days. Now I was ready to read Latin.
I intended to prove this for myself by proceeding to Wheelock’s Latin Reader. So I bought the Reader and flipped to the first section, which consists of excerpts from Cicero’s orations against Verres. Before finishing the first page (that is to say, the small section of Latin that, together with the map and the English notes and glosses, constitutes the first page), I had made two discoveries that crucially altered my Latin-learning and, later, my Latin-teaching:
First, what I was doing—finding the gloss for every third word, reading all the grammatical notes, and then trying to figure out what the text might mean—was not reading. At least, it was not reading in the sense most people mean when they talk about “reading a book.”
Second, what I was doing then was not what I wanted my interactions with Latin generally to be like.
So I did what anyone would do: I gave up and tried reading the Aeneid instead. The lines were shorter, and, unlike with Cicero’s Verrines, I had actually heard of it and would think it cool to have read it in Latin.
I had the same basic experience with the Aeneid as I had had with In Verrem, but I recognized that a big part of the problem was my small vocabulary, so I started studying the vocab of the Aeneid by frequency. This got me far enough to begin audaciously tutoring AP Latin: Vergil students, which is how a particular Head of School heard that I knew Latin (he didn’t know that I merely “knew” Latin), which is how I ended up a high school Latin teacher less than a year later. But I still couldn’t read, in any sense that satisfied not just my intellect, but also my definition of reading, the Aeneid or any other Latin I knew of.
It’s worth noting that, despite my initial inability to read them, Cicero’s orations would take on a valuable role in my Latin-reading journey: as a Ciceronian speech had been the first bit of Latin I had ever encountered outside of an introductory textbook, a Ciceronian speech became my barometer for measuring the improvement of my Latin. The speech I used in this way was the first Catilinarian, for the goofy reason that I misremembered In Catilinam, rather than In Verrem, as the text I had first attempted. I approached and abandoned Oratio in L. Catilinam Prima periodically before finally reading the whole thing a few years after the initial try. Now I can read and enjoy it in a single sitting, as I did recently on a flight to Cabo San Lucas. (There was something aesthetically blissful about reading that particular speech while voluntarily exiling myself from my own country, not for abusing someone else’s patience, but to restore my own.)
I praise Wheelock’s for its insistence that one read Latin aloud and that one read and understand before, not by, translating. Both of these were crucial to my fledgling fluency. And Wheelock’s is up front about its goal: to be “a book which provides both the roots and at least some literary fruits of a sound Latin experience for those who will have only one year of Latin in their entire educational career, and a book which at the same time provides adequate introduction and encouragement for those who plan to continue their studies in the field” (xiv). What I didn’t know I needed—something that is missing not just from Wheelock’s and its ancillaries, but from most textbooks of any language—was hundreds of pages of captivating reading at every level.
Key Points from Phase 1:
1.1. Know what you want to be able to do.
1.2. Distinguish between reading and deciphering.
1.3. Read aloud.
1.4. Identify a barometer text that you can come back to in order to gauge your progress.
Texts that played a key role:
Wheelock’s Latin Textbook, Workbook, and Reader; Cicero’s First Catilinarian Oration; Vergil’s Aeneid
Phase 2 – Flowmilia Romana
Early in my second year of teaching Latin—I have no idea why it took this long and I’m ashamed that it did—I realized I not only didn’t really know Latin, but also didn’t know how to teach it. So I did what anyone would: I typed “How to teach Latin” into Google. I don’t remember most of what I found, but I know I ended up on the Latinteach listserv, where I heard of the then-young latin-bestpractices Yahoo group. Through the latter I learned of a book and of an organization (SALVI) that, in combination, helped me find my way out of attempting merely to decode Latin texts. I say “find my way” because I was genuinely lost. I was sure I needed to be doing something differently if I was actually to be able to read Latin fluently, but hadn’t had any idea where to turn. I hadn’t known a single person who knew Latin.
The book was Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana (hereafter FR). I judged at a glance that it wouldn’t make a good textbook (not enough explicit grammar instruction, I thought), but that it might make a helpful reader for someone like me who had already memorized the paradigms.
I decided to try to read FR without attempting to translate any of it into another language, since it was clear to me that part of the point of learning a language is not to need a translation. Doing this, I was able to “flow” until chapter 7 or 8; at that point, the vocabulary became overwhelming. FR introduces, on average, just under 50 words per chapter, all of which are meant to be mastered before one proceeds to the next chapter. Also, because of the subject matter—the daily life of a Roman family—there were many words I hadn’t encountered in Wheelock’s or the Aeneid.
