From Pergamum to Pallanteum

From Pergamum to Pallanteum: a journey across the landscape of language acquisition and the teaching of grammar.

Mark David Andrews [BA Hons (Melb), BD Hons (MCD), Grad Dip Ed/Grad Cert RE (ACU)]

Master of Education Studies School of Education

University of Ballarat PO Box 663 University Drive, Mount Helen Ballarat, Victoria 3353, Australia

Submitted May 2010 as partial requirement for the degree.

UB Student ID: 2821634

Supervisor Karen Felstead

From Pergamum to Pallanteum: a journey across the landscape of language acquisition and the teaching of grammar.

Abstract At the outset of this paper is the metaphor of a journey. The practice of teaching and learning is always a journey, a journey that is open ended. This journey functions at two levels, personal and academic. At a personal level, the journey is from the existing praxis in my classroom to whatever may emerge from this process. At an academic level the journey is from more traditional methods of Classical Language teaching and learning, to what might be suggested in the light of an investigation into relevant academic literature on language acquisition in general, and second language acquisition in particular.

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Statement of Authorship Except where explicit reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No other person’s work has been relied upon or used without due acknowledgement in the main text and bibliography of the thesis.

Signed:

Signed:

Dated:

Dated:

Mark David Andrews Candidate

Karen Felstead Principal Supervisor

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Acknowledgements This paper has taken longer than expected and taken me away from my wife, April, and my children, Prudence and Julian. I would like to thank them for their tolerance, as I have been shut away working. Thanks are due to my supervisor, Karen Felstead who has remained encouraging and patient throughout this process. I would like to thank the University of Ballarat and The Geelong College, both of whom have sponsored this study. Finally, vobis maximas gratias ago to the Classical Association of Victoria Teachers’ Wing and in particular my colleagues who participated in this research during a busy study period.

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Tabula Itineris (Table of Contents) Tabula Figurarum (Table of Figures)

6

Leaving Troy

7

A Journey through the Literature

9

Bearings for the Journey Asking the guides The Maze of Vygotsky The Monolith of Krashen The Halls of Halliday Reflection upon the Journey

A Shield for the Latin Teacher A- The Metaphor of the Shield B- Maximising understandable input C- Use of memorisation of lexicon and paradigms D- Functional Grammatical Analysis E- Nominal Grammatical Analysis and Syntax Charts F- Marking Up Texts G- Fluffy, the use of familiar narrative Shouldering the Shield

Taking Stock

9 10 15 21 23 24

26 26 26 27 29 32 34 36 37

39

A reprisal. Why leave Troy anyway?

39

Fellow Travellers

42

Voices of Fellow Travellers The Literature The Suggestions for Classroom Practice

46 46 48

Reworking the Shield at Journey’s End

53

Appendices

55

Appendix A: The Proposal Appendix B: PLIS Appendix C: Forum Transcripts

55 88 91

Tabula Librorum (Bibliography)

95

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Tabula Figurarum (Table of Figures) Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17

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26 27 27 28 28 29 30 31 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 36 37

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Leaving Troy At the outset of this paper is the metaphor of a journey. The practice of teaching and learning is always a journey, a journey that is open ended. This is very much the case with the learning of Latin within a secondary school context; both the teacher and students have come from somewhere and after the period of Latin learning there is further travel. With this in mind the metaphor is of the journey from Pergamum, the citadel of the ill-fated city of Troy, to the shores of Latium and the city of Pallanteum.

In Virgil’s Aeneid (Virgil, 1969), Aeneas leads the remnants, the refugees of fallen Troy through a number of trials and eventually lands upon the shores of Italy. The foundation of future Rome is foreshadowed, especially in Book VIII with the journey to Pallanteum, the very site of the future Rome. As all students of Latin in Victoria currently study one book of the Aeneid in order to complete the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) requirements for the study of Latin, it seems most apt to adopt this metaphor for an examination of this teaching and learning experience. Prior to the journey there is the history of Troy and after the journey there is the emerging history of the Rome that was to be. This journey functions at two levels, personal and academic. At a personal level, the journey is from the existing praxis in my classroom to whatever may emerge from this process. At an academic level the journey is from more traditional methods of Classical Language teaching and learning, to what might be suggested in the light of an investigation into relevant academic literature on language acquisition in general, and second language acquisition in particular.

Journey is from an understanding of language as atomistic or unitary, following the Empiricist thinking of Locke (1975 (1984)), Hume (1975 (1985)) and Wittgenstein in his Tractatus (1922 (1990)), to an understanding of language that is holistic, contextualised in culture and always a social phenomenon, following the later work of Wittgenstein in his Investigations (1968 (1990)). The essential question of this paper is whether or not such a top down or holistic view of language sits in accord with more contemporary understandings of language acquisition. This is in contrast to the more bottom up or atomistic views of language that have underpinned the more traditional teaching and learning practices of Classical Language. It is from this perspective that the proposed model of teaching practice for the Classical Language classroom is put forward as A Shield for the Latin Teacher.

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In the course of researching this paper I read a number of papers about the use of narrative and metaphor in academic writing and decided to abandon staid prose in favour of the trials and hazards of literary device and metaphor (Richardson, 2000)(Marvasti, 2004)(Bolton, 2006). Having established such a modus operandi the writer, student researcher, is placed in the role of Aeneas. What is to be achieved by such a journey? Taking a lead from Clough and Nutbrown I was seeking to examine the experience of my classroom practice, to arrest this experience (Clough & Nutbrown, 2002).

A radical look may reveal unexpected potential approaches,

unexpected student performance, unpredictable responses from the students. Radical listening would identify the stake-holders in my research and some of my own assumptions.

Through being critical, radical reading may reveal some of my

motivations and what is at stake for me in terms of intellectual integrity and selfimage. Radical questioning may bring to light the expected results of any instrument brought to bear upon data with reference to the desires and bias of the stakeholders in the research process. This was the starting point of the journey, a desire to examine, question, reflect upon and redefine the experience of teaching and learning within the Latin classroom. As with many an ideal, the response to such a desire needed to be pragmatic and less lofty. It would have been better to have been able to gain feedback from my students as participants in my research, but ethical considerations ruled this out (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2007). Given that I am the sole Latin teacher in the school, it was not possible for me to seek research participation from students who I do not also teach and assess. The use of students from another school was not a good option because I wanted feedback on the teaching and learning in my classroom. Eventually I hit upon the idea of peer review of a teaching proposal.

My colleagues are people over whom I do not have such a power relationship and they are all adult educators who are able to make informed decisions about participation in research. A literature review and proposal for classroom practice were presented to a group of my colleagues for comment. An online forum was utilised to gain the feedback from the transcripts of the discussion. The next two chapters represent a revised version of The Proposal that was put to my colleagues; the actual document is attached as Appendix A.

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A Journey through the Literature Bearings for the Journey The teaching of Latin, much like Aeneas’ journey to found a new Troy, is not an undertaking to be regarded lightly or without due consideration of the landscape.

Looking at the landscape of literature between Pergamum and Pallanteum (Virgil, 1969), between traditional methods of teaching Latin and what might be new ground, there were a number of monuments that required some attention along the way, but first there was one issue to overcome. There is very little literature that relates directly to the teaching of Latin. What there is tends to come from the turn of the twentieth century and tends to be little more than superficial comments about the value of learning a classical language. The esteemed E.V. Arnold (1907) proclaimed that the study of classical language was of great value for one’s political outlook; anyone studying classical language and society at school in 1907 would soon have need of all the political outlook that they could muster. The enraged W.H.D. Rouse (1910) railed against the suggestion of a certain Mr. Snow that Latin prose be dropped from secondary education in order to save Ancient Greek. Although I have some sympathy for both Mr Rouse and Mr. Snow, their concerns hardly address the mechanics of classroom practice. For this reason I abandoned the search for direct reference to the teaching of Latin and made for the open fields of language acquisition and learning in a more general sense. I added to this some exploration of the place of grammar teaching. Having stepped onto an enormous plateau of possibilities, there was a need to find one’s way around this vast landscape. For this Lightbown and Spada (2006) and Nunan (1991) proved quite useful as guides.

Having worked out the basic landscape it was important to select a few monuments for particular investigation, for there was not time to visit them all in one trip. The Maze of Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 1978)(Vygotsky, 1962) was chosen so that we might look at the ways in which language acquisition is influenced by social and intellectual development in both first and second languages. The Monolith of Krashen (Krashen S. , 1988) was chosen because it is central to the landscape of Second Language Acquisition and encompasses a top down approach to the maximisation of understandable input. Halls of Halliday (Halliday, 1985) were chosen as a reference

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point for the explicit teaching and understanding of grammatical features in more functional terms. Finally, came the time to sit down and reflect upon the journey. In this reflection, a Shield for the Latin Teacher, or a proposal for classroom practice, came to light for the consideration of others.

Asking the guides: An overview of the literature Taking the lead of Lightbown (Lightbown & Spada, 2006), it is possible draw a map with which to navigate the landscape of language acquisition theorists and literature.

Language acquisition is divided into First Language Acquisition (FLA) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). According to Lightbown and Spada (2006), in the twentieth century there have been three principle schools of thought around First Language Acquisition.

B.F. Skinner headed up the Behaviourist School and,

extending the metaphors of his research from the study of rats, considered language acquisition to be a matter of imitation and positive reinforcement of behaviour.

According to this approach, language comes from without as a child grows up. It is as if, as Locke (1975 (1984)) put it, we start off as a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, onto which language flows. For Skinner we imitate the language to which we are exposed.

Chomsky argued against Skinner in a famous article (Chomsky, 1959). According to Lightbown and Spada (2006), Chomsky’s contention was that children come to learn more than the language that they hear, they perform more language than could be regarded as imitation; this is called the local problem. For Chomsky, children are born with an innate sense of grammar, a Universal Grammar (UG), which they map onto the given language of their socio-historical context(Chomsky, 2006)(Chomsky, 1965).

Apparently, universal grammar prevents children from pursuing many blind alleys in language development. The learning that children do is to learn how to apply their innate Universal Grammar to their given linguistic context; this can be a complex process of trial and error. Lightbown and Spada (2006) refer to Chomsky and those who build upon his work with Universal Grammar as Innatists. One cannot help but see in Chomsky’s Universal Grammar revisionist set of forms from Plato’s Cave (Plato, 1989) countering the revisionist Lockian tabula rasa or erased wax tablet (Locke, 1975 (1984)) in the work of Skinner; the reformed realist versus the re-shaven empiricist. Linked to the work of the Innatists is the notion of the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH); this is the notion that for different types of development there are Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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critical periods and that for linguistic development this is up to early adolescence; after this point language is less successfully acquired(Lightbown & Spada, 2006). This theory has wide acceptance and has for support two famous examples of children who did not receive human language through socialisation until they were twelve or thirteen years of age; neither achieved a high degree of linguistic competence. To this comes the perspective of Interactionist – Developmental theorists; for Lightbown and Spada (2006), Vygotsky and Piaget come under this heading. From this perspective driven by social interaction and development, the Innatists, read Chomsky, place too much emphasis upon the final product of language acquisition, namely the competence of the adult native speaker, and not enough upon the development of this competency.

A good deal more will be said about Vygotsky upon a visit to his maze, the massive Channels of Chomsky will need to be navigated on another journey. Nunan (1991) and Lightbown and Spada (2006) point out that a longitudinal study completed by Roger Brown in the 1970’s does much to support a developmental understanding of First Language Acquisition.

He found that there are definite markers or

developmental points which children pass on their way to fully developed language, but that not all children pass these markers at the same time. Jill and Peter de Villiers confirmed these findings with a cross-sectional study of their own around the same time (de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973).

Along with linguistic proficiency, meta-

linguistic awareness develops, that is the ability to talk about language and reflect upon one’s use of it. An awareness of register is a meta-linguistic skill.

Having established three general areas of thought with regard to First Language Acquisition, the next step is to look towards Second Language Acquisition. The relationship between the two is a matter of some contention, but more of that later.

