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Well, semester 2 at various institutions here is under way, and I feel like some reflections upon distance education are in order. This might be part one of several... I might begin by talking about this semester. Last semester, regular sufferers of his blog will recall, I taught a small
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I’m sure I didn’t come up with this idea, and I know we’re not the first, but ever since emails started circulating prior to Rusticatio Australiana, a few of us discussed playing an RPG. In this post, I’m going to write a bit about that experience,
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Long-term sufferers of my blog know of my strong interest in Where Are Your Keys and all its applications. I knew that Evan had had a good deal of involvement with our American Latinist friends for a period, and was interested to see how this manifested at Rusticatio. Here’
Latin
I’ve just returned from the first Rusticatio Australiana, where I have spent the week speaking Latin and nothing but. In this post I am going to give part-narration, part-reflection on the week just gone (look for another post in the coming weeks though!) Firstly, what’s a
Language
Amicus noster, in pipiatione nuper hoc misit, atque hic quoque ponendum esse dixit. Here's a wonderful letter from Albin Putzker, in 1895. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. You can see the original in situ. The footnotes, nisi fallor, are Arcadius Avellanus offering his
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I recently had occasion to complete a (modern) language placement test. The test was composed of 20 sections, each asking me to manipulate given sentences and change the forms to other ones (e.g. the equivalents of present to past, one structure to another, and so on). It wasn'
Language
Lately I've been reading, among other things, Joe Barcroft's Vocabulary in Languge Teaching, one of the e-modules in the Routledge E-Modules on Contemporary Language Teaching. And it's been helpful in thinking through some issues about vocabulary acquisition. Like many, I studied quite
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Disclaimer: The course you are enrolling in is a traditional language course. Almost nothing we do this semester will contribute to language acquisition. This course is focused on language as an artefact, and so we will be discussing grammar, analysing syntax, memorising morphology, rote-learning vocabulary associations with our L1,
Language
I've said in the past that it's just a bit wild to give beginning students translation as a task to do, because translation is a high-order skill, not a low-order one. In this post, I want to explore two different types of translation practice,
Greek
Right now I’m heading into week 11 of a 12 week semester teaching a Greek 1 class Koine. I’ve found it frustrating, mainly because I’m frustrated with myself. And as I reflect on that, I decided that if I’m given the opportunity to teach this again,
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The problem with an acquisition-based program in a seminary setting is time. A standard, seminary-type language course represents a 2-semester sequence in which students get drilled through a traditional grammar explanation of the language, with some practice on translating Greek passages to English, and are expected by
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I suspect a lot of people (though perhaps not the general demographic still reading my blog) will find this advice objectionable. There is a school of thought that hates students using Loebs. And, they have a point. If you think the goal of classical language learning is to (a) internalise