Here, for reasons I can’t recall, I made a decision that worked wonders for my reading ability: I didn’t abandon the book, but neither did I turn my energies to studying the vocabulary that seemed to be my stumbling block, as I had tried when going through the Aeneid. Instead, I simply started back at the beginning of the book, and again read as far as I could. I figured, correctly, as it turned out, that I would internalize a bit more of the vocabulary each time I re-read the chapters and thus would eventually make it further and further through the book; in the process, I hoped, the syntax would become second nature. I might read chapters 1-7 three days in a row, then chapters 1-9 four days in a row, then chapters 1-12 several days in a row, and so forth. (There are 35 chapters, of which the last is a grammatical dialogue adapted from Donatus’s Ars Minor.) In this way, after a few weeks, I was reading up through the chapters in the mid-twenties, at which point, for time reasons, I began to divide my reading of the book over multiple days. After about two months, I could flow through the entire story over the course of two or three days, without any problems of vocabulary or syntax. Eventually, I completed the same process with Volume II: Roma Aeterna, although it took a lot longer than with Volume I.
By the way, I ended up convincing my students’ parents to buy them FR.
Key points from Phase 2:
2.1. Read what you can—something easy enough that you can “flow” through it and thus read lots of it.
2.2. Read the same thing over and over again.
2.3. In texts of gradually increasing difficulty, keep starting over at the beginning instead of picking up where you last struggled.
2.4. Read the passages in different textbook series (e.g., Wheelock’s Latin, Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, Cambridge Latin Course, Oxford Latin Course, Latin for Americans, Ecce Romani, Latin for the New Millennium); different series focus on different words and structures, and starting at the beginning of each series will make the readings easy enough that you can read a higher volume at a sitting.
2.5. Be willing to change your approach.
Texts that played a key role:
Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana and Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Roma Aeterna
Phase 3 – “So that’s how you say it in Latin!”
Through reading FR I had become convinced of the value of what I would later learn is called Extensive Reading, i.e., spending extended time reading many pages of a text that is interesting enough and easy enough for one to do so, as opposed to Intensive Reading, which involves decoding, analysis, or both, and therefore requires shorter passages at a session. The problem was that I still didn’t know of any other Latin texts that I could read Extensively.
Just before SALVI’s immersion event Rusticatio Virginiana 2008, I discovered Peter Needham’s translations of the first two Harry Potter books, and I decided to read them right after Rusticatio to make the most of my newly activated Latin. There was a major practical obstacle, because I departed two days after Rusticatio on a three-week rafting and hiking trip through the Grand Canyon, but I still managed to read about a chapter a day in Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis and Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum. I decided not to look up any words, but to underline words that I wanted to look up later. Flipping through my waterlogged copies, I see about one word per page underlined.
It is important to emphasize that I could read the Harry Potter books Extensively in Latin only because I had read the English originals several times; otherwise, many words per page would have baffled me.
I’ve since read the translations listed below many times each and have enjoyed recognizing the ways in which my own Latin has improved along the way: I understand things I didn’t understand before, I catch mistakes I wouldn’t have caught before, and I make connections between these texts and others that I have read in the meantime.
Key points from Phase 3:
3.1. Read something in which you already know what happens.
3.2. Read something that you want to read for hours.
3.3. It’s okay to read “inauthentic” texts; their Latin might still be better than yours.
3.4. Re-read translations-into-Latin and gauge the progress of your fluency both by your increased understanding and by your recognition of errors and of phrases more redolent of the original idiom than of Latin.
Texts that played a key role: Harrius Potter (-et Philosophi Lapis, -et Camera Secretorum) and other translations (Winnie Ille Pu, Mysterium Arcae Boulé, Fabulae Divales, etc.)
Phase 4 – 2300 Years Of Great Stuff
The approach of this article changes here, because reading and re-reading all those translations gave me a good enough idea of Extensive Reading and a decent enough reading ability to start reading widely with profit, first, mainly post-classical texts, then, classical texts as well.