Lightbown and Spada (2006) point out, quite logically, that the context for Second Language Learning is quite significant; secondary school or adult learning, as a foreign language or a second language in the country of the target language. The age, motivations and educational background of the learner are important considerations, as is the nature of the task at hand; experienced language teachers Nunan (1991) and Celce-Murcia (1991) also mention the importance of such considerations.

Once the context and learner have been given due consideration, the issue of theoretical background impinges upon methodology. Lightbown and Spada (2006) Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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point out that as with First Language Acquisition, the Behaviourist approach was very influential from the 1940s to the 1970s and gave rise to the audio-lingual approach to language learning; all those great language learning cassettes that you place in the car to learn Farsi or the like as you drive. This approach was heavily reliant upon imitation and grammatical patterns with less emphasis upon the learning of vocabulary (Nunan, 1991). Another aspect of the behaviourist approach was the assumption that errors made in the second language or difficulties in learning structures could be predicted from the first language. According to Lightbown and Spada (2006), Nunan (Nunan, 1991) and Krashen (1988), this has not been supported by the most studies into the area.

Stephen D. Krashen is a veritable monolith in Second Language

Acquisition and his thinking requires special attention. He regards the most important ingredient for the development of competence in a second language to be the provision of copious meaningful and comprehensible input in the target language (Krashen S. , 1988). The Innatist perspective has been represented by Linda White and others, who argue that Universal Grammar provides the best basis upon which to understand Second Language Acquisition (White, 1987). It is against this input hypothesis of Krashen that Linda White takes issue; that is an investigation for another day. Using a socio-cultural approach is Merrill Swain (Swain, 1985). Developing new corridors in the Maze for Vygotsky in this field of Second Language Acquisition are Jim Lantolf (2006) and Richard Donato (1994); these are more roads to follow later. Nick Ellis and others have proposed an approach that Lightbown and Spada refer to as Connectionism (Lightbown & Spada, 2006). Connectionism places an emphasis upon the frequency with which learners encounter specific linguistic features in their input and the frequency with which features occur together.

Both Nunan (1991) and

Lightbown and Spada (2006) refer to the work of Manfred Pienemann on Processability.

According to Pienemann, linguistic structures in a language are

acquired or understood in accordance with their processability. Learning takes place by getting students to work with structures just above their level of competence (Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993)(Pienemann, 2002).

Nunan (1991), a fairly pragmatic soul with a concern for what really works in the classroom, takes a lead role in guiding us through the specific areas of reading, vocabulary learning and the teaching of grammar. Reading can be looked at from below or from above. The approach of phonics was to consider reading bottom up as Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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a matter of decoding a series of written symbols, blending graphemes (units of writing) and phonemes (units of speech) in the mind, pronouncing and finding meaning. Reading is a case of reconstituting from the bottom up. This approach seems to accord with common sense, but for a second language learner there is a problem. Unlike a native speaker, the second language learner does not have the fallback of spoken language as a yardstick for the correct sound of the words. A preschool age child, on the other hand, already knows what many words sound like before the process of learning to read and write begins. Coming from above to reading is the psycholinguistic approach.

The assumption here is that reading is a matter of

reconstructing meaning from the context rather than decoding it. The process is one of working from past experience, language intuitions and expectations, then moving down to selective aspects of the print, and onto meaning and sound pronunciation if necessary. Nunan refers to Stanovich (1980) as having a halfway approach called the interactive-compensatory model that uses aspects of both top down and bottom up approaches. Quite pragmatically and based upon his own testing, Nunan (1991) points out that time with the language and familiarity with the context are both factors that improve success with reading. Hence, familiarity with grammatical structures is not the sole basis upon which one achieves success with reading.

As mentioned

previously, the teaching of vocabulary suffered under the Audio-Linguistic approach suggested from a Behaviourist perspective; grammatical patterns and pronunciation were emphasised at the expense of vocabulary learning. Vocabulary is best learnt is small amounts frequently, rather than in large amounts infrequently. There have been studies into which words occur more frequently in a language (Johnston, 1985)(Channell, 1988)(Zaki & Ellis, 1999) and Nunan suggests that there may be some merit is focusing upon the more frequent words earlier in one’s learning (Nunan, 1991). He also points out that there are difficulties with words that occur very frequently having more than one meaning. This is a problem for English and it has more words or a larger lexicon than most other languages. Nunan (1991) mentions that there has been some successful work done with teaching vocabulary through computer games. Given that Nunan was writing nearly twenty years ago, one might imagine that a great deal more work has been done in this area. In about 1999, I saw role-playing games for modern languages aimed at developing vocabulary and grammatical understanding.

Traditional language classrooms, working from the

teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek, served up a diet of systematic grammar, Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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vocabulary memorisation and pronunciation. This proved to be more effective for reading and writing than for listening and speaking. Nunan points out that as Brown (1973) had discovered that there were crucial points of acquisition in the first language, so Dulay and Burt (1973)(1974a)(1974b), also in the seventies, found the same to hold for the second language in children. This torpedoes the notion of the Behaviourist that first language background determines the acquisition and the problems for acquisition in the second. Bailey, Madden and Krashen confirmed these findings with adult second language learners (1974). Hence, neither with children nor with adults does the nature of first language determine or even greatly influence learning in the second. Nunan refers to the Halls of Halliday, to which we shall journey. Halliday proposed working with grammatical concepts from the text down rather than from the word up; top down rather than bottom up (Halliday, 1985); he called his approach Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG). Nunan advocates looking at the work of Butt (1989) for the practical outworking of Halliday’s approach in the language classroom. Here ends the overview of the landscape under the able direction of our guides (Lightbown & Spada, 2006)(Nunan, 1991). It is now time to explore some of the monuments in their own right.

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The Maze of Vygotsky: Language Acquisition According to Vygotsky The interrelatedness of social and intellectual development, on the one hand, and language acquisition and development, on the other, are central to the work of Vygotsky in both areas (1962).

First is the task of exploring Vygotsky’s Maze on

language acquisition in general terms, then the task of working through to the more hidden area of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). One of the issues when dealing with the Maze of Vygotsky is that his work was conducted in the Stalinist Era Soviet Union and he died in 1934, yet most of his work did not reach the broader scientific community through translations until the 1960s and 1970s. Although Piaget is a major interlocutor for Vygotsky, Vygotsky is in dialogue with Piaget’s earlier work.

Vygotsky had died before Piaget had a chance to read and respond to him (Vygotsky, 1978).

Piaget argued for a developmental approach to language acquisition that was linked to the development of the intellect (1962).

The development of language and the

intellect are interrelated in the exercise of language in word meaning. This might be in the form of the inner speech of our thoughts or the outer speech of our communication with others. This is an organic approach to linguistic development that locates it within a network of relationships with social and intellectual development.

In

presenting his development hypothesis, Vygotsky uses Piaget as a foil; he considered Piaget to have been too influenced by the psychoanalytic thought of Freud and the like (1962). A crucial point of contention between the two theories was the function of egocentric speech in young children. For Piaget this egocentric thought and speech is an early stage of development that recedes with the socialisation of the child and the development of socialised language. For Vygotsky, egocentric thought and speech develop into inner speech. The egocentric speech of a young child vanishes from vocalisation with development not because it has gone, but because it has become the inner speech of a more developed mind. Vocalised egocentric speech for Vygotsky is an invaluable window on the workings of thought and the development of the intellect (Vygotsky, 1962). The primary function of speech for both children and adults is communication, the function of this communication become differentiated into speech for oneself, egocentric speech, and speech for others, socialised speech. Egocentric

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speech emerges when a child transfers collaborative behaviour into the sphere of internal functions. This is triggered by the need to solve a problem. Pre-school age children will vocalise their problem solving language that older children and adults have as an inner voice; the function of both is to aid the thought or reasoning process (Vygotsky, 1962). These two aspects of language and intellectual development, the inner and the outer, the egocentric and the social, are present from birth. At about the age of two the speech and thought processes merge in an explosion on linguistic development. This is marked by a sudden curiosity about words and naming every new thing that results in a rapid increase in vocabulary; my son Julian is was going through this phase as I was researching for this paper. Although inner and outer speech are interrelated, they are different and perform different functions, one for communication and the other for thinking and reasoning. “ In brief, we must conclude that: 1. in their ontogenetic development, thought and speech have different roots.

2. In the speech development of the child, we can with certainty establish a preintellectual stage, and in his thought development, a prelinguistic stage.

3. Up to a certain point in time, the two follow different lines, independently of each other.

4. At a certain point these lines meet, whereupon thought becomes verbal and speech rational.� (Vygotsky, 1962, p. 44)

Thought and speech are two spheres that overlap in verbal thought; both have areas that are not covered by the other. Verbal thought is not innate, but develops subject to all the influences of socio-cultural context (Vygotsky, 1962). This understanding of the relationship between the development of thinking and speaking is quite different from either Behaviourist imitation or Innatist Universal Grammar. Language develops from internal and social processes in constant dialogue.

Vygotsky looks at the development of thought through complexes to concepts and then looks at the development of speech through increased linguistic proficiency.

Contrary to the notion that conceptual formation is through the interplay of associations, Vygotsky regards conceptual formation to be an intellectual process achieved through stages of complex formation and abstraction (Vygotsky, 1962). That is to say, intellectual development is divided into three stages, each with sub stages.

At the beginning, a child forms syncretic heaps which are based upon trial and error, Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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based upon need and what is successful. If a part proves wrong then it is replaced by another. At the next stage the heap is ordered according to relevance in the experience of the child; this is heavily influenced by visual experience. At third early stage elements are taken from previously formed heaps from past experience. The resulting heap is syncretic and no more ordered than the original heaps from which the parts came. A child moving out from the vocalisation of the egocentric language will move into a second major stage. This second stage involves the use of complexes or family groupings of thoughts rather than heaps; these groupings are based upon concrete experience. At first factual bonds in the complex are established by the concrete experience including mere association.

Next objects or concrete impressions are

combined together on the basis of there being similarities and differences between each. Experience teaches functional groupings such as cutlery or clothes. Moving on, chain complexes are formed on the basis of association, along the chain the association may vary from colour, to size, to shape, yet the complex does not transcend the concrete objects of the child’s lived experience. Next diffuse complexes are formed and marked by fluidity in the very attribute that unites the single elements. The child stays with concrete objects and impressions but the bonds become increasingly less related to direct experience. As a child nears school, the pseudo-concepts develop from using adult language. An adult will use a word base upon a concept, so for an adult a word meaning is conceptual. For a child borrowing and using the same word, the word meaning is complex; it is grounded in concrete experience rather than abstract ideas. The pseudo-concept forms the link for a child between thinking in complexes and thinking in concepts; this enables more developed communication with adults. Mutual understanding is provided through two quite different paths; and hence the understanding on either side is not identical, just compatible. During adolescence, children begin to form concepts, without abandoning pseudo-concepts. Yet, at these early stages, the ability to define concepts does not keep pace with ability to form them; definition is a far more developed process. Hence, the analysis of reality or experience through concepts proceeds beyond the analysis of these concepts themselves. It is more difficult to apply a concept from one context to another, and even more difficult to define a concept without resort to a concrete example at all.

Adolescents will often use a concrete example or experience to define an abstract concept. Recalling a little Platonic language, concept formation is not logical or linear but result from a constant oscillation from the general to the particular, from the Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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abstract to the concrete. The word, or linguistic expression, both inner and social, has a guiding function in complex formation, potential concept or pseudo-conceptual formation and conceptual formation itself, as the thought processes mature. Hence, language development and intellectual development are different but not independent; they are closely interrelated (Vygotsky, 1962).

When it comes to school based learning, Vygotsky makes a distinction between two types of concept formation. One is immediate, experiential and spontaneous; the other is transcendent, abstract and not spontaneous. School based instruction is the second.

These two types of concept formation are related but different. For Piaget, the spontaneous egocentric thoughts of the child, grounded in play, give way to the socialised non-spontaneous thoughts of the adult.

