The ‘Living Latin’ movement is an approach to Latin that treats it as a natural human language; as a result, it is aimed at reviving the language in its spoken form. More and more classics departments are incorporating ‘Living Latin’ into their curricula; some are even teaching their Latin in a style akin to MFL departments, from whom we will hear from in the future. As an introduction, Fergus Walsh and Rachel Plummer have kindly agreed to submit the following questions and answers: as always, comment below to let us know if you intend to use ‘Living Latin’ at your schools, or, if you already use it, how it has benefited your teaching!
Questions by Fergus Walsh, founder of the Circulus Dunelmensis, Durham University
Answers by Rachel Plummer, Teacher of Classics at Downe House School
1. Do you teach no grammar at all? How can you learn a language without any explicit grammar instruction?
You wouldn’t get very far in Latin without having at least some grammatical awareness, so yes, of course we teach it! The difference is, the focus is on understanding the language, rather than decoding a tangled mass of noun endings and verb tenses and mixed-up syntax. You don’t have to attempt teaching the grammar in Latin if you don’t think your students would understand it – teach them in English if you prefer, and then go back to speaking and reading in Latin knowing that they now have a better grammatical awareness of the content of the text, which leads to a deeper understanding.
If you truly wish to teach speaking only in Latin, you and your students would benefit from a textbook designed for this purpose, such as Oerberg’s Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. I think it would be significantly more difficult to communicate grammar effectively without having access to the necessary grammatical terms in the textbook in front of you.
2. Does using and knowing the Latin vocabulary needed to speak about daily life also enable someone to read Virgil and Caesar?
That depends on what you do in your daily life. If you spend your weekends conquering Gaul and dividing it into partes tres, then Caesar will be of great help to you! For the rest of us, there will be a difference in the vocabulary needed to discuss our normal lives, but there is significant crossover. This also depends on the Latin text you are reading and the choices made by the author in terms of vocabulary and register.
One thing to bear in mind when considering this question is, why are you using spoken Latin to teach your pupils? If it is because you want them to enjoy your lessons and feel excited about learning the language, perhaps Virgil is not the best place to start anyway. Few Year 7 pupils start their Latin lessons eager to read the Aeneid – they probably don’t know what it is yet. In my experience, they will enjoy a Latin lesson with an enthusiastic teacher who is giving them the opportunity to communicate and engage with their class in a new language. Virgil can come later when they have learned to love the language.
3. Does a teacher who wants to use communicative pedagogy in their lessons need to be a fluent Latin speaker?
Absolutely not! Speaking Latin to younger pupils will necessarily be limited in scope, so your own spoken Latin does not need to be much more advanced than this to start with. Remember also that if you are a Latin teacher, you already are fluent in Latin – you just don’t speak it out loud. It isn’t your fluency or linguistic knowledge that needs to improve, you simply need to practise speaking Latin rather than reading or writing a translation.
In my experience, the best way to improve your spoken Latin is at an immersion event, such as a summer school. Latinitium maintains a list of opportunities, and I can personally recommend the ones in Poznan (Poland) and Cork (Ireland). Also keep an eye on events at the ARLT: both authors of this article are hoping to offer a Spoken Latin event at their 2021 summer school.
4. Doesn’t it take longer to get to reading Classic literature if someone is taught communicatively rather than through the grammar-translation method?
This is a tricky question to answer, because there are very few people who have learned Latin exclusively through the communicative method. My feeling is that it would be quicker for students of communicative Latin to be able to gain a sense of the meaning of the literature, because the focus of communication is transmitting meaning.
I have found that learning through the so-called grammar-translation method has enabled me to decode the individual words in a piece of text and produce a translation into English, and I can do this quite successfully without having a clue about what the author was trying to communicate.
It was only after I started speaking Latin that my desire to learn the meaning of the text overtook my need to figure out how the noun and verb endings fitted together. For me, this is the best way to access original Latin texts, which is ultimately what we want our A-level and university students to be able to do.
5. Teaching Latin communicatively has gained some popularity among teachers in the United States, but the American school system has no equivalent public exam for Latin like the GCSE or A Level in the United Kingdom; can speaking Latin improve a student’s grade in Latin GCSE or A Level exams?
This is a very important question in the context of the UK’s focus on exam grades rather than a student’s learning journey. I have found it very difficult over recent years to find space for introducing communicative Latin into my classroom. It is hard to justify taking the time to expand the way we use Latin when there is no oral or aural element of Latin exams at GCSE or A-level and therefore no obvious direct benefit to a student’s grade.
However, I feel that we also have to keep one eye on the numbers of students who opt to take Latin or Greek at GCSE and A-level and the way we recruit for our subject. Students do choose their subject options based not only on future career plans, but on which lessons they most enjoy and which teachers make them feel most enthusiastic about their learning. If enlivening your lessons by introducing some spoken Latin leads to a better learning experience, then students will enjoy their Latin lessons and this can lead to increased motivation to learn the subject and indirectly have a positive impact on their exam grade.
If you would like more information about the benefits of Living Latin and some ideas on how you could introduce it into your classroom, you may find the following article useful: The Virtue of Variety: Opening the Doors to Wider Pedagogical Practices in UK Schools and Universities | Journal of Classics Teaching | Cambridge Core
I agree that including elements of ‘living Latin’ can be very beneficial and help gain fluency in the language. However, I think that question number 4 can be partly answered by looking at the results in MFL. They use communicative approaches, have generally much more time on their hands as well as a variety of very engaging resources – including travelling to countries where the languages are spoken. However, by A2 what students are reading cannot be compared to working with Tacitus or Virgil, which is, among other things, what we do and what sets Latin apart as a discipline.
I agree that including elements of ‘living Latin’ can be very beneficial and help gain fluency in the language. However, I think that question number 4 can be partly answered by looking at the results in MFL. They use communicative approaches, have generally much more time on their hands as well as a variety of very engaging resources – including travelling to countries where the languages are spoken. However, by A2 what students are reading cannot be compared to working with Tacitus or Virgil, which is, among other things, what we do and what sets Latin apart as a discipline.
(sorry about the text above: I did not mean it to appear as anonymous! You can delete it – it will not let me)