From here on, titles of assorted texts or anthologies I read in the last five or six years and, in most cases, re-read, are listed with the briefest descriptions, followed by Key Points. This is not an exhaustive account of my reading; I’ve included texts that highlight particular points about reading Extensively. Many of the Key Points could be derived from many of the texts, but I’ve usually listed them just once. I’ve tried to keep the Key Points concise; if you would like further explanation of how they emerge from my experience with the texts, please inquire in the Comments section! I am also happy to recommend more texts in the Comments section.
Beeson’s Primer Of Medieval Latin, an anthology of medieval prose and poetry
Key points:
4.1. Enjoy someone else’s selections.
4.2. Read something whose variety keeps you coming back to it.
4.3. Discover authors, texts, genres, registers, and vocabulary you haven’t encountered.
thelatinlibrary.com, which contains complete texts of many classical, medieval, Renaissance, and post-Renaissance works
Key points:
4.4. Read stuff that’s easy to access and free to read.
4.5. Sometimes, just browse—read without “getting through” entire texts.
4.6. Discover authors and texts of which you haven’t heard (e.g., Karl Marx’s Matura essay, John Owens’s epigrams, Edmond Halley’s poetry, Alcuin’s riddles).
Renaissance versions of Aesop’s Fables, e.g., those collected by Laura Gibbs in Mille Fabulae et Una (of which recordings are available here at Indwelling Language!)
Key points:
4.7. Read widely in a particular genre.
4.8. Enjoy different versions of the same story.
4.9. Absorb different storytelling conventions.
Lhomond’s Epitome Historiae Sacrae, a summary of a few hundred biblical stories in classical Latin
Key points:
4.10. Read something with short installments.
4.11. Read something of which you can easily and quickly create audio recordings.
4.12. Read biblical stories rewritten in classical idiom.
Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius, a miscellany of linguistic, practical, philosophical, mythological, legal, and literary tidbits.
Key points:
4.13. Read something quirky.
4.14. Read something you want to read every day.
4.15. Read “non-canonical” classical texts.
Fabulae of Hyginus, short prose versions of myths
Key points:
4.16. Read a friend’s recommendations. (I learned of these stories from Elliot Goodman.)
4.17. Enjoy recognizing a text’s pet phrases.
Colloquia – dialogues by Erasmus, Vives, Heyden (audio available here at Indwelling Language!), and many others
Key points:
4.18. Read stuff about (someone’s) everyday life.
4.19. Absorb different registers of Latin.
4.20. Read lots written in the 1st and 2nd person.
A First Latin Reader by H. C. Nutting, with readings from both Roman and American history
Key points:
4.21. There are some gems out there.
4.22. Read things that were designed to be translated, without actually translating.
4.23. Read in Latin about things you normally wouldn’t read about in Latin.
4.24. Learn/revisit some non-European history in Latin.
Orations of Cicero
Key points:
4.25. Read something satisfying or exhilarating—I smile to myself once or twice a paragraph as I enjoy Cicero’s turns of phrase or how he sets up a conclusion.
4.26. Read what for millennia has been a go-to example of fluid Latin.
4.27. Read longish texts at a single sitting. My general practice is, if at all possible, to read in a single sitting any text that was meant to be read, delivered, or performed at one go. This includes most orations, letters, and plays.
Letters of Cicero (Epistulae ad Familiares, ad Atticum, ad Brutum, ad Quintum)
Key points:
4.28. Read texts in different genres by the same author.
4.29. Read everyday educated Latin.
Letters of Seneca (Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium)
Key points:
4.30. Read short, high-density things.
4.31. Re-read short, high-density texts over the course of a week. Here is a sample 5-day scheme: 1. Read, 2. Read + conduct word study, 3. Read, 4. Read + record, 5. Read + compose Latin response/reflection/exercise.
4.32. Do something with what you read (cf. 5-day scheme above).
General Suggestions and Encouragement
- Read in various ways: sometimes aloud, sometimes silently; sometimes fast, sometimes slowly; sometimes for a long time, sometimes for a short time.
- Record yourself reading Latin and listen to your recordings in the car, while doing chores, while shopping, etc. I cannot emphasize enough the value this has had for me. (You can listen to a selection of my recordings on the Latin Audio page.)
- Read what interests you. You’ll read much more if you’re keen on the content.
- Except for a class, a job, or personal discipline, don’t bother reading something you don’t feel like reading just because you think you’re supposed to have read it. If you discover after starting a text that you’re not really interested, don’t feel like you have to finish it.