Vygotsky posits that the two

develop along different evolutionary paths and are interrelated (Vygotsky, 1962). A clear example of these two related paths is the relationship of speech and writing.

Speech is the result of direct experience and has developed in the child from its earliest days. Writing is quite different from speech, it requires abstraction from speech with regard to sound and sensory experience; it is also without direct interlocutor or direct social aspect. A contemporary chat room, messaging or texting may provide a challenge here, but the distinction still holds. To write, a child must abstract from the sound of each word and reproduce this in symbols. Speech, on the other hand, may not be conscious of the mental process involved.

Hence, the

relationship between inner speech, or thought patterns, and oral speech, differs from that between inner speech and written language.

The syntax of inner speech is

opposite from that of written speech with oral speech standing in the middle. Taking this view, modern texting language is strange to read because it stands between the mind and the page. As such, texting speech leaves out many of the conventions of writing, yet it appears in written form. It is more reliant on mutual understanding than written speech and much more likely to cause offence or misunderstanding when this mutual understanding is absent. My current students regard email as an extension of texting rather than letter writing and so manage to cause a great deal of offence around the teaching faculty without realising it. What is more interesting from this example, with regard to language acquisition, is that it shows that adolescents area able to understand and utilise the quite complex and dynamic rules of texting. This can be explained in terms of the maximisation of usable input (1988); this term will be Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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explained in greater detail when the Monolith of Krashen is viewed next.

Grammatical instruction is a curious case, because it does not appear to add anything to the skills of the learner. When speaking of one’s own language, children are already utilising a great part of the grammatical complexity of a language prior to school-based instruction. From his context of Russian, Vygotsky refers to children using the correct conjugation and case (Vygotsky, 1962). Grammatical instruction makes children aware of what they are doing, so that skills can be used consciously.

Grammar and writing help a child to rise to a higher level of linguistic competence and speech development.

Learning a foreign or second language is a deliberate or

conscious act from the start. This is doubly the case for Classical Language students, because language work remains in the realm of reading and writing; this is, as explained above, less spontaneous than speech and a conscious abstraction from it (Vygotsky, 1962). According to Vygotsky much of First Language Acquisition takes place at a spontaneous experiential level. Given the methods used at his time, foreign language instruction was precisely that, non-spontaneous, transcendent and abstract.

Conscious understanding precedes utilisation; this is the opposite from First Language Acquisition. For Vygotsky, success in Second Language Acquisition is contingent upon a certain degree of awareness and development in one’s own language. This does not contradict the findings of Brown and others against the notion of first language interference, because here the particular languages that are first and second are not the point (Brown, 1973)(1974b)(1974a)(1973)(Bailey, Madden, & Krahen, 1974). Proficiency in a second language and understanding of it feeds back into the first language and facilitates a higher degree of awareness of it.

The preceding

discussion of development and instruction highlights that which Vygotsky considered to be a crucial distinction between himself and Piaget. Piaget considered development and instruction to be independent of each other. For Vygotsky, these two processes are interwoven, interrelated and to a high degree interdependent for higher levels of development (Vygotsky, 1962).

With regard to language learning two further

concepts from Vygotsky are of note; his discussion of memory and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978).

Memory in young children is

different from that in adults. For young children, to think is to remember; this is largely a case of recalling concrete experience. Words are understood in terms of a child’s concrete experience of them.

Remembering is with respect to isolated

incidents. There is not the ability to abstract from these experiences to form a concept.

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Hence, word meaning, for a child is a heap or a complex, for an adult is a concept. At adolescence all mental structures move away from organisation according to family or type become organised according to abstractions; complexes give way to concepts.

Tying a knot in a handkerchief is indicative of these logical processes of abstraction so that an external stimulus provides the logical links in the memory. The same process takes place with memorials, so that we don’t forget (Vygotsky, 1978). With regard to the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), Vygotsky acknowledges that there are stages of development appropriate for different levels of instruction and that the two should be matched in some way(Vygotsky, 1978). He suggests that there is a need to assess two levels of intellectual competence.

One is their level of intellectual

competence as evident by their ability to perform tasks without collaboration or mentoring. This is their level of intellectual development and it will be related to their age. The second is their intellectual competence as evident by their ability to perform task with collaboration or mentoring.

This collaboration or mentoring is called

scaffolding because it allows the learner to build upon the assistance of others to aid their own progress. The second competency is higher than the first, but will differ between children who share the same first level of competency. The zone created between these two measured levels of competency Vygotsky calls the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978). The larger this zone, the more successful a learner is likely to be with instructional learning. In school, learning activities should be directed at this proximal zone of development in order to facilitate more rapid intellectual development; this is dependent upon appropriate scaffolding and the ability of the teacher to assess the level correctly. In the proposal for classroom practice that is coming ahead, scaffolding is present in marking up, syntax charts and grammatical analysis. The metaphorical knot in the handkerchief can be found in the use of familiar narrative to assist with memorisation tasks.

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The Monolith of Krashen: Second Language Acquisition According to Krashen After stopping for refreshment, the journey goes on from the Maze of Vygotsky to the Monolith of Krashen. The Monolith of Krashen sits in the middle of the landscape of Second Language Acquisition; it must be climbed or gone around, but it cannot be ignored. Krashen looks at language from above, top down, as he talks of language being acquired through the maximisation of understandable input within a meaningful context(Krashen S. , 1988). This is, for the most part, consistent with the view of Wittgenstein in his Investigations (1968 (1990)). At the core of Krashen's understanding of language acquisition is his Monitor Theory (Krashen S. , 1988).

According to Krashen, adults have two systems for developing linguistic proficiency; subconscious language acquisition and conscious language learning. This creates a dichotomy between acquisition and learning. The Monitor is the mind’s conscious activity to correct language performance, be it speaking or writing, in accordance with learnt grammatical rules.

The problem with using the conscious formation of

grammatical structures for oral communication is that rules must be thought about and employed constantly; this is only achievable by the most able learners and even then communication is stilted by the need for thinking time. When used correctly this enhances communication. When over used particularly speech is slowed down and communication is impaired; the learner may even refrain from speaking at all for fear of making a mistake. Under use of the Monitor leads to language that is inaccurate but none the less fluent. Central to this plausibility of the Monitor Theory is the notion that language is best acquired through meaningful and comprehensible input, the more the better. At higher levels of linguistic proficiency this input should also include reading (Krashen S. D., 1993)(Krashen S. D., 1992).

Acquired language is

subconsciously taken in using the same process through which the learner gained their first language. The Monitor, or conscious mental process, is then left to edit rather than create language. Consequently, Krashen is quite dogmatic in his view that formal grammar or a focus upon grammatical structures is of little or no use when teaching communicative language, it is at best peripheral and at worst a hindrance to the flow of communication. Celce-Murcia (1992)(1991), Lightbown and Peinemann (1993) have challenged Krashen on the meaningful input hypothesis with regard to the teaching of grammar. Celce-Murcia regards the teaching of grammar to be important alongside

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meaningful input to allow for the more accurate use of language. Lightbown gives Krashen the credit for bringing the value of meaningful input to everyone’s attention, but also points out that this is not the whole story(Lightbown & Spada, 2006)(Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993). To put this in terms of Wittgenstein (1968 (1990)), it is important to know the rules of language in order to play the game of language. The question is whether one needs to be consciously aware of the rules to be at one’s best in the game; Vygotsky (1962) would argue yes, as discussed above, and Krashen would argue no (Krashen S. D., 1992). Using his processability model, Pienemann refers to successful and sustained results in proficiency through a focus upon grammatical structures at the appropriate level of difficulty. For Pienemann the appropriate level is just above the current level of proficiency (Pienemann, 2002)(Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993); this recalls Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development(1978).

Borg and Burns conducted a study of language teachers in

Australia and the Asia pacific quite recently and the majority were in favour of some form of direct grammatical instruction because it enhances linguistic proficiency (Borg & Burns, 2008).

Krashen also discusses attitude and aptitude as they affect Second Language Acquisition; this is quite a useful section of his book. Working with the idea from Dulay and Burt (1977) of a Socio-Affective Filter, Krashen points out that learners will acquire less language as less is allowed in; adolescents will acquire more language from their peers than from their elders. In the classroom it is important to minimise the negative impact of the socio-affective filter. Integrative Motivation can be useful in the language classroom, the desire to be valued as an effective linguistic performer within the context of the class. Instrumental Motivation is the desire to be an effective performer of the language for utilitarian or pragmatic ends.

With instrumental

motivation acquisition may end as soon as the perceived need has been satisfied.

Personality type has an effect upon motivation, which in turn has an effect upon confidence. Those with confidence have lower socio-affective filter. Empathy is significant for language acquisition; the more someone is able to put themselves in the shoes of another the more language they are able to acquire and the lower the socioaffective filter. Attitude towards the classroom teacher affects both learning and acquisition.

A more open and positive attitude towards the classroom teacher will

lead to a lowering of the socio-affective filter.

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classroom teacher will impact positively upon self-confidence and the integrative motivation, further lowering the socio-affective filter.

The Halls of Halliday on Systematic Functional Grammar Moving around the Monolith of Krashen, with the help of Nunan, we arrive for a brief look at the vast Halls of Halliday. Halliday locates himself within the European functional school with regard to linguistic theory (Halliday, 1985). Halliday’s work points to a means of describing grammar in use or in context rather than by the traditional categories or parts of speech(Halliday, 1985).

He regards grammar as an

attempt to crack the semantic code of a language; each language has its own code.

This places the phenomenon of language before the construct of grammar. From this a given text is an instance of language use within a given context. Any language has the context of its culture. The process of working down to the meaning of a text from culture, language, grammar and situation is one of discovering what goes together.

Paradigms, tables of nouns and verbs, are tables of things that do not go together. For this reason the value of learning paradigms is questionable.

Halliday advocates

functional labelling of sentences so that the interpretation of the grammatical structure of the particular sentence under study can be related to the context of the language as a whole. From Halliday it is possible to develop upon old fashioned sentence parsing and give it a more systematic and functional base.

The nominal and functional

analyses of the proposal to come are in fact developments of Halliday’s notion of describing language in context(Halliday, 1985). Such an approach to the teaching of grammar is described and developed upon by Nunan (1991).

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Reflection upon the Journey: Implications for the Teaching of Latin Having completed the journey through the monuments, it is time to take stock of where we have been and the relevance for the teaching of Latin in the secondary school classroom. To start with is a cautionary point from Lantolf (1996). In Second Language Acquisition, and other areas no doubt, theorists are inclined to put forward metaphors to describe observations or to encapsulate concepts. Unfortunately as these metaphors achieve the status of a theory, by virtue of the acceptance of a number of those in the field, the metaphor it taken literally and loses its dynamism. This is certainly the case with the acquisition and learning dichotomy put forward by Krashen (1982) (1988). The distinction is useful to a degree and the notion of meaningful and comprehensible input has gained significant support as a part of a language learning program, but not the whole.

Chomsky and his followers suggest that the mind

imposes structure onto thought and hence onto language (1965) (2006). This gives rise to a conduit metaphor of placing thoughts into words. Vygotsky and his followers suggest that the relationship between mind and language is reversed (1962). Language and linguistically constructed concepts and discourse impose structure onto the mind.

The metaphor is reversed so words are placed into thoughts. These metaphors are useful as metaphors, but they are always just that, an attempt to drag language from other places in order to describe that for which we, as yet, have no language. Hence, there is no need to be so dogmatic. The same tasks, such as conversation classes, take place from a variety of theoretical standpoints. The need to understand the underlying theories comes when one wants to apply them into a different or more specialised context such as the teaching of Latin.

Notions such as the Zone of Proximal

Development and scaffolding have direct application upon classroom practice. The key is to pick the level of student proficiency; from my experience this varies across the class.

The Critical Period Hypothesis is an important consideration when considering the age at which one might commence language learning. Taking a lead from Vygotsky, one would see Latin as an activity for instruction that will bring benefits into other areas.

