Latin - has anyone done it all on their own?

[musicposy]

Maybe this should be in AIBU!

My brother has been teaching Latin to DD1 for 2 years and they were planning to do GCSE in 2 years time. Suddenly, after 32 years of batchelordom, he has a girlfriend and there have been no Latin lessons for 4 weeks now. Talking to him about the fact that he has suddenly dropped all his commitments to the girls (he took DD2 swimming each week amongst the Latin and other things) sparked a huge row two weeks ago which won't seem to blow over. He was very unkind to me and disparaging of everything I've been through this year and as a result, DD1 defriended him on facebook. He now says there will be no more Latin lessons until she apologises on facebook and asks him nicely. She won't do this because of the way he treated me.

I feel as though I am in the middle, but I do feel cross because when I took her out of school he was full of how he would teach this, teach that etc, and now he has just dropped the whole lot.

So, the upshot is, I do want her to do GCSE Latin but I really can't afford a tutor, even if I knew how to find one. My mum teaches DD2 but she says she isn't up to GCSE and won't take it on. I never did Latin at school.

So, has anyone muddled through themselves with no knowledge of Latin? Or does anyone know of any groups that do Latin?

I know these things are a long shot. She is writing to the two local schools who do Latin this week in the hope she can be flexischooled for it, but that's a long shot too.

If we can't get any further with it I will feel as though she has wasted hours of work. It may all blow over with brother, but he is so obsessed with this girlfriend (having never had one before) that nothing else matters any more. He's even been not bothering to go to work some days and leaving it to my 71 year old father (family business) but that's a whole other story!!

I feel better for the rant , but has anyone any advice on the Latin?

I have no advice, but I am interested. Sorry!#

OOH! Except that the OU has put some of it's courses online for free and I could have sworn there was Latin in there.

Oh! That's interesting, Butterpie! I will have a look

Actually we might be able to afford some sort of distance learning course at a push - it's forking out for a private tutor at x amount a week I can't do.

Why I never considered that I don't know....my head is too full of family rows!

So...has anyone done Latin as a distance learning course?

The OU do latin at level 2 and level 3 study. I've not done them but I am quite tempted!

I should think it's possible to self-study latin with a good text book.

I don't know much about GCEs, posy, we don't have them here, but CUP do a Latin course that you can use to teach yourself. I think that it is called the Cambridge Latin Course funnily enough and is a reproduction of the course that I did at school. I have book one for the children in the mad hope that any of them may become interested (my MA is in Classics with divinities.)

It's a complete course with grammar, background etc. I used it at school until the year I took exams when we had to do proper literature like Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Cicero. It should give you a firm grounding to advance from.

Sorry to hear about your brother, hopefully it will all blow over when the novelty wears off.

OU would be free, they do it off the students income themselves, not the parents, and take students with no qualifications. Underage students do need to apply differently though. I was reading about it the other day, I can't remember where though...one of the HE websites.

no advice but sorry your brother is being an arse. for you, after what you've dealt with this year. and is he specifically asking for an apology on FB? grow up

don't know about latin specifically but the OU are fab

Exactly, madmathsmummy, I feel as though I'm dealing with a row with a 15 year old! Which I guess is what he is in a way - has lived at home all his life, works in the family business (so has had everything very easy and no idea what the real world of work is like), has never had a girlfriend......so he is behaving just like a 15 year old would, quite frankly.

I think he will probably have to do a lot of growing up over the next year or two if this all works out - or even if it doesn't - but in the meantime we are left muddling through alone. There's no way she is going to make a public apology on FB!

I will definitely try the OU which sounds a really good alternative to GCSE. She is working through Cambridge Latin at the moment but I'm not sure she would have the ability/ motivation to do it alone and I don't think I am motivated enough to plough through it with her! I was dire at languages at school, absolutely dire. I got 17% in my French in the third year so they made me take German O level instead, which I failed. I was not deemed clever enough to do Latin

There are people on the HE exams list who have done Latin. Maybe someone there could help you? Or an older person (retired vicar?) in your area might like to help?