- Figure out reading habits that work for you and cultivate them.
I would love to hear about your reading journey!
See also Why Your Reading Habit Works, The Inescapable Case for Extensive Reading (video), and The Number One Mistake In Language Learning.
Excellent article! Thoroughly practical. Thank you very much.
When you were going through Orberg, did you do all the pensa? Also the additional exercise book? Did you do the same in Roma Aeterna?
Thank you, Nick!
I did not do many of the pensa or exercitia for Familia Romana. For Roma Aeterna, I did do most of the supplemental exercitia through Cap. XLIV. Looking back at Exercitia Latina II for the first time in a long time, I see that I stopped abruptly at that point. My guess is that, by that time, I had figured out that doing written exercises of almost any kind is rarely as efficient as simply reading more (or rereading).
Are there any resources or habits that you’ve found particularly helpful?
Thank you for the feedback. I feel the same way about written exercises. They were good for me to check my accuracy, but in the long run they bogged me down, causing me to over analyze the grammar and stripping the words from their meaningful context.
I made my way through FR a few years ago, but I went too quickly. The vocabulary overwhelmed me in the second volume. But overall Orberg is the only text that made me read latin as latin.
After attempting to read Roma Aeterna too quickly (not re-reading enough), I tried to read Cicero and your experience was exactly mine–I could decipher the meaning after a great deal of analysis, but ultimately all pleasure was sucked out of the reading and I was not reading like a human being was meant read. Your point about interesting, even enjoyable reading is huge. After I get through Orberg I’m looking forward to reading Ille Hobbitus.
I’m going to give your method a try because it rings true with what I have found effective. Vocabulary sticks with me when found in a meaningful, interesting context. For this reason, flash cards have been of no help to me, even an impediment. Teaching my little daughter simple commands has burned vocabulary in my mind. Recording myself in simple conversations and responding have been very helpful as well. Attempting to speak with friends has been helpful but it sometimes feels like the blind leading the blind. Orberg’s method of latin synonyms and antonyms has also been a great help.
Did you re-read all the chapters each day? If so how time consuming was that? I can imagine Roma Aeterna took a few years!
Thank you again for your service. This is some of the best advice I have come across for learning this beautiful language.
One obstacle sometimes I find when I re-read things is that I don’t read with the same focus on the words because I know what is about to be said and I worry I’m not really reading the Latin as Latin but the 2nd or 3rd time etc. just remembering the content that I learned from reading it before. In other words, I might not notice implicitly the syntax (i.e. I might not be reading very carefully) but just see words and impose the meaning from already knowing the context. Hopefully this makes sense. Do you see this as a problem or know of a way to avoid this? I’ve always thought the perfect kind of thing to read with Oerberg would be a story that included all the same vocab of Oerberg but with a totally different plot or use of the words.
Thank you great circumnavigator of the world via languages (not boat?).
Speaking of resurrected languages 😉 can you recommend any beginner’s texts in modern Hebrew that might fit in with a CI approach?
Kind thanks,
Hi, Charles, it’s not fully aligned with CI principles, but I have found the Pimsleur course for Modern Hebrew quite helpful. For a learner motivated enough to listen to all the sentences about going to the hotel to drink wine, Pimsleur really makes the language sound natural fast. Buying the course is expensive, but I’ve always been able to find Pimsleur courses at the public library.
Just found this and am amazed at how my Latin-reading journey, still in its infancy, mirrors yours. I too began by teaching the Aeneid (for the IB exam), and my frustration with using Wheelock’s in that context led me to the online discovery of Oerberg. I bought and devoured FR, using it to teach more fluent text-comprehension with good results. After that, I plowed through Roma Aeterna; the vocab wasn’t such a hurdle because I had been studying Latin for years, but the material didn’t interest me that much; nevertheless, I persevered. I then attended a Conventiculum, which introduced me to aspects of current language acquisition theory and pedagogy, and was my first halting experience with spoken Latin. Because of my background in Latin grammar, decoding, and study of classical Latin texts, I have close to 100% aural comprehension of even advanced lectures and conversations, but my speaking still lags far behind–perhaps now having attained an ‘intermediate beginner’s’ level. During this phase, I read as much of Erasmus’ Colloquia Familiaria as I could, with great delight and profit, as well as Sulpicius Severus’ Life of St. Martin–which, to my surprise and joy, I could now actually read–slowly, but fairly fluently! I would recommend it for this purpose. Now I am nearly finished with a medieval Latin reader published in Germany (Schulz: Mittellateinisches Lesebuch), which contains a variety of short and interesting excerpts from significant texts: Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, Paulus Diaconus’ History of the Langobards, Heisterbach’s collection of hair-raising miracles, de Voragine’s Golden Legend (Lives of the Saints), Otto von Freising’s Deeds of Frederick the Great, Aquinas’ Proof of God, the most important early Christian hymns and sequences by Ambrose et al., troubadour songs including the Carmina Burana, and historical documents such as papal bulls, the Corcordat of Worms, and the Magna Carta. All of these I would recommend as well, according to one’s interest.
