Hi All, As I finish up my MSEd in February, I'm looking forward to starting my MA in History and ultimately moving on to a Ph.D. In doing so, I'm going to have to obtain a reading knowledge of a variety of languages, most notably Latin. I had two semesters of Latin waaaaaay back in undergrad and still remember a thing or two. Upon enrolling in a Ph.D. program I'll also need Italian and German. For right now, however, I'd like to focus on Latin for now. If I get enough credits, I can be eligible to teach it at my high school. So here are my questions. 1) Where would be the best place to take distance learning courses in Latin? 2) Based on your experiences, how difficult is it to learn a language via DL? 3) If courses are not available, are there any tests that could be taken to demonstrate mastery after learning the language through other means, like Rosetta Stone software? (Which, by the way, I'm wondering about the effectiveness... any suggestions?) Thanks in advance for your advice! -Matt
The Army is pushing the Rosetta Stone learning method. They have a contract with the company to licence all their language packs and it is made available for free through AKO (password-based army portal). I am not a big fan of it myself for individual study. I taught Arabic and French for a while with Berlitz and when I tried the Rosetta method with Arabic, it was rather confusing. I decided to tackle a different language that I didn't speak(german) and didn't learn much per se other than separate words. Unless you stick with this method for a good while, it just might be good enough to learn foreign vocabulary. But since I was able to acquire 2 DVDs with a bunch of Rosetta languages, I'll try it later with German since I'll be stationed there next week
Latin's gotten really popular among classical homeschoolers. Here are some sites that have the more popular programs you can use to learn ti at home. Ecce Romani Memoria Press This page has all of their Latin resources listed Galore Park HTH,
A good NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/business/17novel.html?em&ex=1203570000&en=5f2608e67c218319&ei=5087%0A
This URL lists Free Online Language Courses http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html I would recommend the Pimsleur CDs for home study. However, it seems they do not support Latin
I second Pimsleur. I love that program. It doesn't help much with reading and writing and I happen to be a visual leaner. But, I feel that I can understand and speak very basic French. I don't really care for Rosetta Stone. I haven't been able to make a sentence yet!!! UNISA offers a BA in Latin in their classics department through correspondence. You may be interested in taking a few courses with them. Best of luck!
