At what speed should I progress through Lingua Latina FR?

Latin Learning Latin
1

Salvete,

A few years ago I started learning Latin using Lingua Latina -Familia Romana. I worked through to about capit. 15, if I recall correctly, then stopped when I got busy and never went back to it. Now I’m looking to start over again(although I do remember quite a bit) and I’m wondering if I worked through the chapters too fast the first time, as I’m seeing recommendations that classes do 8 chapters a year. That sounds rediculously slow to me, but perhaps I sped through too quickly?

What’s the general consensus here about how long each section should take, for an adult, studying alone?

Thanks in Advance,

Celtica

2

I’m an adult studying alone, not a Latin teacher, Celtica. I’ve only read bits of Lingua Latina (I do have it, though) but I think the ideal learning speed for the independent learner has to be at least three times thoughtfully through a lesson, plus whatever time is required to feel you understand everything, while speaking everything out loud, listening to yourself (and the accompanying CDs, of course!), and resaying, resaying, resaying phrases to tune and improve your accent as you go along. And this every day for half an hour. :slight_smile:

Adultus sum et autodidactus, Celtica, non latinae linguae magister. Ego solas partes Linguae Latinae libris legi (verò autem exemplum teneo). De progressûs autem celeritate per cursum, satis esse autodidacto debet, meâ sententiâ, quòd ter ad minimùm omne capitulum arbitrariò perlegas et saepiùs praetereá, dum omnia in capitulo capiantur. Maximè tuâ interest omnes clausulas magnâ voce iterùm ac saepiùs recitare audireque ut accentum per idem tempus emendas compleasque. Et certùm discos impressionum sonituum adsectantes auscultes. Sic facias semihoram quâque die.

3

I am going through a chapter in about 7-9 days. pmda, who was behind me, is now ahead of me, so I think he’s doing a chapter every 6-7 days.

Mind you, I read the passage over and over again until I am completely comfortable with it (as adrianus has suggested), but I only have about 30 minutes a day to devote to it (longer on weekends).

4

Thanks for the input. Originally I was reading the entire chapter three times(once per day), then doing the exercises. If when I marked the exercises I had a certain amount incorrect, I’d start the chapter again. It usually took about 5 days to a week depending, which from what you both said, seems about right. The idea of doing only 8 chapters in a year threw me, and I wondered if I hadn’t worked through carefully enough.

5

I have been doing a chapter every 5 days or so but I did memorize all the noun, verb, irregular verb, pronoun, pronominal, adjective paradigms so it’s been quick. Also I’m spending about 1hr and 20 minutes per day 7 days a week. HOWEVER, where I’m a little apprehensive is syntax and phrases. For example suses of ablative of price and different ways of saying ‘as great as’…etc…use of word like tantum as adverb and adjective…require specific concentration and I assume there’ll be a lot more dealing with syntax and so I expect this pace to slow considerably. I’m aiming to have book 1 finished by Christmas - so around a chapter a week… hence I think the repetition recommendation is probably very sound.

My regime is as follows:

  1. Type entire chapter into a table with a blank row below each line so that I can parse each word. I did have another line below this for translation but I don’t think there’s any point in translating at the moment.

  2. Read chapter out loud from book slowly. Listen to Orberg reading it whilst reading it.

  3. Read typed up chapter and parse each word.

  4. Complete Pensa then correct (using Teacher’s manual)

  5. Complete Execitia Latina then correct (using Teacher’s manual)

  6. Read chapter again.

Revise and repeat 4 and five using CD-Roms.

I’ tried uploading a template for the chapters but the doc extension is not allowed…?..

6

(Hi, I promise I’ve posted an intro post in the introduction thread in the Open Forum, [in fact I think I accidentally posted two] but it hasn’t gone through yet.}

I’m just starting working my way through LL- I started Cap V today. I own Familia Romana, Exercitia Latina, the Teaching Resources and Colloquia Personarum, as well as a small Latin-English dictionary (Cassell’s- I think it’s a pocket edition). I just ordered the College Companion today. I’m really enjoying this method of learning a language- I have taken several languages in the past (modern French, modern German, Ancient Hebrew and Biblical Greek) and while I always liked the languages themselves I really hated the process of learning them. This approach- puzzling things out and reading lots- seems to help me quite a bit.

Personally, I’m doing a Cap over the course of four days or so, but I expect that to slow down significantly soon, and I take a day off a week. The first day I puzzle through the reading of the Cap, and the Grammatica, until I feel that I’m comfortable with the vocabulary (easier for me) and not totally lost on the grammar (harder for me). I usually also puzzle through the Colloquia reading for that chapter.

The second day I do the first half of the Exercitia, and the third day the second half- though that’s not exact, sometimes the first several Exercitia are very easy so I’ll do more than half. The last day I’ll do the Pensum- which I write out fully in the notebook I’m using. I also review the reading each of these days- especially the last few paragraphs of it, which tend to be the bits I skim over fastest the first day. The last day I also usually correct my exercises for the Cap and go back and review the topics for anything I missed. Probably a half hour a day, or a little more, depending on how things go and how often I have to distract my kitten. :sunglasses:

I don’t have much interest in learning pronunciation- my computer is a netbook with no CD drive, and the reviews on Amazon that I saw for the CDs did not fill me with excitement. Were someone to put the readings of the chapters on iTunes, I’d think about buying them, as long as the readings were by a real person.

I do wish the readings in the Colloquia were a little longer, and that they went beyond Cap 26. I’ve also been looking at the Latin readers and such that Orberg and others have on Amazon, the easy ones designed for beginners, but all of them are designed for people who have finished Familia Romana, so i suppose I’ll just have to wait. When I’m done with Familia Romana I’m going to order Harrius Potter as a treat for myself.