Krashen seems quite sceptical about the value of learning Latin at all. He cites a study from the 1920’s to the effect that Latin has some temporary benefit on English scores,

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but that is all (Krashen S. D., 2008). Krashen’s discussion of socio-affective filter and affective considerations in language acquisition are useful as long as the metaphor of the filter is regarded as such.

Likewise comprehensible input needs some

consideration with regard to a program designed for reading proficiency without any speaking component.

To look at some available course material the theoretical

background becomes apparent. The Approach to Latin (Paterson & MacNaughton, 1968 (1983)) is a good example of Behaviourist thinking. There is reference to a sound grammatical foundation in the introduction with very little regard for vocabulary formation or reading beyond sentences. Via Vertendi (Young, 1962), as a course in unseen translation based upon sequential grammatical acquisition, has its roots in the same type of thinking. Having said this, elements of both courses have value so long as there is some meaningful input. The writers of the Reading Latin Course took these ideas on board. The course comprises an immersion reader (Jones & Sidwell, Reading Latin:Text, 1986) that is used alongside a grammar (Jones & Sidwell, Reading Latin: Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises, 1986), vocabulary and exercises book; this was my university Latin textbook. It is a fine adult education resource, but too complicated for secondary students as a textbook; I do use parts of it with my students as the reference grammar is quite good. A key feature of the Reading Latin approach is the modification of Latin so that beginners are able to understand the texts virtually from the start. Classical authors are simplified, in this case Plautus, so that the beginner is able to begin the process of socio-cultural familiarisation along with the text. As the proficiency of the learner increases so does the grammatical complexity of the text until the student is reading passages or summaries of authentic Latin text.

Both the Oxford Latin Course (Balme &

Moorwood, 1996) and the Cambridge Latin Course (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1998 (2000)) follow the general approach of Reading Latin, but at a more simplified level for secondary students. The Cambridge course has been quicker to embrace the possibilities for game playing and on-line learning through the Cambridge site (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009).

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A shield for the Latin Teacher A: The Metaphor of the Shield Just as in Book VIII of the Aeneid (Virgil, 1969), Aeneas is given a shield by his mother Venus in order to fulfil his Fate, so too the Latin Teacher needs a shield in order to take up the challenge of guiding students through the perilous journey that is learning Latin. Below is a suggested shield for the uptake of a secondary school Latin teacher based upon the foregoing literary review and the classroom practice of this Latin teacher.

B: Maximising understandable input From the discussion of Krashen (1988) above, a student wishing to acquire a Classical Language for the purpose of reading proficiency needs to maximise that which is read.

This may be reading for understanding or reading for translation or both. The process of translation requires an active manipulation of the text from one language to another.

Both the Cambridge (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1998 (2000); University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2003 (2004)) and Oxford (Balme & Moorwood, 1996) courses use narrative as a means of holding the interest of the student so that in order to follow the story the translations need to be completed.

In addition to this the Cambridge course provides internet resources so that the student is able to translate the material more efficiently (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009).

Figure 1:

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As can be seen in Figure 1 above, The Latin Companion, or the “gizmo� as my students and I call it, is a very useful aid to translation. The student is able to click upon any word to find the dictionary entry. From Book V of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2003 (2004)) and into the Cambridge Latin Anthology (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1996 (2003)), The Latin Companion provides the parsing for each word along with the dictionary entry. This is a useful way to speed up the translation process so that meaningful input is maximised. Students are able to translate significant quantities of text between lessons so that interest is maintained in a flowing narrative. Onto this flowing narrative grammatical understanding and the development of a lexicon can be attached as part of the process. The priority of narrative over lexicon and grammatical understanding is the priority of top down over bottom up. Students work from the meaningful input of a whole text to understand the parts rather than from parts to build a whole.

C: Use of memorisation of lexicon and paradigms.

The lexicon can be reinforced with weekly vocabulary test from both Latin to English and English to Latin.

Likewise there is no substitute for regular drilling with

declensions and conjugations, so that the students memorise noun, adjective and verb endings.

Figure 2:

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Figures 2 and 3 show a weekly vocabulary quiz or text and the solutions, based upon the vocabulary list for Stage 27, Book III of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

Figures 4 and 5 above show a paradigm quiz and its solution based upon the conjugation of the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive in pattern of the third and fourth conjugations of more regular verbs. Such drilling has long been part of the teaching of Classical Languages and Latin in particular. The question is not one of relevance, but rather one of balance and proportion. There is also the question of how to memorise vocabulary and paradigms. Below in Figure 6 is a mind map prepared as part of a brainstorm with a group of Year 10 students at the beginning this year. On this mind map a range of strategies are suggested to cater for different learning styles.

Placing charts up on a wall or a door may suit more visual learners. Recording the words onto an audio file may suit those who take more in aurally. Involving others with flashcards may help those who learn more through interaction. This may be done face to face or via the web through messaging or video-conferencing. The Cambridge online site provides a vocabulary drill which functions along similar lines to flash cards but this can be adjusted to limit the time allowed to pause for each word and the number of words to be tested(Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009). The words are organised according to the chapter lists in the textbooks. As indicated on the map Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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in Figure 6, I encourage the students to work with memorisation tasks more frequently in short sessions rather than less frequently in long cramming sessions.

Figure 6:

The memorisation of vocabulary and inflections is an attempt to replace the rapid language acquisition of a small child. As noted from Vygotsky (1962), a second language is acquired more through instruction than experience, more through abstraction and the concrete. At year nine, the secondary students that I teach are experiencing this change from complex structures to abstract concepts, each in their own way and time as Vygotsky would have it. Memorisation techniques are just like the Vygotsky’s knot in the handkerchief; they are a useful part, but not the whole of language acquisition.

These long time friends of the Latin teacher need to be

augmented with some new top down tools with which to bring further understanding of the structures of the Latin language.

D: Functional Grammatical Analysis Taking the lead from Halliday (1985), it is important to look at language as it occurs, so that word forms, morphemes, are understood in the contexts in which they are found. The student needs to be able to spot the imperfect or pluperfect in the wild and see an ablative of place in situ.

Functional Grammatical Analysis is a way of

identifying the function of a word in a given sentence or clause. The student looks for the job that a given word undertakes in each context. In Latin, nouns have a range of roles and so need to be identified in a range of ways. The student is then able to see Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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the same word performing a range of functions across a range of contexts and as such the inflection or endings will change accordingly. Students are furnished with the Sentence Attack Skills Sheet and build up proficiency in indentifying function. Much of this corresponds to good old fashion parsing. Figure 7 shows the instructions given to the students for Functional Analysis.

Figure 7:

By asking this series of questions students are able to identify the function of each word in the sentence or clause. Students are introduced to such tasks through weekly quizzes along with their vocabulary. Figures 8 and 9 show a weekly analysis and solution taken from the text of Stage 27 of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

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Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10 shows a solution for a more extended exercise in preparation for the Year 10 first semester exam, again based upon a text from the Cambridge Latin Course(University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

Figure 10:

In the early stages of learning the value of Functional Analysis is that it enables students to see the function of words in context rather than as isolated items on a chart.

In conjunction with more traditional memorisation techniques, Functional Analysis

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provides more top down way for students to become familiar with inflections or morphemes as they apply to real grammatical contexts.

E: Nominal Grammatical Analysis and Syntax Charts A number of years ago, when working at Penleigh and Essendon Grammar, I was introduced to Syntax Charts by my colleagues there. Syntax Charts help students to reinforce an understanding of parts of speech and adopt a more nominal approach to sentence analysis. Again looking at a word in the context of a given passage of text, the student is asked to parse the word according to what the word is rather than what it is doing. The reason box at the end is an explanation of the word’s function. As such, the completion of a syntax chart dovetails with paradigm learning and Functional Analysis.

Figure 11 shows a text from Stage 27 of the Cambridge Latin

Course(University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)) in which ten words have been marked.

Figure 11:

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The words marked on Figure 11 are then placed into the chart as seen in Figure 12.

Figure 13 indicates some hints or pointers provided for the task.

Figure 12:

Figure 13:

Figure 12 shows the solution for the task, the student is given the chart with the Word column filled in and the rest is left blank. Some columns do not require any input. On examinations, especially with the less experienced students, it is best to black out these

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boxes to save confusion. I find that this is not necessary with Year 11 and 12 students.

Syntax Charts provide another more top down approach that encourages students to learn word forms, morphemes, in context. When completing a Syntax Chart the student is reading and translating so that the correct understanding of the word can be gained.

F: Marking Up texts.

As the texts become more complex, and sentences become longer with subordinate clauses and other complex structures, it becomes more important for students to be able to decode the structures in the language along with specific word forms. Either with seen text from the textbook or with an unseen translation task, it is vital that students identify linguistic structures. Many key structures have signals or warning signs. One example is that the Latin conjunctions ut, ne and cum frequently introduce a subordinate clause in the subjunctive mood. If students are taught to mark these words as key joining words, then they can be looking for the appropriate structure to match. Figure 14 shows the instructions students are given for marking up a text.

Figure 14:

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Students are able to complete this task using a pencil or using the Mark Up tools in Adobe Acrobat. The advantage of using Adobe Acrobat is that the Marked Up files can be combined to form a class set. Students are then able to see that other students have come up with similar responses. Areas of difficulty for the entire class or significant portions of it are able to be identified and discussed. In Figure 15, four Year 10 students working in pairs have collaborated to Mark Up a text from Stage 27 of the Cambridge Latin Course(University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

Figure 15:

The speech bubbles in Figure 15 indicate the allocation of lines to students, when in Acrobat the students pass the curser over the bubble to see who is to Mark Up which lines. The students have marked sentences with vertical lines, clauses with brackets, verbs with underlining and key joining words with boxes, as indicated in the

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instructions in Figure 14. Students complete these tasks with Adobe Acrobat as part of their classwork or homework and then use a pencil during unseen translations and exams. In conjunction with Functional Analysis and Syntax Charts, Marking Up text provides a third top down teaching and learning strategy to be used along with the more traditional bottom up approaches.

G: Fluffy - The use of familiar narrative When preparing for the first semester exams this year, my Year 10 students were looking for a way to combine all the aspects of inflection that they needed to deal with onto one concept map. After a little thought a three-headed monster appeared on the board during our brainstorm; nouns, adjectives and verbs. Fluffy, the Cerberus like pet of Rubeus Hagrid, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling, 1997), came to mind and before long a three-headed monster appeared on the board with an appropriate lyre with which to put it to sleep, namely the set dictionary with a grammar in the back (Collins Latin Dictionary and Grammar, 1997). Two students decided to complete their own version of this mind map as part of their preparation for the examination; these were submitted to me to make available to other Latin students.

Figures 16 and 17 show these two concept maps.

Figure 16:

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Figure 17:

Students from Years 9-11 found Fluffy a useful way to group together a number of ideas that do not hold together naturally. Fluffy provided the context of a familiar narrative onto which unfamiliar and otherwise disjointed concepts could be grouped and kept together in the memory; another use of Vygotsky’s knot in the handkerchief concept(1962).

Shouldering the Shield When taking up this shield, as mentioned above, the crucial factor is the mix of the teaching and learning strategies. With too little emphasis upon the memorisation of lexicon and morphology the students become overly dependent upon the dictionary and are not able to perform under timed conditions. Yet if this bottom up work is the focus of attention then the students have difficulties decoding words and structures in context. I find that weekly vocabulary quizzes, such as that in Figures 2 and 3 work quite well up to about two weeks prior to the semester examination. Functional Analysis (Figures 8 and 9) and Paradigm (Figures 4 and 5) quizzes alternate. At this Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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stage I set one Paradigm quiz for every four to five Functional Analysis quizzes; this ratio may need to be reassessed to give a little more emphasis to Paradigms. I have used Marking Up as preparation for classwork or homework during the term and as revision for examinations. In the first instance students are asked to mark up the texts for a chapter or a stage of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)) prior to working through the text for their own translations. In the second case, after having worked through a number of Stages or Chapters during the school term students focus upon about three to prepare for the examination. These will be marked up in collaboration, with each student or pair of students taking a section of a text as shown in Figure 15. This use of Marking Up does impact favourably upon results with both prepared and unseen translations under timed conditions.

