no matter what subject matter they choose for higher education. His online course is best suited for juniorhigh and high-school students, as well as adults, and involves interactive chat room work along with homework from two basic texts. The convenience of this online format makes the study of Latin in a classroom setting with an experienced teacher more accessible.
A rigorous course, Carmenta Latin uses Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John F. Collins in the first four semesters and Lingua Latina by Hans Orberg in the fifth through eighth semesters. According to Kuhry-Haeuser, “Collins’ Primer presents a more traditional, grammar-focused approach to the language, one that is more suited to the beginning student. By means of this thorough and wellorganized text, the student learns about the rules and structure of Latin and of language in general, which in time he is able to apply to his own native language.”
Then the class moves into Lingua Latina, which is an immersion text written entirely in Latin with no guides or explanations. “With this crutch removed,” says Kuhry-Haeuser, “the student is now |
forced to understand the rules and intricacies of the Latin language from context, leading the student to a more intuitive understanding of the language and allowing him to learn to write and speak it quickly and fluidly.”
The third component of the Carmenta Latin program is conversation. Beginning in the second semester, students in the course begin speaking and writing in Latin both in and out of class.In class the instructor leads group conversations (starting very simply, but moving in time to the more complex), while at the same time, outside of class, pairs of students are assigned each week a certain amount of Latin conversation time, chatting with each other by means of the text chat room on the Carmenta Online Latin Classroom website. Kuhry-Haeuser believes that this conversational element, integrated fully into nearly every level of the course, is key to the students’ longterm success with the Latin language: “Only through the frequent practice in forming sentences and recalling vocabulary that conversation in the language provides are the students able, in time, to truly master it. Conversation, which |
