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Latin: Review of Artes Latinae | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| BLT Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5763 days ago 5 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese | Message 1 of 9 28 February 2011 at 11:47pm | IP Logged |
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I'd like to comment on Artes Latinae, a software program for teaching Latin. Most members of this forum would
probably not find it helpful for themselves - but it strikes me as an excellent program nonetheless, so I would like to describe it in case a member might like to recommend it to someone else or buy it for their children. I also have a feeling that there are plenty of visitors to this forum who are less experienced in language study (and don't post), and many of them may benefit from what seems to me a gentle, effective approach. The program is largely text-based, with simple audio (you choose from three different systems of pronunciation) and cartoon drawings when appropriate. You are taught a small piece of information, then are asked a series of questions meant to cement your understanding of it. You are encouraged to re-visit earlier frames if you don't understand or remember something. You generally type your answers into the blanks provided. After a few lessons on pronunciation and the computer interface and such, the program teaches a total of 150 "basic sentences" taken from ancient writings. These sentences are to be memorized (and plenty of help is given for this). Mostly using these sentences as a starting point, the program takes you step by step through grammatical principles, and guides you to make new sentences. (If we change the order of these words, does the meaning change? If we change these endings, does the meaning change? What if we wanted to say....?) Grammatical vocabulary is taught (starting with "noun" and "verb"). Technical terms are largely avoided at the beginning, but are gradually introduced after the student is familiar with a concept. The program starts with generalizations which are not always true (like "-t signals a verb, -s and -m signal a noun"), but which work for the given sentences and serve to get the student looking at the proper signals to understand the workings of the sentence. (The generalizations are modified as the course continues.) Vocabulary is deliberately limited, but the grammar concepts are solidly taught. There is a nice dose of humor throughout the program. One of the practice sentences my son encountered today was, "The elephant annoys the young man with his shadow." The approach is mixed. Some of it is listen-and-repeat, and memorization. Some of it is straight grammatical discussion. ("The ablative is..." "Write these forms of this noun.") Sometimes you are presented with a drawing and are asked to describe what is depicted. ("The baby is looking for the old woman.") Sometimes you are given a sentence and asked to translate it (into or out of English). Sometimes you answer questions, entirely in Latin. Review is built in; vocabulary is thoughtfully re-used as appropriate, and older concepts are explicitly as well as implicitly reviewed. Overall, this course feels to me a lot like taking a class with an experienced, thoughtful teacher. Accompanying the program are a reader and a test manual. The reader contains sentences using the grammatical concepts from the lessons, but using a much greater range of vocabulary. The reader is not referenced in the main program, so you can omit it or use it as you prefer. There is also a notebook into which you are encouraged to write rules, paradigms, and basic sentences. Disadvantages of this program (that I see) are: (1) Its cost. (2) The slow pace, for someone who has experience learning languages. (3) The interface, which can be awkward at times. (4) When you fill in a blank with your answer (in almost every frame), you are given the number of letters in each word. This can serve as a hint to what the proper answer will be. It seems to me possible that a student could become too dependent on this, although I don't see it as a huge problem in our case. The testing manual would probably indicate whether this was a problem in a particular case. (5) The overbroad statements; if it annoys you to learn a generalization in unit 5 and then to be told in unit 8 that you were told only a partial truth, this may be a problem. My observations come from watching my ten-year-old son use it. He finds the course interesting and sometimes funny, and walks around the house reciting his basic sentences. He is about a third of the way through this course (which, I believe, is supposed to be the equivalent of a first-year high-school course), and I am pleased with his progress. He has been assigned to spend twenty minutes a day on it, but he almost always spends longer than that. His grammatical understanding and awareness is improving significantly, too. I was hesitant to spend so much money on a Latin program, but I do not regret it, because I can't imagine a resource which would have awakened more interest in him. He is able to study entirely on his own (except for the reader, which wasn't designed with a ten-year-old in mind), although I generally sit near him just to enjoy the program. I have seen a lot of language teaching materials. (I have taught Spanish in classroom and tutorial situations, am trying to write some Spanish materials for the use of homeschoolers, and collect language-learning materials of all types.) This is probably my single favorite language-learning resource ever. Edited to correct a factual error, then to try to improve formatting Edited by BLT on 04 March 2011 at 2:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 2 of 9 01 March 2011 at 4:44am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the review, never heard of this before.
FYI, the series Lingua Latina per se illustrata series also has a nifty version that runs on Mac. (Maybe PC too but not sure.) The price I see on Amazon is a bit higher than I remember though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 3 of 9 01 March 2011 at 5:10am | IP Logged |
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I love the sentence about the elephant's shadow.
You list the cost as a negative factor, but don't tell us what the cost is. Would you mind sharing that bit of information? How much did you pay for it? Did you get it new or second-hand? I have to say it sounds like a really nice program, and if I was in the position to be able to spend any money at all on language-learning materials right now, I might be tempted to get it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 01 March 2011 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
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BLT, are you affiliated with this program?
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| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7222 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 5 of 9 01 March 2011 at 6:00am | IP Logged |
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I personally bought this course over four years ago. The cd-rom complete package I and II, but it was 50% off when I bought it. Around $300 overall when I paid for both of them. The company Bolchazy Carducci has been mentioned multiple times before in this forum, but I do not recall many people showing interest. I am also curious if BLT is affiliated with the company. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 9 01 March 2011 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
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It costs just short of $300
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| BLT Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5763 days ago 5 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese | Message 7 of 9 04 March 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged |
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No, I am not affiliated with this program - just quite enthusiastic about what I've seen so far. I could have made
that explicit in my first post - I thought about it, but hoped that my listing of negatives (some of which I thought were pretty broad, like "it probably wouldn't be of interest to most of you"!) would make that clear. I thought of another negative the other day which I'd like to add to my list - at the moment it's slipped my mind but I'll add it as soon as I remember. We're only about a third of the way through the first level of this program. I know how often it is true that a program seems great at first, but after a time becomes much more difficult to use. So I cannot speak to how well it works long-term. For completeness and fairness, I will post an update to this review when I see how my does as he finishes the program. I might also add that my 10yo is not a typical kid - many kids would probably need to be older to study this. The company does say that 10 is the minimum age; I don't know how many kids of that age could use it, just that my own likes it. But he has very strong language-learning ability. I am a homeschooling mom, Spanish teacher by profession, who loves to study languages (mostly I dabble, though, which is why my language list is as short as it is), with lots of experience looking at language resources of various types. My only affiliation with any language program is that I am perpetually trying to write a Spanish curriculum that is easily usable by homeschooling families - but since I dabble in that too (hey, this approach would be great! No, that one would be better! Wait a minute, what about doing it like THIS?!), it's not very likely to come to fruition. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7222 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 8 of 9 08 March 2011 at 3:46am | IP Logged |
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I saw the price and it has been reduced to about 50% again. Well the dvd version package anyway like the cd package before. The book package is still over $300. To BLT, You were writing about your 10 yr. old. Did you think about buying the Minimus book and cd for him? It is aimed specifically for children. Even though I speak Spanish, and have the goal of having four Romance languages before studying Latin. I am going to use "Minimus" and "Minimus Secundus" just for a quick primer, then of course my other Latin courses like Artes Latinae I and II, Power-Glide and others. It is just figuring out the order I am going to do them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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