In the two to three weeks prior to the semester examination,

students complete four to six Syntax Charts based upon the set texts for the examination. These are completed during class or as homework to be corrected in class. The success of Fluffy with the students has encouraged me to search with students for other literary allusions from which similar scaffolding might flow, either from the Classical tradition or in other narratives familiar to the students.

The seven aspects of classroom practice in the Shield provide a mix of top down and bottom up teaching and learning strategies. Remembering from Wittgenstein (1968 (1990)) that the parts of language always occur in a context, the emphasis of these teaching and learning strategies is top down.

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Taking Stock A reprisal. Why leave Troy anyway?

This project has essentially been about a journey from my current classroom practice; take this to be Pergamum, the citadel of Troy. From this starting point, like Aeneas, I have taken remnants and assumptions of what will be to the great seas of literature on language acquisition. Being tossed to and fro, meeting with the odd Cyclops, or oneeyed monster, I have sought a new home for the teaching of Latin; take this new home ultimately to be Pallanteum, the city of Evander that would one day be Rome. Rome is the goal, the manifestation of lively and vigorous study of Latin texts with understanding and enjoyment.

Between Pergamum and Pallanteum lie many

obstacles; there are those like Juno who affronted for one reason or another take issue and frustrate the foundation of such learning.

I have been a student of Languages Other Than English (LOTE) since I was in year seven, and a teacher of Classical Languages (Latin, Koine Greek and Ancient Greek) for the last thirteen years. I bring to this research a desire to reflect upon my practice in the light of emerging understandings of how learning takes place. The area of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is of particular interest given that there are no native speakers of Latin, Koine Greek or Ancient Greek left in the world. As there are no surviving communities using these languages in the same way as a modern communicative language, Second Language Acquisition of a Classical Language concentrates almost entirely upon understanding the written text rather than verbal communication or even the generation of novel written text.

The context of my current practice is the teaching of Classical Latin to students from Year Nine to Year Twelve. This four-year course is both intense and demanding; less than half of the students starting in Year Nine sit the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) exam at the end of Year Twelve. A number of the schools teaching Latin in Victoria allow five and six years for the same programme.

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When training to be a teacher, some years ago, I was struck by the difference between a traditional approach to the teaching of Classical Language and that of the communicative method of teaching language to be found in the average modern language classroom. For the last thirty years the teaching of both first and second languages has been heavily influenced by the work of Stephen Krashen (Krashen S. , 1982) (Lightbown & Spada, 2006). This has moved the emphasis from learning vocabulary and grammar rules to the learning of language in authentic contexts. The ideal context for the communicative method of language acquisition is full immersion in the target language. With the exception of a bilingual campus, this is not possible in the average Australian secondary school. For a Latin teacher, the full immersion of students in a fluent Latin speaking community remains beyond the realms of possibility. As mentioned above, modern students of Latin are seeking to understand written text via the medium of reading and sometimes listening.

By reading the work of David Nunan (1991), I began to realise that there was a middle ground to be found. The crucial question was the one of purpose. If the purpose of learning a classical language could be identified and agreed upon with students then the chances of engagement would be higher; in Krashen’s terms, language acquisition might take place alongside learning (1982)(1988). Isn’t part of the issue how we understand acquisition in such a context? Alongside this was the need to bring a more top down approach to the learning of language.

Following the lead of Ludwig

Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations (1968 (1990)), I do not regard language learning as merely combining linguistic units to form a whole. Such a view belongs to the atomism of John Locke (1975 (1984)) and David Hume (1975 (1985)) and finds its full expression in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Wittgenstein, 1922 (1990)).

Having struggled with the limitations of such a positivist view, Wittgenstein demonstrated in his Philosophical Investigations (1968 (1990)) the shortcomings of this atomistic approach to language. Language is better understood as a game with rules. As such every word is never without a context of meaning and purpose within a game of communication. Within the area of language teaching, the views of Locke and Hume that informed the traditional approach to teaching classical and modern languages are referred to as bottom up and those emanating from Wittgenstein to find expression in the work of Krashen are referred to as top down. Simply put, in a

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traditional classical language classroom vocabulary lists are memorised along with tables of verb, noun and adjective forms and a number of grammatical rules are memorised with reference to sentences grabbed, often, from unrelated contexts. This approach can be called bottom up because language is regarded as a series of units that one must place together rather like lego. A top down approach uses texts, often with narrative, as a base from which to discuss examples of grammatical structure and word forms within the context of the processes of reading. For a language learner with a focus upon reading for understanding, this is the corollary of a conversation in a modern communicative language. Language is regarded as organic, wedded to the communication of meaningful information and to be understood by looking at the whole for understanding the various parts rather than the reverse. Hence one is looking from above at real examples of written language to understanding from the top down.

The question of my research is to look at how a more top down approach can be underpinned by more recent academic discussions about First and Second Language Acquisition. A starting point for this investigation has been the work of Krashen, who as has been seen, can be viewed as a key figure in discussion of a language learning using a top down approach (Krashen S. , 1982) (Krashen S. , 1988). One of the key strategies that I have been developing over the last ten years in line with this approach stems from systematic functional linguistics as expressed in the work of Nunan (1991) and behind him Halliday (1985). In particular, I have been working with techniques for helping the students acquire an understanding of nominal and functional grammar.

Nominal grammar can be regarded as looking at words with a view to describing what they are; this is in fact old-fashioned parsing. Functional grammar is looking at words within the context of linguistic structures with a view to identifying their function within that context. Nominally a noun will always be a noun, but functionally it can be a subject, object, indirect object or preposition object depending upon its deployment within the context of a grammatical structure. More recently and as a result of this research, I have begun to experiment with new strategies in the classroom such as the use of familiar narrative for the memorisation of abstract concepts. When I sat down to describe the teaching and learning process in my classroom from this understanding of language, A Shield for the Latin Teacher developed in the light of A

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Journey through the Literature, and then from there the The Proposal (Appendix A) came into being.

Fellow Travellers After making A Journey through the Literature, looking at A Shield for the Latin Teacher, and reflecting upon the developing understanding of language that underpins my practice, it is time to look at the research process. This paper is in some sense a testimonio as described by Beverley (2000); it describes my journey in the research process, it preserves the experience of a journey taken and then shared with others. In this the journey is inclusive and I am the main, but not the only, protagonist. As such it does not fall neatly, but rather one step after another. To take the journey alone would have been academic solipsism. Teaching and learning are shared experiences; they are a language and as such are not private; they require a group or a context for shared meaning (Wittgenstein, 1968 (1990)).

Those who would share this

conversation, this journey, would need to be colleagues, fellow Latin teachers, with an experience of the same system, namely preparation for the Victorian Certificate of Education. These folk would understand the journey and be able to make critical comment upon it and upon the Shield, from the inside. This is a case for purposive sampling (Babbie, 2007)(Mason, 2002). That is to say, there is a need for this kind of group in this research context to get the desired relevant feedback upon my classroom practice and my reasons for having designed it in the ways that it has been designed.

Having established a need for fellow travellers, it remained to select this group of hardy colleagues. There was no question of a random sample of Latin teachers; there are not that many of us. As can be seen from The Plain Language Information Statement (Appendix B), my colleagues were contacted through the Classical Association of Victoria and invited to participate in the research project. In order to have persons with like experience, it was asked that they be current teachers of Year 12 or be those with recent experience of the same.

Given that, as a group, we Latin teachers are all quite busy, I thought that the most efficient way to gain the feedback from the group was via an online forum. This approach brought with it a number of issues relating to focus groups, researching with one’s peers as the subjects, confidentiality, security and the life cycle of material obtained online. Then, finally, there were issues with the execution of this approach.

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A group of one’s peers is essentially a focus group when encountered together. As noted by Babbie and others, such groups have a number of advantages and disadvantages (Babbie, 2007)(Marshall & Rossman, 2006). They are flexible, speedy, low cost, socially oriented and the data has high validity. On the other hand there is less control over the data, groups can be difficult to assemble, there must be an environment conducive to discussion and focus groups require moderation; that is they require a moderator to guide the discussion. Looking at one’s peers has particular issues with regard to how one acts as both a member of a group and someone who is researching the same group; this very issue is addressed in some detail by Platt (1981).

Platt outlines that there are there are advantages and disadvantages of engaging one’s peers in such a process. They are known and there is an air of informality. There is a shared language, as mentioned above, but this can lead to abbreviated communication on the basis of this shared understanding. The best approach suggested is to treat the interview, or research process in my case, as an isolated incident within the overall collegial relationship with its own special rules. Taking this approach was assisted by the formality of the induction process into the research; the use of the Plain Language Information Statement (Appendix B) and the subsequent return of an informed consent form.

An online forum (Andrews, 2009) was set up for the purpose of providing a space for an online discussion A Journey through the Literature and A Shield for the Latin Teacher. Using the web as the context for discussion requires all the care that one would associate with a face-to-face meeting with regard to the validity of data and informed consent, but there are issues particular to the online context (Lee, Fielding, & Blank, 2008)(Charlesworth, 2008). Locating the discussion forum within a site with secure socket layer (SSL) protection gave a degree of security to the data and confidentiality for the forum; it was necessary to log into the site with a user created password and only those admitted to the site by the site administrator, in this case myself, were permitted to create such a login (Eynon, Fry, & Schroeder, 2008). It was important to establish and publish in The Plain Language Information Statement (Appendix B) the degree of anonymity that could be expected from such a group.

Each participant was allocated a letter from A through to F and was asked to refer to other participants by their letter even if the identity was known. Likewise it was Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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important to establish the lifecycle of the data and the likely publication of the paper around the Classical Association of Victoria. In these ways participants were made aware of the foreseeable consequences of their participation and the uses to which the data obtained by their participation would be put. As Gaiser (2008) mentions, an online focus group affords all the advantages of a conventional focus group without the need for each of the participants to be in the same place at the same time; this was a particularly attractive option for busy Latin teachers. The main distinction for online discussion groups is whether they are synchronous or asynchronous; whether they happen at the same time such as in a chat room or whether each participant contributes in their own time as with a bulletin board or discussion thread (Hewson, Yule, Laurent, & Vogel, 2003). The thought of arranging a time when all the participants might be able to enter a chat room together seemed a little daunting, so I opted to give the participants a large amount to read and then respond in their own time in an asynchronous manner (Gaiser, 2008). The forum itself contained an online version of The Proposal (Appendix A) and The Plain Language Information Statement (Appendix B) along with two discussion threads. One thread was for response to the Literature and the second thread was for response to the proposal for classroom practice (Andrews, 2009). It was anticipated that there would be a period of three weeks over which the participants would make their contributions to the discussion threads. These threads would then be copied from the web for analysis (Appendix C).

As indicated above, this approach to the online forum seemed sound in theory; in practice it was less effective than had been hoped. Five teachers offered to participate and then a sixth teacher was invited to join the group after seeking information about the project. I had anticipated a discussion involving all six members of the group (Teacher A through to F). What resulted were responses from three teachers (B, C and E). Rather than these being in an integrated dialogue, they were comments made to me, almost in isolation from the other comments made by other participants. The effect was three separate conversations in dialogue with me, as the moderator and with The Proposal (Appendix A) as the focus point of discussion.

