"For seven days at the end of July, I spent an entire week in a mansion in West Virginia with thirty other people.听 For these seven days, only Latin was spoken within these walls.听 This weeklong intensive, immersive experience reanimated the life of a language whose favorite epithet is 鈥渄ead.鈥�
The instructors at this program were a mix of Latin-lovers: from lifetime aficionados to college professors, who came from all over the world, including Mexico, South Africa, and Australia.听 Regardless of our backgrounds and ages, we automatically had one very important thing in common: our passion for a language whose benefits are often undervalued.
Each day was well structured between full classes, small group sessions, and guided leisure time.听 After breakfast, congressus omnium was our first gathering of the day in which all participants learned in one room.听 Afterwards, we divided into pre-assigned groups for two sessions.听 The first session revolved around common quotidian vocabulary, such as rooms of the house, telling time, seasons, and animals.听 During the second small-group session, we read Latin passages in which we discussed the grammatical and the pragmatic meanings of these texts.听 After this session, lunch was served.听 After lunch, we split into three groups, depending our oral Latin expertise.听 Each group prepared a miniature play, which was performed on the final day, rehearsed, choreographed, and memorized.听 Our last class of the day was another congressus omnium, in which we practiced grammatical structures and lexical items introduced throughout the day.听 Between this final meeting and dinner, there were guided leisure activities, such as reading more complex literature, and various games, including dungeons and dragons and go fish.听 After dinner, participants and teachers alike spent the remainder of the evening in personal leisure activities, including telling stories on the back porch, a place of informal, spontaneous chatter interspersed with copious laughter.
The experience was fun, challenging, and most importantly, rewarding.听 It was crucial for my quest to become a Latin teacher.听 Because the ACTFL standards for world language teaching are becoming more focused on communicative approaches, the necessity for oral, conversational Latin is increasing more and more.听 Because I have learned Latin through the traditional, didactic, grammar-translation method, I was at first hesitant to participate.听 However, this intensive program showed me not only that it can be done, but that it should be done to foster a more complete understanding of the ancient language."
-Brandi Boseovski
M.A. Classics with a Concentration in Teaching Latin
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