I also try to listen to as much good Latin online as possible e.g. yours, and Latin lectures such as Luigi Miraglia’s and others at European Latin conventions. For absorbing the meters of classical poetry, the recordings of Vivarium Novum (Eusebius Toth’s settings) are valuable.
I am torn between several things to tackle next: the most commonly-read speeches of Cicero, or someof his letters, Aulus Gellius (inspired by you), Harry Potter (!), or more Erasmus…
One more enthusiastic personal recommendation: Asterix in Latin! Rubricastellanus’ Latinity is decent, and the material is nothing if not engaging, and conversational too, since they’re comic books.
Finally, thank you for your incredibly helpful tips, recommendations, and materials. They are an inspiration!
Dear Ioanna, thanks for reading and commenting–I can’t believe I’m only just replying! It’s so great to read of your experiences and chosen texts, and fascinating how similar our paths have been. I’m eager to make them even more similar by reading Sulpicius Severus and your other recommendations!
Hi, Justin,
Which recording of “Aeneid” did you listen to?
How exactly did you start practicing spoken latin?
Thanks for your tips,
André
Hi, André, thanks for reading and commenting! I listened to the Aeneid from LibriVox (https://librivox.org/aeneidis-libri-xii-by-publius-vergilius-maro/).
Until last year, my only Latin-speaking times outside of formal immersion events were in the classes I taught. I figured, “If I want people to have Latin conversations with, I need to create some Latin speakers!” About a year and a half ago, I started having weekly conversations with advanced Latinists via Skype or telephone.
I should emphasize, though, that the main factor, BY FAR, in improving my speaking ability has been Extensive Reading and Listening. Speaking opportunities do make us more comfortable and confident speakers, but they don’t cause much new language to enter the brain. So the combination I recommend is a high volume of reading and listening to fairly easy text, mixed with low-pressure conversations, if you can find them.
I wish you all the best! Please don’t hesitate to share what works for you.
How long did it take you to get through Roma aeterna?
Good question! Maybe a year? But I never made it the sole focus of my reading; I would have been reading other things concurrently and frequently rereading parts of Roma Aeterna before moving on to the next part.
I’ve bought a Latin anthology called “Selecta Latina”, it’s an anthology for Portuguese-speaking students. There is a great selection of Latin texts and their difficulty increases as you read each chapter, and there’s a vocabulary at the end of each text. I think it’s a good idea for Latin learners to buy a Latin anthology for students. But at least here in my country, it’s somewhat hard to find these anthologies, because they are either too expensive or too old and hard to find.
What a great article! The “middle road between narrative testimony and naked list of texts” seems fantastic for anyone who might want to follow that same road. Without the list, he wouldn’t know where to begin, and without the narrative the how and why.
I did have one question about phase 1, or specifically the “decoding” work you did on texts beyond your level of “reading” then. Would you say that this work was valuable? Or if you could do it all over again would you cut out any “decoding” from phase 1? When you tackle a new language do you do it? These are all meant to be the same question.
Let me briefly explain where my question is coming from. Someone might read your segment on phase 1 and think that you thought “decoding” was not very useful except that it gave you a “barometer.” But since you say that one needs a “barometer” you can’t think the work was all bad. Is one then to do what is otherwise useless just to get a “barometer”? Maybe this “barometer” means some sufficient knowledge of the depth and complexity of the language so you know what you’re up against. If so, getting it might mean a substantial amount of “decoding.” So after all you do value decoding?
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Right on the money. I wish I had this 10 years ago, but it still contains a lot of helpful material even for someone who has been down much of this road already.
