Wheelock is overrated

Started by Bonaventure, February 19, 2017, 01:24:37 AM

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Lynne

Quote from: Christina_S on February 19, 2017, 03:40:36 PM
We used Lingua Latina by Orberg in my homeschool online Latin class, and everyone loved it. The order it gives noun endings is nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, as opposed to Wheelock's and a lot of other textbooks that go nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative. In terms of verbs, Orberg uses 3rd person speech until Cap. XV, which tends to make the transition to 1st and 2nd a little harder. However, idiomatic Latin, various uses of the ablative case, vocative nouns, indirect speech and present active/passive infinitives are introduced early, so you get a well rounded idea of Latin sentence construction early on. Because you learn through translating, new vocab and concepts get cemented in the brain pretty quick.
I'm using Wheelock's at uni now, and I think it's great, but for people who struggle to identify parts of language and speech, it's difficult. I like the variety of sentences introduced for translation, and the charts at the back of the book are very good. The glossary isn't great, so a supplemental dictionary is needed.

I found it (Lingua Latina) on Amazon and one of the review has a lot of good detail on the course material.

https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205
In conclusion, I can leave you with no better advice than that given after every sermon by Msgr Vincent Giammarino, who was pastor of St Michael's Church in Atlantic City in the 1950s:

    "My dear good people: Do what you have to do, When you're supposed to do it, The best way you can do it,   For the Love of God. Amen"

MilesChristi

I have both volumes, although I've never finished the second one. It definitely helps with fluency.

I had already gotten good at grammar and translation (public school lol) before poring through these books.

Actually having to express yourself in Latin sentences was a welcome challenge I didn't have before.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

MundaCorMeum

'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Heinrich

Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 12:18:53 PM
'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Accusative or Dative?
Schaff Recht mir Gott und führe meine Sache gegen ein unheiliges Volk . . .   .                          
Lex Orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.
"Die Welt sucht nach Ehre, Ansehen, Reichtum, Vergnügen; die Heiligen aber suchen Demütigung, Verachtung, Armut, Abtötung und Buße." --Ausschnitt von der Geschichte des Lebens St. Bennos.

MundaCorMeum

Quote from: Heinrich on February 20, 2017, 01:29:01 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 12:18:53 PM
'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Accusative or Dative?

We've not covered that, yet....so, no clue  :)

Jayne

Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 05:29:04 PM
Quote from: Heinrich on February 20, 2017, 01:29:01 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 12:18:53 PM
'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Accusative or Dative?

We've not covered that, yet....so, no clue  :)

If you are doing English grammar you probably won't ever use those terms.  They are used in Latin and other inflected languages.  "Accusative" corresponds to direct object in English grammar and "dative" to indirect object.  They both are "whom". 

Direct object - Whom do you seek?
Indirect object - To whom are you giving that donut?

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

LouisIX

I would strongly caution against Orberg or Collins. Orberg works on the modernist educational theory that students should just be shown how to do something without actually learning rules, principles, patterns, etc. You can't shortcut your way through a language.

Collins might be fine if one were only going to read the Bible, but it's severely lacking in vocabulary and grammar outside of that limited range.

Wheelock has been the standard bearer for decades now, and with good reason.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Bonaventure

Quote from: LouisIX on February 20, 2017, 08:02:04 PM
I would strongly caution against Orberg or Collins. Orberg works on the modernist educational theory that students should just be shown how to do something without actually learning rules, principles, patterns, etc. You can't shortcut your way through a language.

Up to a point, it is not modernist. As children, we do not pick up grammar and rules, then begin talking. We observe, and repeat. Because of similar sentence structure and that many of the kids I'll have are Mexican hispanohablantes, Orberg pars I would do well to engage them and have them able to understand and speak basics.

Of course they need to learn grammar and rules, too.
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."

Jayne

Oerberg is engaging, but I think it fundamentally flawed to use the small children's learning process as a model for an adult program. Older children and adults do not learn language the same way that small children do.

With my small co-op class, I used MP's First Form Latin,  with its traditional approach to grammar, as our main text, but we occasionally read the stories out of Oerberg as a fun Latin activity.  It made a great change of pace.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

LouisIX

Quote from: Bonaventure on February 21, 2017, 12:59:43 AM
Quote from: LouisIX on February 20, 2017, 08:02:04 PM
I would strongly caution against Orberg or Collins. Orberg works on the modernist educational theory that students should just be shown how to do something without actually learning rules, principles, patterns, etc. You can't shortcut your way through a language.

Up to a point, it is not modernist. As children, we do not pick up grammar and rules, then begin talking. We observe, and repeat. Because of similar sentence structure and that many of the kids I'll have are Mexican hispanohablantes, Orberg pars I would do well to engage them and have them able to understand and speak basics.

Of course they need to learn grammar and rules, too.

Certainly, and this is why I would advocate for parents to begin teaching their children organically at a young age in the home. However, older children, teenagers, and adults have lost the intuitive reception of language. It is now something like a science which must be learned rationally. This is what Wheelock does, in my opinion, and what Orberg loses.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

rbjmartin

Maybe you already mentioned it, but what grade level are you teaching? In homeschooling my children, I have been using the First Form, Second Form, Third Form, and Fourth Form books published by Memoria Press. The Fourth Form book transitions to Henle by incorporating translation work from the latter half of Henle's First Year book. This is a good cursus studiorum if you are starting them in middle school or earlier. If you're starting with high schoolers, you would probably need to dive straight into Henle's First Year.