There was some

reference to what other members of the group had said, but only in passing. In hindsight, this is entirely predictable given the way the forum was set up. We were all busy with our own students at this time. Each of us devoted time to the forum in between a range of other tasks. The timing of the online forum was delayed by three Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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weeks due to my own illness and other commitments. As a result those who originally may have been able to contribute to the forum may have found it difficult. I had to help a couple of the participants gain access to the forum. The login in procedures, whilst providing a necessary layer of security, for one participant in particular, also provided a technical barrier that was difficult for me to overcome from a remote location. Finally, and most importantly, I did not provide a sufficient degree of moderation for the group; Gaiser (2008) discusses the importance of finding the right degree of moderation for an online forum and how crucial this is. In hindsight, it would have been better to have provided a more structured set of questions, rather than let the participants reply in the their own way. Given the nature of the group and the number of other commitments each member of group had, I would still advocate an asynchronous model using a discussion thread rather than synchronous approach such as would be afforded by the use of a chat room. Having said this, one group meeting, via Skype or in person, to ensure that everyone had access to the forum and its materials would have been a good idea.

As suggested by Bouma and Ling (2004), I looked at the transcripts from the forum (Appendix C) to establish what I had. The transcripts contain a range of tangential comments that can be interpreted as a range voices echoing impressions of similar experience; Mason discusses the analysis of this kind of data (Mason, 2002). These are folk who have read The Proposal (Appendix A) and have their own journey as teachers. The comments are like those when one is sight-seeing. A group may observe a monument or a statue in silence then one or other will make a comment before the group moves on. It was in this way that the online focus group of my colleagues regarded A Journey through the Literature and A Shield for the Latin Teacher. With three comments addressed to the literature and eight to classroom practice, it seemed a bit arbitrary to classify these. It seemed better to take the data on its own terms as suggested by Marvasti (2004) , thus taking them as part of the story of the journey, as comments made to which one can respond later, from the perspective of having gone some way down the track . These are voices that demand a response before the journey can go on.

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Voices of Fellow Travellers Below are the transcripts of the discussion threads from the online forum. I have left them intact so as to give a greater sense of context and timing. It is easy to see from the times that the forum was being visited at the end of the day and mostly in the evening.

Further to the comments made earlier about busy schedules; these are

contributions made at the end of a busy teaching day. The responses are, for the most part singular, but there is some degree reference to each other. At a few points I have made directional comments in an attempt to bring focus to the discussion. The two threads were intended to provide opportunity to comment upon both the Literature and the Suggestions for Classroom Practice, the two parts of The Proposal (Appendix A).

The Literature Mark Andrews 8 Apr 2009, 22:14 +1000 Do you agree or disagree with the implications drawn by the student researcher from the literature as presented in the proposal?

Re: The Literature Teacher E 1 Aug 2009, 21:42 +1000 I entirely agree with the connections made.

I have little patience with psychological theory of any kind, but if some of these pseudointellectuals, whose devastating influence has been instrumental in reducing the capacity of a generation of learners to learn anything useful, have nevertheless created the stimulus for the work of the Nuffield Foundation in the 1960s to produce the Cambridge Latin Course, thus saving Latin and Classics from oblivion in the English speaking world, then I dare say that aspect of their influence has been good.

If, on the other hand, educational theory were to be grounded from a philosophical standpoint, then we would have an entirely different education system and an entirely different attitude to learning. This is very clear in the tortured language of these theorists which defies precise definition, but this is not the fault of the researcher, who has made a competent job of deriving meaning from the vocabulary of the pseudo-intellectuals.

That said, the implications drawn by the researcher seem to be the necessary ones, and the discussion of these is ellucidating and cogent.

Without taking up any polemic against educational theorists, the value of the Cambridge Latin Course is noted by Teacher E (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1996 (2003)). The philosophy of Wittgenstein, and in particular his Philosophical Investigations (1968 (1990)) can be employed as a window through which much of the “tortured language of the theorists� can be viewed. From this standpoint language itself is not viewed as atomistic or composed of units, but rather as a whole that requires the context of a community; there are no private or individual

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languages.

Such a standpoint leans towards a more top down understanding of

language and may lead to a more top down approach to teaching it.

Re: The Literature Mark Andrews 23 Aug 2009, 16:54 +1000 From Krashen comes the idea of maximising understandable input. That is to say that, in the case of Latin, with frequent translation students will build a facility with the language. Do you think it is valid to transfer across this understanding of language acquisition from the modern language classroom into the classical language classroom?

Re: The Literature Teacher C 24 Aug 2009, 09:06 +1000 I am sure that the more students read, the more command of the language they acquire. That is why I have taught the CLC for so long, because the passages suit the interests of students at a particular age group, and by the end of Unit IV students read with considerable sophistication. I am equally sure that there is a transfer of understanding between modern and classical languages. Latin assists greatly with modern Romance languages, and I believe also with Japanese. A major part of the value of learning Latin in current society is the knowledge of linguistics that it fosters. Students find this fascinating, as well as enlightening. Every vocabulary lesson we push this aspect of language cross-referencing.

Re: The Literature Teacher C 24 Aug 2009, 11:30 +1000 Further to my comments on constant reading and the importance of semantics, the CLC Worksheet Masters have many exercises to help do this. They are intelligent and lively, such as comparing the numbers 1-10 in 6 languages, 5 of them Romance. Students love working them out from Latin.

These two comments from Teacher C can be taken together, as the link is made by Teacher C, “Further to my comments.� The more students read the greater command they have of the language; in other words Krashen’s maximisation of understandable input has some currency for Teacher C (Krashen S. , 1988). Here also Teacher C draws attention to the transferable skills gained from a study of Latin. In studying Latin the student gains an understanding of the very structures of language. Because there is a need to be quite explicit about how the language is put together, students gain a generic understanding of the kinds of things a language needs to have and the kinds of jobs that need to be filled by the various parts of speech and syntax in a language. I have had similar experiences with my students applying their grammatical understanding into English, French and other languages. This transferability of skills goes a long way towards instrumental motivation for studying the language (Krashen S. , 1988). With my students, although they may have been told about the value of Latin language skills, I find this to be a realisation that comes to them after they have been working with the language for a year or so, rather than an immediate

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understanding. It is one thing for others to tell you that something will be useful, and quite another to actually find it so yourself.

The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Mark Andrews 8 Apr 2009, 22:16 +1000 From your own experience, what do you agree with and what would you disagree with in the Proposal concerning suggested classroom practice?

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher E 1 Aug 2009, 21:23 +1000 Mark's discussion on classroom practice is excellent.

All the necessary bases have been covered. The use of computer technology places the study of Latin within a context that the children find acceptable, given the current culture of the young, and this is the kind of thing we need for Latin to continue as a necessary part of the Western curriculum.

I highly commend Mark's efforts.

I take the statement that all the bases have been covered to refer to the range of approaches outlined in A Shield for the Latin Teacher. This is supported by Teacher E’s comments further down, where an eclectic mix of activities in the classroom is called for. Apart from anything else, the use of computers in the classroom does link into the expectations of students today, particularly with my Year 9 and Year 10 students. By Years 11 and 12 I find my students to be less accepting of new uses for the computer and a case needs to be made; they have grown weary of carrying around laptops and the use of a computer for its own sake. Thinking of Krahen’s socioaffective filter, it is important that computer based learning not become inefficient and tedious, as this will detract from language learning (Krashen S. , 1988).

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 5 Aug 2009, 19:12 +1000 I admire the intensely analytical approach to translating, but have found that some students never master the finer points of grammar analysis, but translate really well in an intuitive way. I would not wish to block their intuitive flow by insisting on parsing prior to translating.

I find that some students with excellent analysis skills translate in an over literal or stilted way, where other students find the exact modern equivalent for a Latin phrase. Often funny, or uncannily accurate.

The analytical approach to translating, I take to be the support for translation afforded

by Marking up. Teacher C raises an important point here with regard grammatical analysis and grammatical understanding overall. The goal is for student to be able to translate the Latin yet for transferable skills there is a need for grammatical understanding, for a transferable linguistic understanding. On the one hand there is a

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need to take Krashen’s monitor seriously; too much focus upon grammar will strangle the process of language acquisition (Krashen S. , 1988). There is also a risk of stifling the progress of those who are gaining a more intuitive understanding of the language.

On the other hand, mere translation without understanding will not afford the full benefits of the study and of this kind of study (Vygotsky, 1962). Somewhere in between lies the via media, a compromise or balance between these two.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 5 Aug 2009, 19:16 +1000 In regard to drilling verb and noun endings, some students find this boring, but never tire of me "testing" them orally on a one-to-one basis. It seems to motivate them that I go around the class listening to them individually, and it does wonders for the tardy ones.

The question with regard to drilling is whether it is the end result or the experience, or are both sought; I tend to want both. There is a need to memorise vocabulary and paradigms; tables of nouns, adjectives and verbs. There is also the experience of tying the knot in the handkerchief (Vygotsky, 1962), the experience of coming again and again to the same material until it becomes engrained. I encourage my students with my own lack of success with memorisation. Although I was by no means a gun when it came to vocabulary tests and paradigm tests, over time the patterns stuck. It is a matter of keeping the motivation while this takes place. In this the Latin teacher is more like a coach, seeking to keep the class team moving on to their best performances. Given the discussion above of the socio-affective filter (Krashen S. , 1988), coaching for higher degrees of motivation is entirely explicable.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher B 6 Aug 2009, 15:54 +1000 There is a tension in studying Latin between grammatical excellence and content appreciation and enjoyment. I know that some students may be able to do the both, but the reality I have found is that very few students find grammar intrinsically interesting and the extrinsic value is diminished for a no-longer spoken language. What students do find intrinsically interesting is the Romans - the ability to gain insight into an ancient culture that offers both a window on another world and insight into our own. to some students grammar is a means to this, but to many it is either a hindrance or a necessary evil. while teachers may get antsy because students can't recall the present subjunctive 3rd conjugation by heart it is a very rare student who finds this an issue. when teachers keep harping on grammatical excellence as a prerequisite for Latin all we do is turn otherwise keen students off. the grammar is a means to an end, not the end in itself. consequently tools which make grammar easier such as the cambridge gizmo are welcome and are not the end of the world as some would have us think!

Teacher B has hit upon a key aspect of Classical Language teaching that is part of my practice, but was not included A Shield for the Latin Teacher. The Romans, as the

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socio-historical context for the Latin language are intrinsically interesting. The study of the language has a meaning, there is an instrumental motivation (Krashen S. , 1988), if the desire is to understand the Romans more completely. With the language there needs to be a study of the Romans. My students have one cultural-historical assignment per semester for five semesters until half way through Year 11. These assignments give the students an overview of Roman history, religion and the overall culture. The context of the Cambridge Latin Course texts is the second half of the first century of the Common Era, so the assignments allow for a broader take on the history. This is a great opportunity for group work and such activities as movie making.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher E 7 Aug 2009, 00:21 +1000 Quite so! Some, however, find it thrilling to identify aspects of syntax independently. The early days of CLC, especially first edition, allowed students to ask the necessary questions about the accidence. This way, they "discovered" the various systems of verb aspects and tenses, persons etc and were well motivated to systematise their experiences of adjectives and nouns. (real Chomsky stuff!!)The interesting thing which has emerged over the years is that people still interested in Latin who were students in the eighties, declare that they remember very little about the grammar/accidence/syntax. One of these was a colleague at my school who taught French and German, recalled loving Latin in her UK school but could barely remember syntax. Anecdotally, the causes may have had nothing to do with CLC. Back to Mark's paper, the use of the marking up technique seems to me to turn the CLC online window into a source for more technical activity. Students are encouraged by this to do some "traditional" accidence and syntax identifiction. In a classroom, the game has largely been to keep the students in there and learning. The Latin teacher has the worst (andbest) job in the school just to keep the class at all. That is the priority requirement, such is the nature of "education". Therefore,whatever works, goes. My fellows receive"shock cakes" ( green cup cakes) when learning the third conjugation in year 8, because it is a "shocking" conjugation- a memnonic, not a method. (Skinner cannot be blamed!)