I always get a charge out of having my opinions backed by a competent authority. When I was teaching my children Latin they complained frequently about the fact that we kept starting at the beginning of Lingua Latina. “Taverna Romana” became a dirty phrase and a running joke at our house. Today, after 10 years of studying Latin in many different ways, I just re-read Lingua Latina again from the beginning, leaving off this morning in the middle of the penultimate chapter. Doing so was still enjoyable and useful.
Soon I will begin rereading Roma Aeterna. In addition to Orberg, I am currently taking an online class that studies the prayers of the old Latin Missal closely. I am enjoying both the intensive and extensive reading, but if you don’t have a teacher I think it wise to weight the extensive reading much more heavily.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Vincent. I’m glad you’ve been enjoying Familia Romana. I wish you all the best with Roma Aeterna and your other pursuits!
Given your experiences (both learning on your own and as a teacher), do you think that your path of “study grammar carefully using a traditional text, then move on to extensive reading” is optimal? Or could you skip the Wheelock and move straight to FR? Would the answer be different for self-learners or those learning in a classroom setting?
Great question! I’ve wondered about that a lot. The answer may vary based on interest, other languages known, and, as you note, whether one is learning alone or with a community of learners.
I can say confidently that it is possible to learn languages, including Latin, without front-loading explicit grammar study. My students have been successful without such front-loading for the last seven or eight years, as have I and something I have done with other languages. If an autodidact has some knowledge of a Romance language, she can probably dive right into FR on her own, adding other simple reading material as soon as possible. A wish for grammar explanations more explicit than what FR provides can be fulfilled through Jeanne Newman’s College Companion to FR.
The value of explicit grammar study is determined in no small part by the learner’s temperament–more, I think, than it is determined by the nature of language or the nature of the brain. For instance, some learners enjoy having an overview of forms, even out of context, and may be frustrated by not having an overview of forms at hand. The resulting stress is likely to have an adverse effect on learning and motivation. That said, a learner should avoid thinking–and we should take care not to make learners believe–that a focus on forms or on generalizations abstracted from linguistic data (e.g., grammar rules as presented in textbooks) is a prerequisite for internalizing the language.
I hope this helps!
Hi Justin
I much enjoyed your account of how you developed the technique of extensive reading of Latin. I thought that you and anyone else who is interested might like to read of my experience which is not dissimilar to yours.
Although I have had an engagement with Latin going back many years (which included teaching the subject in schools here in the UK) I would not say that I could read the language in the generally accepted sense of reading a book although I had enough grammar and vocabulary to puzzle out the meaning of a Latin sentence.
In 2015 I decided to do something about my inability to read Latin and completed about twenty of the exercises in Frank Ritchie’s well known and long established textbook Second Steps in Latin. I then bought Ritchie’s Fabulae Faciles (1913 edition) and translated and wrote out the one hundred or so graded passages of Latin prose which the author provides. As I progressed through Fabulae Faciles I felt that I was acquiring the ability to read in Latin word order which is the key to reading the language as opposed to hopping about from verb to subject to object.
I attended, parallel with translating Fabulae Faciles, a Latin class run by an organisation called the City of London Literary Institute (popularly known as “the City Lit”). Those classes were useful but were based on the very dull Cambridge Latin Course (now in a new edition) which involved reading much simplified versions of the plays of Plautus and simplified Cicero.
I decided that I might be better working on my own and when looking round for a text book I found, as you did, that genius Hans H. Orberg’s series Lingua Latina per se illustrata. After reading Familia Romana I embarked upon Roma Aeterna which is more challenging with its extensive vocabulary and more complex sentence structures. I shall certainly adopt your method of going back to the beginning of the book and re-reading what I have already covered.
Apart from the approaches you described, I have found beneficial the video clips (YouTube?) of readings especially those from Vergil and Horace. They are beneficial in the sense that they allow oneself to become steeped in the language. I have also translated Horace, Odes, 1.9 (Vides it alta stet nive candidum) as well as making a somewhat faltering start on Aeneid 2 by translating the first 100 lines. That is very much a work in progress.
The (London) Times publishes on Saturdays a Latin crossword under the title O Tempora! which is good test of ones knowledge of grammar and the rich treasure trove that is Latin literature. It must appeal to a sufficient number of Latinists to make publishing it worthwhile.
Best wishes
Roger Turner
Thank you for sharing your experience, Roger! It’s fascinating to see how many of us cite Lingua Latina per se Illustrata as formative for our reading fluency. Fabulae Faciles has played a valuable role for me and my students, too.