I was wondering- is there a reason why there isn’t a Lingua Latina board here?

7

Hi, Wrt to a LL board…I had that thought myself. I have the CD roms of the LLPSI Book 1 and the CD rom for exercitia latina..which, once I’ve done them by hand and checked I think go through several times as a sort of drill…I think it’s working…I’ve just started chapter 10.

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I’ve read a bit more of the board now, and I suppose there really isn’t much point in an LL forum when we can just label our posts here.

I’ve also created an Anki deck (thank you to… someone… for suggesting that program! I just wish I could put it on my blackberry- the only free flashcard program for blackberry is no longer freeware) with the declensions, conjugations, and pronouns I’ve learned in LL so far (plus the dative, it wasn’t hard to add it and would have been annoying to leave out, plus I already know what it means from having studied Greek) and it’s helping me get those nailed down.

9

There’s actually some talk of merging all the Latin forums into just one, though I dunno if the forum’s “upper management” has given it any thought. I can’t seem to find the thread anymore, though…

10

Hey, Quin,

For more reading material for Lingua Latina, go here (http://www.pullins.com/programs/FabellaeLatinae.pdf) and download the Fabellae Latina. It contains one to two page stores for each chapter of Familia Romana that were all written by Orberg.

-smythe

11

Thank you, Smythe! Those are very helpful. I’m still waiting for my College Companion to get here, but I think I’ll be able to keep pretty busy until then. I’m going to start doing the exercises for Cap VI today.

12

I’m just finishing Ch. 10. Which is much slower. I have spend a lot longer on this because suddenly there are all these 3 declension nouns and extra verbs coming at you…not to mention indirect speech etc…I’m afraid that if I don’t master this stuff before I move on to then I’ll get confused…but ch 10 took me 2 weeks…before I felt comfortable. Unless that’s just a blip…that would slow me a lot.

13

Heh, I’m going through the book at breakneck pace, often multiple chapters per day. I’m currently on chapter 26.

This is, of course, because I’ve already done Wheelock (not the Loci Antiqui/Immutati at the end, just chapters 1-40). Obviously I couldn’t proceed that fast before I did Wheelock; the furthest I got was chapter 11 and then I felt too lost. Now I only have to look up a couple of words per chapter at most.

Soon I’m gonna be going through the Lingua Latina edition of Caesar’s Commentarii De Bello Gallico. I can hardly believe it myself…

14

To be honest Latin is (apart from my native language - English) the first language I have ever tried to learn really thoroughly so I’m paranoid about not absorbing information or not noticing vital details just to ‘get by’. Hence I am determined to stick to new information until I have internalised it. Hence I am doing the exercises a number of times. I am also taking the time to memorise the verb principal parts…something which Orberg doesn’t even give us…but which are, I reckon, necessary for future use…so that might explain why I’m going a little slower these past two weeks… Having said that I am, I think, just starting to get a glimmer of a sensation of actually reading it and grasping the reality what’s being said without the language and grammar getting in the way…which is a nice feeling. My attitude to this is to be - well - relentless. I will give it 1 hour per day, 7 days per week until I have mastered enough to read Virgil like I would English…If I have to slow up sometime just to absorb new information then so be it.

15

Don’t over do it though, it could easily make something fun very, very dull. One thing that is also possible is to work a little bit faster – but then review the past once in a while. Something that I’ve noticed is that Ørberg has put in many reveiwesque stuff in the exercises: a chapter that introduced the genitive case still has fill-in-the-blanks that require the accusative.

16

Hampie, that sounds like a good point I will take it on board. I’m wondering does it come in sort of peaks and troughs…in other words you will find that with one chapter it’s suddenly tough going. I was rather intrigued by my own response to Ch 10 which contains a lot of new 3rd declension nouns and a lot of 3rd conjugation verbs… Suddenly you have to know what conjugation or declensin it is in to answer the questions - make sense and 3rd conjugation verbs don’t advertise themselves as well and nor do 3rd declension nouns… That is a challenge. I went through about 3 days of feeling like - ‘oh so now I know why it’s supposed to be hard’…but actually remembering what conjugation a verb is is or what declension a noun is is not that big a deal. You are right about overdoing it. My benchmark is that if I stop enjoying it then I won’t sweat it… Having said that I reckon that the less you let slip by the more dividends it pays …the more enjoyable it becomes… Your right about Orberg putting review-type stuff in chapters…I have noticed this and, encouragingly, I almost always get it right…

17

With regards to review, I try to read the previous couple of chapters, along with the current chapter every day so I don’t forget the tricky bits after getting done with a chapter.

Everyone probably gets stuck at different places. Unlike pmda, I blazed through Chapter 10. Chapter 11, however, kicked my ass. I still am not quite done with it.

18

I use Anki, an excellent flash card program, to help me internalize unfamiliar words and grammar (though in Lingua Latina there’s very little unfamiliar grammar for me since I already did Wheelock – quite a relief, too). Basically when I encounter the new word, I put the entire sentence into Anki. If I don’t like the sentence (e.g. the sentence is too trivial), I just wait for the word to pop up in the text again – if it doesn’t come up again I figure it can’t be that important anyway.

19

I’m now on Ch 13 and have slowed down from 1 chapter per week to about 1 chapter every 10 days - this is just because of the complexity of material. I don’t mind this though but it may push my completion date for Book 1 back to February 2011. We haven’t really come across any other tenses yet (just ‘erat’) but I don’t think this will be even a speed-bump as my Dowling-memorization-of-all-the-tenses should provide me with fuel to keep up the pace. I am enjoying Orberg very much and given how little Latin I had studied in the past (1 year in senior school back in 1973) I think I’m learning a lot.