Too often in AP classes there is such a rush to dive into the lines to be "read" (i.e., "translated"), that little time is spent discussing how to improve one's ability to read all those lines of Latin.  To be sure, many serious students develop efficient skills at decoding Latin--looking up words more quickly, identifying grammatical forms more quickly, stringing together English translations more quickly--but they hit a wall at some point that they can't get around.  This wall keeps students of Latin--young and old--from learning to develop true reading skills.  Time is wasted in jumping back and forth in a sentence, missing how phrases and clauses go together, and then more time is wasted in writing out translations for every single word on the page.

Our goal in reading Vergil this year is not just to meet the requirements of the AP syllabus, but to learn how to read Latin--real Latin--more fluently.  Your year with Vergil shouldn't get more stressful as the year goes on, but more enjoyable as you not only get used to Vergil's style, but as you retrain your mind to accept Latin in word order.

There are several habits you should get into this year:

1) READ OUT LOUD.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Learning how to read out loud with confidence and fluency.  Read out loud the WHOLE section of lines assigned before you begin, then read them again after you've translated/figured out what everything means.  Then read them a THIRD time, with feeling.  The more times you read it, the more easily you'll recognize the passage later on.

2) USE THE PUNCTUATION.  Punctuation helps you understand phrases and clauses and how words go together.   If you are reading in word order, the punctuation and phrasing will make sense. If you ignore the punctuation and jump around in the sentence, not only will you have difficulties understanding the sentence, you will slow yourself down.  Think about the punctuation, use the punctuation.  IN FACT, a major mistake that readers of Vergil make is to read line by line, not to the punctuation, not to the period.  Don't make this mistake!  Use the punctuation.

3) METAPHRASE.  You won't feel the need to skip around in the sentence, looking for a verb, and then wondering what to do with all the clauses if you are reading in word order and metaphrasing in order to hold the place for whatever is missing.  ("Someone verbed something to someone" is our basic metaphrasing placehodling sentence.)   So often sentences may start with an accusative or dative, and it's easy to lose sight of their syntatical meaning if you don't have a way to hold that meaning by using metaphrasing.

4) REREAD.  Before beginning a new passage, reread at least the last few sentences of the previous assignment, if not the whole assignment.  Not only will you begin with a clear recollection of what you did the day before (because you will have just reviewed it), you will notice more how the vocabulary does repeat and overlap, often with intended emphasis.  Does rereading take up time?  Not much. Time yourself.  Read out loud so you don't slow down.  The more you reread as you go along, the easier quizzes, tests, and eventually the AP test will seem.

5) AVOID WRITING OUT TRANSLATIONS WHILE YOU WORK.  Your goal during the week should be reading and rereading the Latin to understand it and absorb new vocabulary and syntactical structures.  It will, however, be very important that you do learn how to write an accurate English translation of any given passage on the Vergil syllabus. NEVER write down a translation of any sort for any reason until you are SURE you understand THE WHOLE SENTENCE or even the whole paragraph.   You will get much better at doing this if you spend the majority of your time reading and rereading the passages in order to fix the vocabulary as well as the idiosyncracies of Vergil's style (word order, contractions/syncopation, and such).  Only then will you be able to translate anything with true confidence.

6) READ OUT LOUD TO MASTER METER. Did I mention you should read out loud?  Hide in the bathroom to read out loud if you need to if you are shy, but read out loud.  Hear the words,spoken correctly, accents on the correct syllable with great attention to long and short vowels.  The more you read out loud, the more you will fix the whole sound of the word accurately in your head.  This is important because guess what?  There will NOT BE ANY MACRONS on the AP exam.  You will soon realize that this truly isn't a problem because meter will help you figure out anything that you find tricky, and your reading ability will reassure you that you've figured it out correctly from the meter.  You ability to scan lines for meter will be made easier if you are confident in reading out loud.  It all goes hand in hand.

I reserve the right to modify this "Developing Your Reading Skills" entry as the year progresses. I think you'll find, though, that these habits mentioned above will help you more than anything else this year.  I know that at first you will think that you don't have enough time to reread old stuff, read the new stuff, and reread the new stuff again.  But I think you will find that once you make a habit of it, you will see its benefits throughout the year.

I thought it would be handy to post our schedule for assignments for the year here for easier access.  It is imperative that we keep up with the number of lines assigned.  So, as you have projects come up in other classes, try to plan ahead.   

I am setting up a blog site for our Vergil's Aeneid class of two.  As I'm reading articles and contemplating what quia.com things to design, I am also thinking about how pressed for time we will be in class.

I'm hoping that setting up this page will give us a means to continue our discussion of Vergil as well as a place to post problematic lines, etc. We'll see how it goes, how much we use this space, etc as the year begins.

MagistraL