Comments - 2010 Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation Published by APA/ACL - eLatin eGreek eLearn2024-03-29T05:48:18Zhttp://eclassics.ning.com/profiles/comment/feed?attachedTo=727885%3ABlogPost%3A42506&xn_auth=noHi Andrew, thanks for sharing…tag:eclassics.ning.com,2010-03-31:727885:Comment:425112010-03-31T18:50:06.848ZLaura Gibbshttp://eclassics.ning.com/profile/lauragibbs
Hi Andrew, thanks for sharing this. There was nothing in it very surprising, and since it doesn't really specify levels of competence, but just vaguely defined areas of competence, I don't imagine it will really make any difference in any undergraduate program.<br />
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In particular, the report really doesn't grapple with the issue of what Latin fluency means - it doesn't envision actual conversational Latin, for example, and it really shies away from the issue of Latin composition in that it seems to…
Hi Andrew, thanks for sharing this. There was nothing in it very surprising, and since it doesn't really specify levels of competence, but just vaguely defined areas of competence, I don't imagine it will really make any difference in any undergraduate program.<br />
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In particular, the report really doesn't grapple with the issue of what Latin fluency means - it doesn't envision actual conversational Latin, for example, and it really shies away from the issue of Latin composition in that it seems to expect that teachers compose Latin on a sentence-by-sentence level, illustrating grammatical points, with no notion that one would choose to write in Latin as a form of communication or for self-expression. To me, that is a real danger: to the extent that Latin cannot even begin to approximate the kind of fluency that teachers and students acquire in living languages, Latin runs a real risk of (justifiably) being removed from language programs and replaced with languages that really are being taught as languages, with a full range of fluency expected in the teachers and students.<br />
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Did you see anything in here that was not just the "same old, same old"...? Maybe I missed something... They say at one point that Latin teacher preparation in 2010 is not what it was in 1960 - but how so? Except for the acknowledgment that there are some online resources of value (eclassics gets a nod for example!), I didn't see anything in here that would be different from what Latin would have looked like in 1960. It certainly doesn't describe anything at all different from the training I got as a Classics major in the 1980s. Maybe somebody will be able to show how this report will make a difference to someone, somewhere... I will be curious what others say about it.