I would be interested in some advice concerning Latin texts that are appropriate for use in schools. I teach Latin in a school in Germany and we are currently looking for editions of Latin texts (Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Catullus, Sallustius) that are suitable for students. They should have english line notes, introductions, maybe a vocabulary section, all the things that students need to cope with original texts.
It would be great if teachers or students could give me some advice on which texts they are using.
Just out of curiousity, why do you need texts with English notes and vocabulary? I know from experience that trying to translate Latin by way of a third, non-native language can be a tedious and perplexing, if also fascinating, process.
The best place you can go to check out what texts are available for students is the Good Text Guide from the Joint Association of Classical Teachers in the UK. I could name a few texts I have experience with, but the list they have is much more extensive, and includes the texts I would have mentioned anyway.
My school is applying for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Since most of our students learned Latin as their first foreign language, we will offer an IB course in Latin. Students will have to translate from Latin to English and that’s why we need Latin texts with english notes etc.
By the way, if anybody here has ever heard of any other German school that tried to do something like this, I would be grateful to know about it. As far as we know we will be the only school around here trying to teach Latin with English as classroom language.
Its use in schools around the world has been met with unprecedented success. I owe practically all my comprehension of Latin to it, and I’m very fond of it.
Wow, that sounds like quite a project Petaus! (Eigentlich finde ich es sehr interessant, wegen des Umgehen mit mehrere Sprachen. An so etwas würde ich gerne teilnehmen.) I hope you keep us posted about how it works out.
I can give a few observations based on my own experience. (I took Latin while studying in Germany at one point, so essentially did the reverse of what your students will be doing.) Giving grammatical explanations in a second language shouldn’t cause too many problems, provided the students have a sufficient level of fluency in that language. The concepts are the same regardless of language.
The biggest difficulty is translation. Even if the students understand the sense of a sentence - how the Latin is put together, and what the words mean - it can still be a struggle to find the right words to translate it in a second language. I think having a vocabulary list for the texts would be essential, since it would save much time and frustration. I found myself working with three dictionaries (Latin-German, Latin-English, and English-German/German English) occasionally for one Latin passage, which is definitely something to be avoided, as it’s terribly tedious and confusing.
You might also consider making up your own lists: Latin to English vocabulary, and then where necessary a third column glossing the English word in German.
If the students have mostly learned how to translate Latin into German, an initial review of grammar focusing on the equivalents in English would probably make the transition to translating into English easier. One particular area of difficulty is in knowing the right word for the the many, many relative and demonstrative pronouns in Latin (ipse, iste, aliquis, quiquod, quique…). Maybe you’ve already been giving thought to these things, so my suggestions are unnecessary.
There don’t seem to be any textbooks intended specifically to prepare students for the IB Latin test. However, here in the US there are a number of texts written for the AP (advanced placement) program, which is similar. Some of the authors covered are the same (Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Cicero), although I don’t know how much the specific curriculum overlaps. I’ve used a couple of the Horace and Catullus texts; they’re not perfect, but certainly sufficient for instructional purposes. Most of the AP texts are available from Bolchazy-Carducci