Applied Linguistics and Latin Pedagogy ______
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Running Head: CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 1 Changing the Mos Maiōrum: Applied Linguistics and Latin Pedagogy _______________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University ________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Classics _________________________ Kelly A. Bilz April 2018 CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 2 This Thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Classics and World Religions _______________________ Dr. Neil Bernstein Associate Professor, Classics Thesis Advisor ______________________ Dr. Dawn Bikowski Director of ELIP Thesis Advisor ______________________ Dr. Ruth Palmer Director of Studies, Classics ____________________ Dr. Cary Frith Interim Dean, Honors Tutorial College CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 3 Table of Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................................4 Relevant Linguistic Theory and Literature Review.......................................................15 Research Questions, Methodology, and Significance....................................................32 Results & Discussion.....................................................................................................36 Structure of Reading Materials......................................................................................52 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................62 References.....................................................................................................................73 Appendix.......................................................................................................................75 CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 4 Introduction “[Eugene] liked that Latin was dead. He liked that only smart kids took it. He liked his idiosyncratic Latin teachers, Dr. Fletcher, who played ‘Shoo-Fly Pie’ on his guitar to teach them dactylic hexameter, and Miss McNally, who described their grammar book as ‘gruel-colored.’”1 So Jeffrey Eugenides writes in his short story, Bronze, which illustrates both the best parts of Latin education (the “idiosyncratic Latin teachers”) and the worst (“only the smart kids took it”). Even though this story is set in 1978, thirty-one years before I first set foot in a Latin classroom as a freshman in high school, I found I could completely relate to Eugene's thoughts and impressions about my own Latin learning. This illustrates the extent to which Latin education has remained the same, drawing from tradition and preserving the same ultimately harmful attitudes about Latin. For instance, Eugenides continues: “Gruel was like ‘gray’ and ‘cruel.’ Which was like Latin grammar! Most kids couldn’t take it. They flailed.” In my eight years of studying Latin, I have watched students struggle with the language class’s demands: memorizing case endings, differentiating between nuanced grammatical constructions, learning new vocabulary, and translating extensively. While some students, like Eugenides’ character Eugene, a few of my classmates, and to some extent, myself, can endure or even thrive in this environment, many more do “flail.” They leave their Latin experience confused, perhaps even resentful, and with very little Latin ability. Without a focus on methodology, the disadvantages of the Latin pedagogy--“Most kids couldn’t take it”--will never be addressed. Most of the dialogue in the field of Latin education today focuses on questions of why, rather than how, Latin is taught. In trying to change the 1 Eugenides, J. (2018, February 5). Bronze. New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/bronze CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 5 reputation of classics, as well as keep it viable as a discipline in an era where it has been devalued, scholars have emphasized Latin’s continued relevance. Though this justification is important, there must be equal focus on the methodology of Latin teaching. The field of applied linguistics deals with these questions of how to effectively teach language, especially modern languages, but there has been very little discourse on its application to the classical languages. In fact, there is a great disparity between the amount of literature published on Latin and Greek teaching and the literature on teaching modern languages. In order to evaluate the potential benefits of applying linguistic principles to Latin pedagogy, we must first understand the traditional methods of teaching Latin. In this section, I also address other components of Latin’s pedagogical tradition, namely identity and access. Next, I will discuss the unique circumstances of teaching a language which prevails only in its literary form, as well as the types of students Latin attracts. Since the structure of reading materials are particularly important in teaching Latin, I also describe the role of commentaries on ancient texts in the Latin classroom. After contextualizing the issues of Latin pedagogy, I will list my research questions and methodology, and then I will explain the essential applied linguistics theories which are most important to this argument. The materials and arguments of the educators cited here illustrate some tension between long-established tradition and modern attitudes, but most importantly, they reflect the field’s dedication to teaching Latin, and teaching it well. Traditional Education Because Latin education has had such a long and unique history, once being the language of an empire, then of a church, then of a class of intellectuals, Latin teachers have access to a long and abundant pedagogical tradition. This tradition involves the use of the Grammar CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 6 Translation method (hereafter abbreviated as G-T). In this method, grammatical structures of the language, called forms, are explicitly taught first. After one or two years of memorizing forms, endings, and rules, the students begin translating classical texts into their native languages. The texts read have changed over time, but the most common ones are Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, Cicero, Catullus, Ovid, and Vergil’s Aeneid.2 Two of these texts, Caesar’s De Bello Gallico and Vergil’s Aeneid, are covered on the AP Latin exam,3 so they are particularly significant in the field. Many students struggle to learn with this method—as Jeffrey Eugenides phrased it, they “flail”—and many language educators have moved away from G-T, which will be described in the Literature Review, in favor of new principles, such as communication and linguistic input. At first glance, the G-T method might seem outdated, but harmless for Latin education: students are reading early, so even if their grasp of the language is not as strong from memorizing rules as it would be from other methods, couldn’t they develop their skills through reading and extended exposure to the language? Wouldn’t this practice, after some time, compensate for any discrepancies? This process of reading through Latin texts, however, is not a holistic approach to reading. As I will show in the Literature Review, literacy involves a variety of skills, but G-T targets only one of these: the ability to decode into the student’s first language (L1). In a G-T classroom, students carefully analyze every word, which often means that once they reach the end of the sentence, they cannot comprehend the meaning. All these students have is a collection of words, no context, no meaning, no ideas. The act of translation itself, a common homework exercise and test item, necessitates word-by-word reading. The end result may be what is called 2 See Bennet & Bristol (1911) 111-130; Krisch (1928) 186-197; and Toda todallycomprehensiblelatin.blogspot.com. 3 For the AP Latin syllabus, see: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-latin/course/ap-latin-reading- list?course=ap-latin CHANGING THE MOS MAIORUM 7 “translationese,” a term applied to overly-literal, incomprehensible translations, which reveals that the student still does not understand the sentence. Translation is also a highly specialized skill, requiring advanced degrees, as Brown points out.4 In applied linguistics, one of the goals of teaching reading is to avoid having students read word by word, so that they can develop the ability to read quickly and thus can remember the start of the sentence once they reach the end. This tradition is not strictly pedagogical; there are other components of the field of Latin pedagogy, including identity and accessibility. Here, I address these aspects in an American context from the past century until now. The pursuit of classics, for many years, was only allowed for a certain demographic: aristocratic white men. Though women were allowed to study classics, it nonetheless remained a male-dominated field. A classical education was often a means of exclusion, which has somewhat continued today by Latin programs continuing primarily at private schools, Catholic schools in particular. The Roman Catholic Church once used Latin to reinforce power structures in the Middle Ages, keeping holy texts in the Bible inaccessible to all but a few highly-educated elite, and today, the Church’s influence on Latin education can still be observed from my own experiences and those of others. For instance, Krisch highlighted the importance of Latin in developing discipline and even virtue in young men,5 an attitude that can still be found today,