View Content #20566

Dr. Edward M. Zarrow (tzarrow@westwood.k12.ma.us) teaches Latin at Westwood High School in Massachusetts. In addition to his language teaching and advocacy, he is the 2016 ACTFL Teacher of the Year.

For many years, I used to teach Latin in a traditional way.  I prepared my students to read and interpret ancient texts, although I was never satisfied with their ability to read and comprehend a text that they had never seen, despite my best efforts.  Over the past five years, as a result of using more active methods for teaching Latin and focusing on building student proficiency in writing, my students have shown marked improvement in their ability to comprehend unfamiliar, authentic reading passages.  By making fluency with Latin writing, rather than exclusively reading, one my principal goals for my students, they now demonstrate greater aptitude with Interpretive Reading long after they leave our program as well as greater retention of linguistic structures.  The extended writing assignment described in this week's Activity of the Week is one part of that. 

This is an ideal activity for bridging a long unit or even a long vacation.  I have had the most success with it in Latin II and beyond, when the students are making or have already made the transition in their Presentational Writing from novice high to intermediate low.  For instance, shortly before the winter break, my students were shown a picture from a chapter we were going to read.  As a class, we sourced familiar vocabulary and verbs that would help us to describe the content of the image, and we added some new words as well.  Before we read anything from the chapter itself, I gave students some time to write their own story based on the picture – the goal of which was for them to use and internalize the new vocabulary.  While they were writing, I was able to see what mistakes were systemic (naturally ones with the verb “to be” - argh!) and address them before they would become habitual.  Some students volunteered to read their short stories to the class.  We then set aside our original stories and read the actual chapter; it was remarkable how similar it was to what the students themselves had written.  At any rate, we filed our stories for later. 

In the chapter / unit, students were introduced to relative clauses.  Once I was satisfied that they had learned all the forms they needed, students went back to their writing (which they hadn’t seen for about a week) and now added as many relative clauses to their original text that they could in order to describe the nouns in greater detail.  Again, students were eager to read their passages aloud, and they were truly comprehensible!  The two extended writing activities bridged the unit effectively, students had ownership of their new linguistic structures as well as their improvement, and even ones who can be somewhat challenging to motivate became active listeners.  In the end, despite this being designed as a writing activity, there was actually a great deal of reading, speaking, and listening as well.  I hope that you’ll give it a try!  Let me know how it goes!