Hello all,
I’m begining my first quarter of Latin here at UC Santa Barbara. We are using Jones and Sidwell “Reading Latin”. I also have downloaded D’Ooge “Latin for Beginners” that I may use as a supplement.
I’m excited to begin my studies, and it looks like this site will be a good resource.
Any tips for beginners?
Jason
Hi and welcome to the forum!
Any tips for learning Latin… uh… let’s see… concentrate on the verbs, they are important, but so is understanding the grammar. Flash cards are really good for learning a lot of vocab quickly and effectivly.
Welcome!!
Good luck on your studies!
Greetings! I have the text of Reading Latin and it is very good. However, if you are wanting to learn latin in less than 2 years, for that is a rather long course with the texts of considerable difficulty after Unit 4, you may wish to use D’Ooge instead. Whichever you choose good luck 
How about Hugo in Three Months Latin 
haha that doesn’t exist I think, who could learn latin in 3 months? The TY Latin course is HUGE at 200 pages that would take more like 25 months. D’Ooge is the quickest way to go but it won’t make one advanced. 
Hi! UCSB, you say? That’s right near where I live. 
The course I am taking is using the “Reading Latin” text, but I don’t know how closely we will stick to it. I plan to take the course for the entire year and then pursue it on my own.
My Ilium, I didn’t realize I lived “far, far away”, but I guess I do, seeing you are so close.
Welcome!!!
D’Ooge is a good book. You can also download the answer key from this site.
Welcome to Latin and Textkit.
Don’t fall behind, keep all concepts fresh in your mind (which means devoting a large amount of time to study/review), do not shy away from grammar, and make sure to memorize each declension/conjugation as it is presented to you.
The TY Latin course is HUGE at 200 pages
I’m immensely fond of the Teach Yourself Latin course. But it is rather more like a grammar than a coursebook. If only I had discovered Moreland & Fleischer a few years ago. Oh well.
As for tips on learning Latin, I would say -
(i) Make sure you _over-_learn all the paradigms. Repeat until you know them like the back of your hand and they are like old freinds to you.
(ii) Try to get exposed to quite a bit of original latin. If you can actually see the progress you are making in reading say Caesar or Pliny the younger (to take two writers most often introduced to beginners), and you can see the constructions you recognise that grammar, as well as that vocabulary, will be all the more firmly imprinted on your mind.
(iii) finally, if you want to learn to read Latin, rather than simply pass your course then I should pay attention to the way Latin words are formed. Knowing prefixes and their common meanings is going to ease your study of Latin considerably.
Anyway, that is what I have learnt in my long journey from beginner to beginner-intermediate. Good luck, then.
Edit it’s more like 300 the course and another 100 appendices 
it is an extremely intensive and difficult course which would take many a year.
In Latin, every letter counts : invenis “you discover” invenies “you will discover” inventis “having been discovered” (in certain grammatical functions). Sharp eyes needed !
You will have to cope progressively with vastus gurges amphibologiae, i.e. “ambiguity’s wide raging abyss”, for often (but fortunately not always) a Latin form may admit many parsings. There, the context will be of powerful help, so never neglect it.
To find the right parsing of a form, you must always be aware of the “group” to which it belongs. For example, an ending -AS can indicate that a word is a direct object in the plural if it belongs to one “group”, and it can denote a subject in the singular if the word belongs to another words “group”. So to say, each group seems to have at least some particular endings.
You will progressively familiarize yourself with all that.
Welcome to this site !