To Read or Not to Read: Trialling an Extensive Reading Program in a Year 10 Latin Classroom

Abstract

Reading is an essential part of learning a language. During my postgraduate (PGCE) teacher-training placement in the UK, I observed extensive reading being used in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) and English classrooms but saw no evidence for it in the Latin classroom. However, the practice is gaining popularity in the United States as part of Comprehensible Input-based teaching. I was interested to see if extensive reading could be introduced in my classroom without any accompanying spoken Latin and if students would be interested in it. So, I decided to try an extensive reading program for my PGCE research project. The program was positively received by the majority of students, who felt that their Latin ability had improved even after only a handful of sessions, and who appreciated the relatively stressless activity that warmed up their ‘Latin brains’. Many commented that they wanted to read for longer. This very short trial of an extensive reading program gives me much hope for a longer trial or even a permanent program in the future. I also hope that this will encourage others to try bringing extensive reading and its benefits into their classrooms.

Latin and Greek in English Primary Schools – seedlings of a classical education

“…Because at the very moment where many teachers in secondary schools seem to be beginning to grasp what it means to teach ancient languages as languages (using their increased knowledge of broadly communicative techniques) rather than codes, it would be a shame if their primary school sisters and brothers were obliviously going backwards to the grammar-grind of the past. For further reading, I suggest the following: authors from UK schools in Lloyd and Hunt (2021), to recent presentations at conferences at the University of Reading in 2023 and at Harrow School in 2022, to articles by Cooper (2023), Omrani (2023), Lanzillotta (2023), Letts (2021) and Hunt (forthcoming), and to the special edition of the Journal of Classics Teaching volume 20 (39), which demonstrate the appeal of active approaches to learning Latin and ancient Greek in UK schools today.…”