Latin Fall 2023 ONLINE

The goal of this course is to enable the student to read Latin without the use of a dictionary or translation, and to read as fluently as one could read in French or Spanish. Latin is treated as a living language. Teaching methods commonly used for modern language acquisition are applied to Latin: total physical response (TPR), role-playing games, gradual complexity of dialogues and stories, and gradual grammatical progression. These learning methods will help the student to internalize grammatical forms and vocabulary. Latin will be the only language heard by the students throughout the course.

All courses are taught using The Polis Method which immerses students in the target language from the very first class which allows learning in a more natural way. The Polis Method focuses on total immersion and speech fluency and we believe helps students acquire the language quicker than the traditional grammar translation method.

Classical Latin, taught in its broadest sense, includes the golden age of Latin literature (1st c. BC – 1st c. AD) as well as the Imperial Latin from the Nerva-Antonine dynasty (96-192 AD) and the Severan dynasty (193-235 AD). This period has the advantage of being an intermediate between pre-Classical Latin and Late Latin (3rd c.-6th c. AD). Even authors from the 4th or 5th centuries AD such as St. Augustine of Hippo or St. Jerome, albeit writing in a slightly different language than the classical one, took the golden age of Latin literature as a reference. Studying Classical Latin (in the broad sense) allows us to easily read the most interesting Latin texts of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.