Cambridge Latin are doing their own 'qualifications' but am not sure how they compare with GCSE. I know I glanced at it on their website.

Alternatively, could you download a sample exam paper from the OCR website and see how she copes with it. I would assume mark schemes are available too (although I can't see them).

What area of the country are you in? I'm doing Latin with DS1 - we are in the North East.

Tinuvel- we are in the NE too. Ours are too young yet, but we are very keen on them doing Latin (we already march in Latin when we play roman soldiers!) How are you finding it?

Perhaps you could do the OU course and the children could do the Cambridge Latin, I think that it goes up to GCSE. The first level for the Cambridge one is £175, going up to £500 for the GCSE level course which seems very reasonable to me. I might put my state educated daughter on it. I have done the OU one and found it much easier than their English courses.

To be honest,
I would eat humble pie, however bad it tastes, for free latin tuition!

I wouldn't recommend teaching Latin to your dd unless you know it well, as it's a very complex language (too complicated to pick up as you go along if you are trying to teach someone who knows a lot already). However, I don't see why your daughter can't teach herself if she has a good grasp of it already.

Hi Butterpie,

I did Latin O level many years ago so am find it OK. It does tax my brain though! We used an American course to start but it wasn't that good TBH. Then we started Cambridge Latin with DS1 and did books 1 and 2a. The only thing I find with them is that although they prepare for GCSE pretty well, they don't really do the grammar that thoroughly, (and as a linguist, that was one of the main reasons I wanted to do Latin) so we switched to Galore Park "So You Really Want to Learn Latin". Grammatically it's brilliant but it's quite hard-going. So now we use both - GP for grammar and Cambridge for lots of translation/comprehension work. That's working quite well for DS1.

DS2/DD are going to start in September. I'll probably do the same - start with Cambridge for a while and then introduce GP for grammar work.

Cambridge Latin is used in quite a few schools. I went to a big Waterstones not too long ago and they had the Cambridge books and one series called Minimus and Maximus. A lot of people I know have recommended the Galore Park books.

We are intending to teach DD Latin from age 7 (depending on her reading). We plan to start with the Latin's Not So Tough curriculum (can be googled, or is sold through Icthus Resources). We then plan to move to Galore Park. The former (LNST), does seem to be aimed at parents/teachers without much former knowledge and you can get a CD with it to help with correct pronounciation.

Unless I am misinformed, there are two Latin GCSEs you can take, with different exam boards. There are schools that are happy to take external candidates. It is worth finding out whether the OU credits you can accumulate can be used towards other courses in future (eg towards another Uni/College course if wanted).

HTH (and the argument gets resolved soon)

I did 'Ecce Romani' from the age of 7 and then with Caecilius, Grumio et al...

I personally think that the Cambridge books are very good but you do need to put the effort in to find the grammar points!

What part of the country are you in? I'm in Herts, and doing Latin with my 9 year old for the past few months, using the CLC. I have a classics degree and I'd be happy to help you, or anyone else who's local and in a similar situation. - I digress, but I'm actually flabbergasted that there's so much interest in Latin these days- I've pretty much only encountered negative reactions to my degree choice, particularly from potential employers , so it would be nice to put all that hard-won knowledge to good use!

What part of the country are you in? I'm in Herts, and doing Latin with my 9 year old for the past few months, using the CLC. I have a classics degree and I'd be happy to help you, or anyone else who's local and in a similar situation. - I digress, but I'm actually flabbergasted that there's so much interest in Latin these days- I've pretty much only encountered negative reactions to my degree choice, particularly from potential employers , so it would be nice to put all that hard-won knowledge to good use!

I was home-educated. I taught myself Latin (although never took exams so don't know if I was actually any good.) using this series.

May, or may not suit your daughter.

If you still need this try this website.

www.cambridgescp.com/page.php?p=clc^top^home

I did latin at school to GCSE but due to an utterly inept teacher (we actually had a teacher for less than a quarter of the year) our class was extremely behind so i ended up teaching myself. You can learn all the vocab and the history on that site, so you only need to do get a book for the poetry section. (should say i got from a U in my mock in november to an A at GCSE so it works if you apply yourself!)