I agree with Louis's criticism of Orberg, simply because my own experience in studying by that method was ineffective. It was used in my high school classes, and I came away from four years of HS Latin feeling like I learned very little. Later, when I started Latin studies from scratch in seminary, we used a grammar-first approach, and I gained a much better grasp of the language.

While I don't like Orberg as a primary textbook, I do use it as a supplemental reader, so my children have an opportunity to do some easy translation and application of the rules they've already learned. This gives them a sense of accomplishment and builds motivation. Doing solely grammar with too little translation turns the language into something too abstract and hard for the student to grasp.

MundaCorMeum

Quote from: Jayne on February 20, 2017, 06:23:13 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 05:29:04 PM
Quote from: Heinrich on February 20, 2017, 01:29:01 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 12:18:53 PM
'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Accusative or Dative?

We've not covered that, yet....so, no clue  :)

If you are doing English grammar you probably won't ever use those terms.  They are used in Latin and other inflected languages.  "Accusative" corresponds to direct object in English grammar and "dative" to indirect object.  They both are "whom". 

Direct object - Whom do you seek?
Indirect object - To whom are you giving that donut?

Wouldn't that second 'whom' be object of the preposition? 

LouisIX

Quote from: rbjmartin on February 21, 2017, 12:27:19 PM
Maybe you already mentioned it, but what grade level are you teaching? In homeschooling my children, I have been using the First Form, Second Form, Third Form, and Fourth Form books published by Memoria Press. The Fourth Form book transitions to Henle by incorporating translation work from the latter half of Henle's First Year book. This is a good cursus studiorum if you are starting them in middle school or earlier. If you're starting with high schoolers, you would probably need to dive straight into Henle's First Year.

I agree with Louis's criticism of Orberg, simply because my own experience in studying by that method was ineffective. It was used in my high school classes, and I came away from four years of HS Latin feeling like I learned very little. Later, when I started Latin studies from scratch in seminary, we used a grammar-first approach, and I gained a much better grasp of the language.

While I don't like Orberg as a primary textbook, I do use it as a supplemental reader, so my children have an opportunity to do some easy translation and application of the rules they've already learned. This gives them a sense of accomplishment and builds motivation. Doing solely grammar with too little translation turns the language into something too abstract and hard for the student to grasp.

I agree that Orberg will work as a supplement and that doing translations early builds confidence. That's part of the reason that Wheelock is so good. You're doing translations right away. It doesn't take long before you're translating lines from Cicero.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Jayne

Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 21, 2017, 12:37:10 PM
Quote from: Jayne on February 20, 2017, 06:23:13 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 05:29:04 PM
Quote from: Heinrich on February 20, 2017, 01:29:01 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 12:18:53 PM
'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Accusative or Dative?

We've not covered that, yet....so, no clue  :)

If you are doing English grammar you probably won't ever use those terms.  They are used in Latin and other inflected languages.  "Accusative" corresponds to direct object in English grammar and "dative" to indirect object.  They both are "whom". 

Direct object - Whom do you seek?
Indirect object - To whom are you giving that donut?

Wouldn't that second 'whom' be object of the preposition?

Here are two sentences:

I went to the store.
I give the book to Sue.

In the first, "to" is a preposition, indicating direction. In the second, "book" is the direct object of the verb "give" and "Sue" is the indirect object. In Latin, indirect objects are shown by an ending on the noun.  In English, one way to show an indirect object is using the particle "to" before the noun. Strictly speaking this usage of "to" is not a preposition because it is not showing position or direction.

One could use "whom" as an object of a preposition, as in the following:
To whom are you running.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

rbjmartin

Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 21, 2017, 12:37:10 PM
Quote from: Jayne on February 20, 2017, 06:23:13 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 05:29:04 PM
Quote from: Heinrich on February 20, 2017, 01:29:01 PM
Quote from: MundaCorMeum on February 20, 2017, 12:18:53 PM
'Who and 'whom' always refer to people, not things or places.  'Who' is always in the nominative case, and 'whom' is always in the objective case. 

(Guess what 7th grader and I are currently studying??  ;))

Accusative or Dative?

We've not covered that, yet....so, no clue  :)

If you are doing English grammar you probably won't ever use those terms.  They are used in Latin and other inflected languages.  "Accusative" corresponds to direct object in English grammar and "dative" to indirect object.  They both are "whom". 

Direct object - Whom do you seek?
Indirect object - To whom are you giving that donut?

Wouldn't that second 'whom' be object of the preposition?

Latin wouldn't use a preposition to express the "to whom" as given in the context of that sentence. Oftentimes when translating the dative, one can use "to" or "for," but you can also omit it by rearranging the word order.

"You are giving the donut to him."
"You are giving him the donut."

If the "to" expressed motion, then you would use the preposition "ad."

"I am walking to mother's house."

"Ambulo ad domum matris."