2011 November 19

Of relevance to ancient literary and scriptural studies: As It Is Written: The Nature, Purpose, and Meaning of the Gospel of Mark. What is the purpose of Mark's Gospel? Can the author's intention be divined from the text itself? Does the text have a Roman provenance?

2011 November 19

  Utility: LTM Micro-Mini Calendar for 2012 [1-page PDF file]. A super-minimalist calendar: essential monthly information for the year in a postage-stamp-sized area.

2011 October 29

"Re-Envisioning Classics As a Liberal Art," Electronic Antiquity 14:2 (May 2011) 1-20. Argument: Collegiate classics, under the sway of too severe a concept of professional philology, has drastically underplayed its educational hand in such a way that it has diminished its vitality, impact, and usefulness; yet this damage can be reversed — and liberal education transformed to a new level of effectiveness — by revising the concept of undergraduate programs in classical studies and by following a few key maxims.

2011 March 14

Word Study: Ut in the Letters of Seneca.   For use as a praxis or as a source of examples (598 instances in 485 passages).

2011 February 06

Nietzsche Humanist, 2nd edition.  Recommended for college-aged students and older. This new ebook edition is a corrected and revised version of the one that appeared from Marquette University Press in 1998. It offers a general reading and interpretation of Nietzsche's work in the context of the classical humanist tradition.

2010 December 18

  Utility: LTM Micro-Mini Calendar for 2011 [1-page PDF file]. A super-minimalist calendar that fits essential monthly information for all the months of 2011 into a postage-stamp-sized area.

2010 November 13

Verbal Brilliance: Sample Verb Synopses. PDF format. Synopses of three verbs, with a list of 196 verbs for practice.

2010 October 16

What Difference Does the Conjugation Number Make? Indicative Passive Forms. Tables comparing all personal verb-forms across the conjugations horizontally.

2010 October 10

The Liveliness of Latin. For easy printing: the PDF version of a promotional chart comparing the liveliness of Latin to that of English.

2010 October 09

What Difference Does the Conjugation Number Make? Subjunctives. Tables comparing all personal verb-forms in the subjunctive mood across the conjugations.

2010 October 03

Perfect and Passive Two-Step. An easy rule for changing perfects into passive forms and for recognizing such forms.

2010 July 28

Word Study: Gratia, with over 600 examples from Cicero, prefaced by an easy-reading adaptation of the entry in Lewis & Short's dictionary.

2010 July 27

Word Study: Oportêre with examples from Cicero.  Over one thousand instances of Cicero's use of this favorite word, prefaced by an easy-reading adaption of the entry in Lewis & Short's dictionary and a short guide to the word's usefulness in conversational Latin.

2010 July 17

New Verbal Brilliance condensed files. Thousands of verb exercises in paper-saving format, ready-to-go for class handouts. See Numbers 40-44 on the index-page. Teachers can select from and re-process these items.

2010 March 11

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta. MP3 sound files for Sections 1-3 redone; Section 4 added. Listen to the text as you read.

2010 March 09

Cicero's De Domo Sua. Acceleration Reader versions (html / pdf / txt).  A challenging, passionate speech addressing the destruction of Cicero's house on the Palatine. 15,000+ words. The .txt format is suitable for the Reading Acceleration Machine.

2010 February 14

Dative Usage in Cicero's Second Catilinarian Oration. Examples of Cicero's use of the dative case, with translations. PDF file also available for ready-to-go handouts.

2010 February 10

"Classical Humanism Has Everything to Do with Justice" [OFFSITE LINK]. An essay published in Electronic Antiquity.

2010 February 09

The Liveliness of Latin (Comparative Chart). How Latin remains relevant and vital.

2009 November 11

The Star-Spangled Banner in Latin. Two versions of the first stanza that can be sung to the music.

2009 November 07

  Utility: LTM Micro-Mini Calendar for 2010 [1-page PDF file]. A super-minimalist calendar that fits essential monthly information for all the months of 2010 into a postage-stamp-sized area. Could be pasted to a bookmark, inside a binder, or around a pen. Two slightly larger alternate versions are included.

2009 November 06

Verb Tense Practice 1-10 [PDF FILE: 2-page ready-to-go handout] and Verb Tense Practice, 1-34, All Conjugations, including Deponents [PDF FILE: 6-page ready-to-go handout]. Written homework / assignment pages designed to fix certain tense-markers in students' memories for selected forms of verbs. Students are given English forms and asked to write the Latin equivalents.

2009 October 20

Verbal Brilliance in Latin: Deponent Verbs, Comprehensive Practice on Paradigm Verbs (all forms). 345 items, Latin to English and 345 English to Latin. Each list can serve as an answer-key to the other. Teachers might want to select and re-arrange items ad libitum.

2009 October 14-15  

Acceleration Reader MP3 Audio: Cicero, Pro Archia (Sections 1-3). Listen as you read the text.

2009 October 11  

Acceleration Reader: Cicero, De Officiis I  Easy-reading format for the first book of one of Cicero's most important philosophical works. A bicolumnar classroom text with numbered lines is available in pdf-format from the index-page.  14,000 words. Last revised: November 3, 2009.

2009 September 19  

Indirect Questions: Tenses [PDF file]  One-page ready-to-go handout explaining the subjunctive-tense possibilities for indirect questions.

2009 August 29  

Verbal Brilliance handouts [PDF file]: Condensed version of Conjugation 1 exercises. Saves paper and photocopying. Use regular looseleaf paper to write out the answers.