Marrying classroom practice to the theories of learning postulated by "the sophists" may have some point. If indeed the "behaviourists" informed Paterson and Mcnaughton which is still in use in some quarters, they were successful, because the material is excellent, so described because it has has had positive effects on learners. ( My younger son learnt with this as well as CLC in tandem. he declares it to have been a successful mix and suggests that modern languages could improve teaching techniques by emulating it. I think he means that modern language teaching is so intent upon avoiding adequate grammar explanations that it is seriously wanting in this respect.)

Obviously, my colleagues, we should conclude that successful practice is an eclectic mix of many styles and techniques. Bloom's taxonomy was "scripture" long ago, and using techniques based on Bloom is very successful, I have found over a long time. It appears to me, in a climate where the intrinsic disciplines of many studies are not understood or simply unknown, (geography, history being distinct disciplines)and knowledge has been redefined as a set of "skills" virtually devoid of specific subject matter, students like the security of tables and charts while they enjoy the motivating effect of narrative. In short, they like a definite body of recognisable items to support them through their reading. CLC is predominantly about reading. The Cambridge Latin Grammar is a nice reference. Explanations are adequate with

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examples. Lists of common verbs in neat categories, and no plural for "unus"! are well set out for the young. The year 12 class finds it frustrating, so now we have a set of Kennedy.

A nearby school was about to pitch out a whole library of old Latin books and offered them to us. What a collection of gems we were given. Among them we found the "direct method" books "Principia" and "Pseudolus Noster." My own at home are precious so I leave them there but we have had lots of fun with selected extracts from this source. Direct Method gave students very effective control over using the langauge as a language. One notable proponent of this technique was Helen Gordon, long retired, from University High School who was also a Method lecturer at MU. Perhaps the tension we have over grammar derives from the changed nature of our task. The ability to write Latin - English to Latin - at VCE examination level was last tested as an option in the pre 1990 HSc examinations in Victoria. One needed a good grip on accidence and syntax to write four short sentences. Now that this requirement has disappeared, the accidence and syntax has become a more residual aspect of total time spent learning Latin. In the 1960s, there were two three hour Latin papers at matriculation level. It would be nice to believe that we are doing things more creatively now.

At the core of Teacher E’s comments here is a desire for an “eclectic mix of many styles and techniques” in the language classroom coming out of a pragmatic outlook; “ Therefore, whatever works, goes.” Students find Latin difficult and it is a real issue that some students drop the language before completing Year 12; for a range of reasons the socio-affective filter can block learning and the motivation for learning (Krashen S. , 1988). A crowded curriculum and competing priorities for student time are also significant factors. It takes a pragmatic approach and an eye for discontent.

Then one may vary the content and approach so that the students remain focussed and motivated. It is helpful for students to “discover” the grammar or rules before being told them. As mentioned, the Cambridge course places the grammatical structures in the text for students to find prior to being given a systematic explanation (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1996 (2003)).

The point is

well made about Latin composition; composing paragraphs or even sentences of Latin requires an understanding of the grammar beyond that required for reading the Latin.

Both the Cambridge (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1996 (2003)) and the Oxford (Balme & Moorwood, 1996) courses provide opportunity for this although the Cambridge provides a greater degree of scaffolding; the words are provided and the student is required to select the correct forms and join the sentence together.

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Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 7 Aug 2009, 09:17 +1000 I like Mark's combination of grammatical precision combined with modern gizmos and Fluffy.

Keying into current fashion is important to link with students. I have always enjoyed the dialogues and colorful stories in the CLC which enable classroom plays. Getting students moving is important for kinesthetic learners, and improvising costumes and props is fun. The younger students enjoy making masks. the best of which I keep for all age levels to use.

Teacher C is reinforcing the comments of Teacher B; it is the Romans who are interesting. Making masks and costumes so that dramas can be acted out is a way of getting inside the history and culture.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 7 Aug 2009, 09:21 +1000 Another technique for syntax is to structure a passage in such a way that groups of students work out the "rule" for themselves. I have used this for time phrases, and it generates some excitement; students seem to have a competitive streak, and love to be "first" to attain the goal.

Here Teacher C is reinforcing the notion put by Teacher E above, that it is valuable for students to “discover� the grammar for themselves. Here there is a degree of competition to work out the rule; this helps with motivation.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Mark Andrews 23 Aug 2009, 16:58 +1000 Given what Teacher B was saying regarding the need to balance excellence with turning students off, how important is it to have a viable study of Roman History and Culture alongside the linguistic study? Does such study provide meaning and a context for the language work?

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 24 Aug 2009, 11:25 +1000 Many students find background studies fascinating, and since keeping alive Western European ideas of the importance of individuals to society, rationality, justice, fortitude,etc is one of the major reasons for teaching classics, I cannot see how you could leave them out. It is impossible to read tracts on law, architecture, engineering etc except in translation, but films showing the mighty achievements of Greeks and Romans in terms of these things are essential.

It also helps to link other curriculum areas such as Art. Our Classics Club has run a mosaics class with the ceramics teacher at lunchtime Term 1 for the past 3 years. Many students (about 20 a year, quite voluntarily) have enjoyed this activity.

Again, it is the Romans and their culture that is interesting. Activities that allow students to immerse themselves in Roman history along with the broader Classical Tradition will provide a useful context and support for language learning.

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Reworking the Shield at Journey’s End The journey draws to an end; key points in the Literature have been visited, a Shield has been tried and evaluated by the fellow travellers. It remains to assess changes to the Shield that may be required in the light of the comments of my fellow travellers.

Students endure and deal with the rigours of Latin language learning out of a love for the history and culture; this is especially the case with more senior students. For most, it is the Romans who are intrinsically interesting and not the finer points of Latin grammar. For this reason it is important to supplement the linguistic side of Latin language learning with opportunities to learn about the Romans and the broader Classical Tradition such as the Olympian Gods and Goddesses. There is agreement that the maximisation of understandable input through such courses as the Cambridge and Oxford Latin Courses provide a means for students to translate a large body of comprehensible text and receive the positive feedback for so doing. The reward of being able to do it, so to speak, is an important part of maintaining the motivation to go on learning Latin (Krashen S. , 1988). The use of computers in the classroom is a part of our current educational context. The use of computers affords the opportunity to enhance the interactions between students and with the teacher. Much of the information for Latin study can be found online and the Cambridge course itself has a site to enhance the learning experience of students (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009). Such tools as the “gizmo� help to facilitate the maximisation of understandable input for students and so enhance their learning experience (Krashen S. , 1988). Not to be forgotten are the transferable linguistic skills that come with the study of Latin. This experience is there for students with any language but it is more noticeable with the study of those languages that have a clear link back into Latin.

With regard to grammatical understanding, the feedback from my colleagues is to seek a balance. Too much focus upon grammatical understanding can stifle rather than enhance the learning of Latin. I still see the Shield as a viable option, but the art comes with how one employs the various teaching strategies. In this, one needs to be a little pragmatic and aware of the competing priorities for the study hours of our students.

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To what extent do these findings have generalisability? Silverman suggests that the status of findings should be identified (Silverman, 2000). What is the status afforded to the findings this journey?

Lincoln and Guba discuss at some length the

applicability of findings with regard to the context from which they are drawn (Lincoln & Guba, 2000). These findings are applicable, in the first instance, to the context from which they have been drawn. In this case the context is the teaching of Latin in a secondary school for the Victorian Certificate of Education in Australia.

What has been shown is that within this context, a more top down approach, such as that suggested in A Shield for the Latin Teacher is in keeping with a current understanding of Second Language Acquisition and has the broad support of my colleagues. Having said this, each teacher is going to arrive at his or her own set of teaching strategies that best suits the context of teaching and learning. As language is holistic and top down (Wittgenstein, 1968 (1990)), so the teaching and learning of language is more top down. Learning a language is as much an open-ended game as using one. As such the strategies for teaching and learning need to be dynamic and open to the social and cultural context of those learning. The main question of this paper has been to look at the validity of a more top down approach to language teaching and learning in the Latin classroom. In this four strands come into accord; my own understanding of language, the Literature, the Shield of my own classroom practice and the voices of my colleagues.

Pallanteum becomes Rome through

attention to the needs of the students and their ways of learning for their generation.

Computers have to some degree replaced exercise books, but there is always something new on the horizon. To journey from Pergamum to Pallanteum is to take up a more holistic understanding of language teaching and learning.

To reach

Pallanteum is not to complete the journey, but rather to start one of teaching and learning. Like the building of Rome, it takes more than a day to learn how to teach Latin; it is a continuing experience.

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Appendix A

An invitation to journey between Pergamum and Pallanteum: a journey across the landscape of the language acquisition and the teaching of grammar.

A proposal for classroom practice.

University of Ballarat MEdStud

Mark Andrews UB Student ID: 2821634

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Bearings for the Journey The teaching of Latin, much like Aeneas’ journey to found a new Troy, is not an undertaking to be regarded lightly or without due consideration of the landscape.

Looking at the landscape of literature between Pergamum and Pallanteum (Virgil, 1969), between traditional methods of teaching Latin and what might be new ground, there were a number of monuments that required some attention along the way, but first there was one issue to overcome. There is very little literature that relates directly to the teaching of Latin. What there is tends to come from the turn of the twentieth century and tends to be little more than superficial comments about the value of learning a classical language. The esteemed E.V. Arnold (Arnold, 1907) proclaimed that the study of classical language was of great value for one’s political outlook; anyone studying classical language and society at school in 1907 would soon have need of all the political outlook that they could muster. The enraged W.H.D. Rouse (Rouse, 1910) railed against the suggestion of a certain Mr Snow that Latin prose be dropped from secondary education in order to save Ancient Greek. Although I have some sympathy for both Mr Rouse and Mr Snow, their concerns hardly address the mechanics of classroom practice. For this reason I abandoned the search for direct reference to the teaching of Latin and made for the open fields of language acquisition and learning in a more general sense. I added to this some exploration of the place of grammar teaching.

Having stepped onto an enormous plateau of possibilities, there

was a need to find one’s way around this vast landscape. For this Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) and Nunan (Nunan, 1991) proved quite useful as guides. Having worked out the basic landscape it was important to select a few monuments for particular investigation, for there was not time to visit them all in one trip. The Maze of Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 1978)(Vygotsky, 1962), the Monolith of Krashen (Krashen S. , 1988) and the Halls of Halliday (Halliday, 1985) were found useful points of reference for Second Language Acquisition in general and the teaching of Latin in particular. Finally, came the time to sit down and reflect upon the journey. In this reflection a shield or proposal for classroom practice comes to light for the consideration of others.

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Asking the guides: An overview of the literature Taking the lead of Lightbown (Lightbown & Spada, 2006), it is possible draw a map with which to navigate the landscape of language acquisition theorists and literature.

Language acquisition is divided into First Language Acquisition (FLA) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). According to Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006), in the twentieth century there have been three principle schools of thought around First Language Acquisition. B.F. Skinner headed up the Behaviourist School and, extending the metaphors of his research from the study of rats, considered language acquisition to be a matter of imitation and positive reinforcement of behaviour. According to this approach, language comes from without as a child grows up. It is as if, as Locke (Locke, 1975 (1984)) put it, we start off as a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, onto which language flows. For Skinner we imitate the language to which we are exposed.

Chomsky argued against Skinner in a famous article

(Chomsky, 1959). According to Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006), Chomsky’s contention was that children come to learn more than the language that they hear, they perform more language than could be regarded as imitation; this is called the local problem. For Chomsky, children are born with an innate sense of grammar, a Universal Grammar (UG), which they map onto the given language of their socio-historical context (Chomsky, 2006)(Chomsky, 1965). Apparently, universal grammar prevents children from pursuing many blind alleys in language development. The learning that children do is to learn how to apply their innate Universal Grammar to their given linguistic context; this can be a complex process of trial and error. Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) refer to Chomsky and those who build upon his work with Universal Grammar as Innatists. One cannot help but see in Chomsky’s Universal Grammar revisionist set of forms from Plato’s Cave (Plato, 1989) countering the revisionist Lockian tabula rasa or erased wax tablet (Locke, 1975 (1984)) in the work of Skinner; the reformed realist versus the re-shaven empiricist. Linked to the work of the Innatists is the notion of the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH); this is the notion that for different types of development there are critical periods and that for linguistic development this is up to early adolescence; after this point language is less successfully acquired (Lightbown & Spada, 2006). This theory has wide acceptance and has for support two famous examples of children who Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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did not receive human language through socialisation until they were twelve or thirteen years of age; neither achieved a high degree of linguistic competence. To this comes the perspective of Interactionist – Developmental theorists; for Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006), Vygotsky and Piaget come under this heading.