Not mentioned in “Driving with Dido” is my habit of recording myself reading Latin texts, which I then listen to almost incessantly while driving, walking, or doing chores. (Some of these recording can be heard on the Latin Audio page.) The proliferation of YouTube videos has greatly multiplied the amount we can listen to in Latin. In case it is of interest to you, I have created and annotated a list of free online Latin materials suitable for Extensive Reading and Listening, including several YouTube channels. You can access the list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1voCJtIGDouGt80TxpNlmaRChfIX5OmUf-2jMWmImNMg/edit?usp=sharing
I wish you all the best in your Latin-related pursuits!
Hi, Justin.
I’m Spanish. Latin was mandatory in high school a few years ago, so I studied it more than 20 years ago. I think I forgot everything but “rosa/rosae”.
I would like to learn Latin. I hate to study grammar, so the Extensive Reading approach sounds good to me. First lessons of Familia Romana are very easy to follow because of my Spanish knowledge. But I’m studying French now, and I wonder whether my reading of Latin could interfere (positive or negatively) in my French studies. What do you think?
Hi, Miguel,
Thanks for reading and commenting! I love that you are getting back to Latin. While there exists a phenomenon called linguistic interference, I don’t think it will be a problem in this case. You may sometimes accidentally think of a word in the other language rather than the language you are currently dealing with, but that is normal and harmless.
In case they’re useful to you, here are a few blog posts on learning multiple languages simultaneously:
“Limiting Your Language Learning–on Purpose”
“Do What You Feel Like”
“The Multilingual Reading Countdown”
“Reading Websites in Multiple Languages”
I wish you all the best in your linguistic pursuits!
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Hi Justin,
Do you have advice for reading texts that are not of gradually increasing difficulty, such as Ad Alpes, or texts like Harrius Potter and Hobbitus Ille translated from English? I find that I usually know enough to have a good sense of what of what is going on in the story, but on any given page there are still a number of words I don’t know, or grammar constructions not immediately apparent so that I am really able to “flow” through the text yet. I’m not sure it would be best to just become better acquainted with the English, or simply spend more time looking things up and moving through the text at a slower pace.
Thanks!
Ryan
Wow! Mind blown.
I starting studying Latin in college, majored in it, got a MA in Classics, taught a few Latin and Greek courses as a graduate student. Then, switched to Arabic. I studied Arabic pretty much as I had studied Latin: grammar, vocab. memorization, etc. BUT, the more I got into it, the more I was forced to read for school–I eventually got a Ph.D. in Arabic and became an Arabic professor. I could pick up any book from any genre in Arabic and read it without translation, without a dictionary, etc. It became much like English for me, except of course that my level was not as high because it is not my native languague. Still, I never connected the dots of how I came to learn Arabic.
Fast forward a decade. I watched a Stephen Krashen video on YouTube about extensive reding/comprehensible input. I must have heard of Krashen somewhere along the line during my schooling, but it never rang a bell, and NO professor ever explicitly taught me that you learn languages when you understand messages (as Krashen says). So, I set out to see if what Krashen said was correct.
I had studies a little bit of Icelandic grammar, but my level was still very low. As an experiment, I stopped reviewing my Icelandic flashcards, stopped reading about Icelandic grammr, stopped doing Icelandic drills, and started to read and listen to very simple Icelandic. I devoted between 1 and 2 hours to Icelandic per day, very consistently (I was ablet to because of the pandemic). After 9 months, my Icelandic went from probably a level A1 to a B1+. I now listen to podcasts and read books written for teenagers in Icelandic without any outside help.
That experience brought me back to Latin. I realized (very late in life!) that I had never acquired Latin as I now had acquired Arabic and to a lesser extent Icelandic. So, I am starting my Latin journey anew, this time using the principle of comprehensible input.
Your suggestions on this page seem excellent. Thank you for a wonderful post! And now, onto a late-in-life journey in Latin!
How do you apply this to teaching students? I totally agree with your analysis of the benefits of extensive reading vs doing exercises and memorizing forms/grammar, and I would like to pass that on to my students. The problem is that I don’t know how to measure their progress unless they’re completing the pensa, and while I can encourage them to read the chapters of FR over and over again, I don’t really have a way to enforce that. Can you comment on how you use these methods in the classroom?