2009 August 05  

Comprehensive Practice on Infinitives. 562 Latin-to-English and 562 English-to-Latin forms. The lists can serve as answer-keys for each other.

2009 August 04  

Synopsis of Latin Infinitives and How to Produce Them.

2009 July 31  

Synoptic View of All Third-Declension Patterns, a vertically-arranged comparative chart of nouns and adjectives that take third-declension endings.

2009 July 08-31  

Extensive editing of most of the 300+ pages at this site for better appearance across browsers.

2009 February 21  

LatinPraxis Sentence Practice 18 (cf. Wheelock 1-18).  125 items.

2009 February 08  

LatinPraxis Sentence Practice 17 (cf. Wheelock 1-17).  159 items.

2009 February 03  

Arbor: a flash movie (Rudîmenta in Môtû).

2009 January 29  

Nouns (cf. Wheelock 1-16): One-page ready-to-go PDF file for review of all nouns, with space to identify genders (m/f/n/c). Teachers can ask students to write out or to deliver orally a given case for some or all of these nouns.

2009 January 25  

Oculus: a flash movie (Rudîmenta in Môtû).

2009 January 20-23  

Mâlum: a flash movie (Rudîmenta in Môtû).

2009 January 09  

3400 Latin Adjectives, Comprehensive List, Arranged by Type. Also available: a PDF version in columnar format.

2008 November 27  

Beowulf: The Latin translation by Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin, 1815.

2008 November 16  

Verb Practice, English to Latin (all persons) Cf. Wheelock 1-11.   Also available in PDF format.  846 items.

2008 November 16  

Verb Practice, English to Latin: Simple tenses, 1st and 3rd sg. forms. Cf. Wheelock 1-11.  276 items.  This one-page, ready-to-go handout in PDF format can also serve as an economical review of all the verbs taken in the first eleven chapters of Wheelock.

2008 July 23  

LTM at SLU receives commendation from Finding Dulcinea: Librarian of the Internet as "a must-bookmark for any teacher of Latin."

2008 July 18-25  

Added mp3 audio files for Seneca Epistula I.5 and I.6.

2008 July 17  

MP3 sound files for the Latin of some of Seneca's Letters improved, and put into classical pronunciation. Embedded audio player allows for listening directly from the webpage.

2008 July 04  

Epistula Ad Familiares XIV.4.  A bicolumnar, bilingual handout in PDF format (2 pages). This letter is an extraordinarily passionate and personal communication from Cicero to his wife and children in a time of crisis. "I only wish, my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your arms...if I have you I shall not think myself wholly lost."

2008 January 05  

When Does the -i- Appear in the III-io Conjugation?  A one-page pdf handout comparing the regular third conjugation forms with the III-io forms. (See the Grammar and Vocabulary Helps page.)

2008 January 04  

  Super-Minimalist Micro Calendar for 2008  A postage-stamp-sized calendar covering the twelve months of the year.

Grammar and Vocabulary Helps

These materials present the essentials of beginning and intermediate Latin morphology. In addition, you can find a summary of the vocabulary for Wheelock's Latin (6th Edition), other vocabulary studies, and some Flash movies for elementary Latin acquisition.

LatinPraxis is a series of exercises correlated with the same text, using thousands and thousands of short phrases and sentences to help students achieve mastery of vocabulary and forms as well as an immediacy of understanding.

For the theory of this phrase-based approach to second-language-acquisition, read "Upgrading Latin Pedagogy."

Verbal Brilliance in Latin is a set of ready-to-go handouts in pdf format. This series of explanation-pages and exercises can be used in conjunction with any text, or they can stand alone as a beginning workshop in the study of Latin. Read the preface for an insight into the pedagogical problems that this approach is designed to address.

You are welcome to use, to improve upon, and to share whatever you may find helpful for teaching or learning Latin.  The pdf versions may be especially useful in the creation of handouts: they are formatted to fit the contents on 8.5 x 11 typing paper.

Elementary Latin Readers

Here you will find excellent simplified Latin reading material for beginning and intermediate students. It is especially valuable because it carries much of the long-shared Western- and world- cultural-historical koine, such as Bible stories, Aesop's fables and famous anecdotes from antiquity. There is also one of the most famous books of fourteenth-century England, the Gesta Romanorum.

Acceleration Readers

These readers use pedagogical typography and collections of parallel syntactical examples to increase comprehension speed for authentic classical texts. Recommended: Read the Introductory Note for a brief overview of the essential skills needed for a mastery of Latin prose. Current authors: Caesar, Cicero, Pliny the Younger, Livy, Quintilian, Sallust, Seneca.

  Audio-files in mp3 format present some of Seneca's letters in classical pronunciation.

Paedagogica

Here are presentations of ideas that bear upon the pedagogy behind much of the material offered at this site. You can find some Latin translations and compositions of material like

• Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

• the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

• the Apology of Socrates

• the Analects of Confucius

• Plutarch's Life of Cicero.

• Shakespeare's Sonnets

There is some material relating to the history of Latin pedagogy, including a rare Latin textbook from 1623 (John Harmar's Praxis, with translation), and a very full timeline of Roman history from John Sandys. Because of its relevance to classical humanism, a theoretical essay on cultural history has been included. Also available are several pages on the GRASP method and free language-learning software for Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0., the Reading Acceleration Machine.

Related Sites

A selection of sites relating to Latin Pedagogy.