Life After Wheelock?

[montecristo42]

Salvete,

I've reached Chapter 30 in Wheelock's 6th Edition, and while I still have another 10 chapters and other materials to get through, I'm already wondering how I should continue my self-studies. I've seen Wheelock's Latin Reader in bookstores and have been tempted to buy it, being a fan of Cicero. I've also recently discovered Latinum, which seems to be a wonderful online podcast that teaches through great, and interesting, materials. I used to have a copy of D'Ooge from high school, and I remember that being a good resource for intermediate Latin, but my copy is long gone.

I'm trying to avoid my natural tendency to study several books at the same time. I've been good while doing Wheelock (have only occasionally looked at other materials) and have found that focused study on one book has served me much better than what I used to try and do.

Does anyone have any recommendations for life after Wheelock? If possible, I'd like to stick to one book to continue my studies.

I don't know if this has any bearing, but I'm toying with the idea of going back to school (eventually) and getting a degree in the Classics.

Gratias and Valete!

Brian

[furrykef]

Well, of course there's the Loci Antiqui and Loci Immutati in Wheelock. By the time I finished Chapter 40, though, I was bored with Wheelock and wanted to move on to something else; I'll come back to those later, if I get around to it. What I did was move on to Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata.

What actually happened with me was this:
* Bought Wheelock, studied it a bit. Got bored with it, set Latin aside for quite some time.
* Bought Lingua Latina. Was quickly convinced that Latin isn't so bad if I can read the first few chapters without difficulty. But as I progressed, the book became harder and it felt less like reading and more like studying.
* Armed with confidence from Lingua Latina, went back to Wheelock and eventually did all 40 chapters. This took about a year. (It would have taken much shorter, probably a couple of months, if I could have devoted most of my time to Wheelock.) This time around I used the flash card program Anki along with flash cards made out of complete sentences from the book, instead of drilling vocabulary. It was very rough going at first, but it quickly became pretty effective.
* Now I'm going through Lingua Latina again, and at a brisk pace -- it's trivially easy after having done Wheelock. I found that it still has plenty to teach me, however, not least because its vocabulary tends to be different from Wheelock's. There's also quite a difference between reading isolated sentences and reading an entire story in Latin, so it's good practice without hurting my brain the way Wheelock's passages do in the later chapters. Also, that Lingua Latina is often fun to read is an immeasurable help.
* I have bought the Lingua Latina edition of De Bello Gallico, which I will read after finishing Lingua Latina I. I still think it's pretty wild that I'm going to be reading Caesar soon, if only excerpts (pretty large excerpts, though).

[montecristo42]

furrykef -

Right, I am looking forward to Loci Antiqui and Loci Immutati in Wheelock. It's interesting you found Wheelock boring at first.

What do you mean by "flash cards out of complete sentences from the book"? Did you literally copy the sentences onto flash cards, then put the translation on the other side?

I'd like to make some flash cards myself. I've been drilling myself on Wheelock vocab through a few sites (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/latin/wheelock/contents.htm, http://people.hofstra.edu/Ilaria_Marche ... rcises.htm, and http://www.warmenhoven.org/latin/vocab/). My vocab is pretty good, I still struggle a little with some of the principal parts of verbs, but where I struggle the most is just remembering what gender nouns are. First, second, fifth, and to an extent the fourth declensions' genders are fairly easy to remember, but I always find it difficult to recall the rules and the exceptions governing gender in the third declension. I think flash cards listing a noun's gender would be a big help.

Do you recommend Linga Latina Per Se Illustrata as a good intermediate resource, then?

Thanks!
B

[furrykef]

What do you mean by "flash cards out of complete sentences from the book"? Did you literally copy the sentences onto flash cards, then put the translation on the other side?

Yeah, it's pretty much the only format of flash cards I use anymore. Generally I create both an English->Latin card and a Latin->English card in Anki.

Do you recommend Linga Latina Per Se Illustrata as a good intermediate resource, then?

I'd say it's good for beginner to the lower intermediate level (where I am), yes.