From this perspective driven by social interaction and development, the Innatists, read Chomsky, place too much emphasis upon the final product of language acquisition, namely the competence of the adult native speaker, and not enough upon the development of this competency. A good deal more will be said about Vygotsky upon a visit to his maze, the massive Channels of Chomsky will need to be navigated on another journey. Nunan (Nunan, 1991) and Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) point out that a longitudinal study completed by Roger Brown in the 1970’s does much to support a developmental understanding of First Language Acquisition. He found that there are definite markers or developmental points which children pass on their way to fully developed language, but that not all children pass these markers at the same time. Jill and Peter de Villiers confirmed these findings with a cross-sectional study of their own around the same time. Along with linguistic proficiency, meta-linguistic awareness develops, that is the ability to talk about language and reflect upon one’s use of it. An awareness of register is a meta-linguistic skill.

Having established three general areas of thought with regard to First Language Acquisition, the next step is to look towards Second Language Acquisition. The relationship between the two is a matter of some contention, but more of that later.

Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) point out, quite logically, that the context for Second Language Learning is quite significant; secondary school or adult learning, as a foreign language or a second language in the country of the target language.

The age, motivations and educational background of the learner are

important considerations, as is the nature of the task at hand; experienced language teachers Nunan (Nunan, 1991) Celce-Murcia (Celce-Murcia, 1991) also mention the importance of such considerations.

Once the context and learner have been given due consideration, the issue of theoretical background impinges upon methodology. Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) point out that as with First Language Acquisition, the Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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Behaviourist approach was very influential from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and gave rise to the audio-lingual approach to language learning; all those great language learning cassettes that you place in the car to learn Farsi or the like as you drive. This approach was heavily reliant upon imitation and grammatical patterns with less emphasis upon the learning of vocabulary (Nunan, 1991). Another aspect of the behaviourist approach was the assumption that errors made in the second language or difficulties in learning structures could be predicted from the first language.

According to Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006), Nunan (Nunan, 1991) and Krashen (Krashen S. , 1988), this has not been supported by the most studies into the area. Stephen D. Krashen is a veritable monolith in Second Language Acquisition and his thinking requires special attention. He regards the most important ingredient for the development of competence in a second language to be the provision of copious meaningful and comprehensible input in the target language (Krashen S. , 1988). The Innatist perspective has been represented by Linda White and others, who argue that Universal Grammar provides the best basis upon which to understand Second Language Acquisition. It is against this input hypothesis of Krashen that Linda White (White, 1987) takes issue; that is an investigation for another day. Using a socio-cultural approach is Merrill Swain. Developing new corridors in the Maze for Vygotsky in this field of Second Language Acquisition are Jim Lantolf and Richard Donato; these are more roads to follow later. Nick Ellis and others have proposed an approach that Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) refer to as Connectionism. Connectionism places an emphasis upon the frequency with which learners encounter specific linguistic features in their input and the frequency with which features occur together. Both Nunan (Nunan, 1991) and Lightbown and Spada (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) refer to the work of Manfred Pienemann on Processability.

According to Pienemann, linguistic structures in a language are

acquired or understood in accordance with their processability. Learning takes place by getting students to work with structures just above their level of competence (Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993)(Pienemann, 2002).

Nunan (Nunan, 1991), a fairly pragmatic soul with a concern for what really works in the classroom, takes a lead role in guiding us through the specific areas of reading, vocabulary learning and the teaching of grammar. Reading can be looked at from below or from above. The approach of phonics was to consider reading bottom up as Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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a matter of decoding a series of written symbols, blending graphemes (units of writing) and phonemes (units of speech) in the mind, pronouncing and finding meaning. Reading is a case of reconstituting from the bottom up. This approach seems to accord with common sense, but for a second language learner there is a problem. Unlike a native speaker, the second language learner does not have the fallback of spoken language as a yardstick for the correct sound of the words. A preschool age child, on the other hand, already knows what many words sound like before the process of learning to read and write begins. Coming from above to reading is the psycholinguistic approach.

The assumption here is that reading is a matter of

reconstructing meaning from the context rather than decoding it. The process is one of working from past experience, language intuitions and expectations, then moving down to selective aspects of the print, and onto meaning and sound pronunciation if necessary. Nunan refers to Stanovich (Stanovich, 1980) as having a halfway approach called the interactive-compensatory model that uses aspects of both top down and bottom up approaches. Quite pragmatically and based upon his own testing, Nunan (Nunan, 1991) points out that time with the language and familiarity with the context are both factors that improve success with reading.

Hence, familiarity with

grammatical structures is not the sole basis upon which one achieves success with reading. As mentioned previously, the teaching of vocabulary suffered under the Audio-Linguistic approach suggested from a Behaviourist perspective; grammatical patterns and pronunciation were emphasised at the expense of vocabulary learning.

Vocabulary is best learnt is small amounts frequently, rather than in large amounts infrequently. There have been studies into which words occur more frequently in a language and Nunan suggests that there may be some merit is focusing upon the more frequent words earlier in one’s learning. He also points out that there are difficulties with words that occur very frequently having more than one meaning. This is a problem for English and it has more words or a larger lexicon than most other languages. Nunan (Nunan, 1991) mentions that there has been some successful work done with teaching vocabulary through computer games. Given that Nunan was writing nearly twenty years ago, one might imagine that a great deal more work has been done in this area. In about 1999, I saw role-playing games for modern languages aimed at developing vocabulary and grammatical understanding. Traditional language classrooms, working from the teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek, served up a diet of systematic grammar, vocabulary memorisation and pronunciation. This proved to be Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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more effective for reading and writing than for listening and speaking. Nunan points out that as Brown had discovered that there were crucial points of acquisition in the first language, so Dulay and Burt, also in the seventies, found the same to hold for the second language in children. This torpedoes the notion of the Behaviourist that first language background determines the acquisition and the problems for acquisition in the second. Bailey and Brown confirmed these findings with adult second language learners.

Hence, neither with children nor with adults does the nature of first

language determine or even greatly influence learning in the second. Nunan refers to the Halls of Halliday, to which we shall journey. Halliday proposed working with grammatical concepts from the text down rather than from the word up; top down rather than bottom up (Halliday, 1985); he called his approach Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG). Nunan advocates looking at the work of Butt (Butt, 1989) for the practical outworking of Halliday’s approach in the language classroom. Here ends the overview of the landscape under the able direction of our guides (Lightbown & Spada, 2006)(Nunan, 1991). It is now time to explore some of the monuments in their own right.

The Maze of Vygotsky: Language Acquisition According to Vygotsky One of the issues when dealing with the Maze of Vygotsky is that his work was conducted in the Stalinist Era Soviet Union and he died in 1934, yet most of his work did not reach the broader scientific community through translations until the 1960’s and 1970’s. Although Piaget is a major interlocutor for Vygotsky, Vygotsky is in dialogue with Piaget’s earlier work. Vygotsky had died before Piaget had a chance to read and respond to him (Vygotsky, 1978).

Piaget argued for a developmental approach to language acquisition that was linked to the development of the intellect (Vygotsky, 1962). The development of language and the intellect are interrelated in the exercise of language in word meaning. This might be in the form of the inner speech of our thoughts or the outer speech of our communication with others. This is an organic approach to linguistic development that locates it within a network of relationships with social and intellectual development. In presenting his development hypothesis, Vygotsky uses Piaget as a foil; he considered Piaget to have been too influenced by the psychoanalytic thought Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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of Freud and the like (Vygotsky, 1962). A crucial point of contention between the two theories was the function of egocentric speech in young children. For Piaget this egocentric thought and speech is an early stage of development that recedes with the socialisation of the child and the development of socialised language. For Vygotsky egocentric thought and speech develop into inner speech. The egocentric speech of a young child vanishes from vocalisation with development not because it has gone, but because it has become the inner speech of a more developed mind.

Vocalised

egocentric speech for Vygotsky is an invaluable window on the workings of thought and the development of the intellect (Vygotsky, 1962). The primary function of speech for both children and adults is communication, the function of this communication become differentiated into speech for oneself, egocentric speech, and speech for others, socialised speech.

Egocentric speech emerges when a child

transfers collaborative behaviour into the sphere of internal functions.

This is

triggered by the need to solve a problem. Pre-school age children will vocalise their problem solving language that older children and adults have as an inner voice; the function of both is to aid the thought or reasoning process (Vygotsky, 1962). These two aspects of language and intellectual development, the inner and the outer, the egocentric and the social, are present from birth. At about the age of two the speech and thought processes merge in an explosion on linguistic development. This is marked by a sudden curiosity about words and naming every new thing that results in a rapid increase in vocabulary; my son Julian is going through this phase as I write this paper.

Although inner and outer speech are interrelated, they are different and

perform different functions, one for communication and the other for thinking and reasoning. “ In brief, we must conclude that: 1. in their ontogenetic development, thought and speech have different roots.

2. In the speech development of the child, we can with certainty establish a preintellectual stage, and in his thought development, a prelinguistic stage.

3. Up to a certain point in time, the two follow different lines, independently of each other.

4. At a certain point these lines meet, whereupon thought becomes verbal and speech rational.� (Vygotsky, 1962, p. 44)

Thought and speech are two spheres that overlap in verbal thought; both have areas that are not covered by the other. Verbal thought is not innate, but develops subject to Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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all the influences of socio-cultural context (Vygotsky, 1962). This understanding of the relationship between the development of thinking and speaking is quite different from either Behaviourist imitation or Innatist Universal Grammar. Language develops from internal and social processes in constant dialogue.

Vygotsky looks at the development of thought through complexes to concepts and then looks at the development of speech through increased linguistic proficiency.

Contrary to the notion that conceptual formation is through the interplay of associations, Vygotsky regards conceptual formation to be an intellectual process achieved through stages of complex formation and abstraction (Vygotsky, 1962). That is to say, intellectual development is divided into three stages, each with stages. At the beginning, a child forms syncretic heaps which are based upon trial and error, based upon need and what is successful. If a part proves wrong then it is replaced by another. At the next stage the heap is ordered according to relevance in the experience of the child; this is heavily influenced by visual experience. At third early stage elements are taken from previously formed heaps from past experience. The resulting heap is syncretic and no more ordered than the original heaps from which the parts came. A child moving out from the vocalisation of the egocentric language will move into a second major stage. This second stage involves the use of complexes or family groupings of thoughts rather than heaps; these groupings are based upon concrete experience. At first factual bonds in the complex are established by the concrete experience including mere association.

Next objects or concrete impressions are

combined together on the basis of there being similarities and differences between each. Experience teaches functional groupings such as cutlery or clothes. Moving on, chain complexes are formed on the basis of association, along the chain the association may vary from colour, to size, to shape, yet the complex does not transcend the concrete objects of the child’s lived experience. Next diffuse complexes are formed and marked by fluidity in the very attribute that unites the single elements. The child stays with concrete objects and impressions but the bonds become increasingly less related to direct experience. As a child nears school, the pseudo-concepts develop from using adult language. An adult will use a word base upon a concept, so for an adult a word meaning is conceptual. For a child borrowing and using the same word, the word meaning is complex; it is grounded in concrete experience rather than abstract ideas. The pseudo-concept forms the link for a child between thinking in Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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complexes and thinking in concepts; this enables more developed communication with adults. Mutual understanding is provided through two quite different paths; and hence the understanding on either side is not identical, just compatible. During adolescence, children begin to form concepts, without abandoning pseudo-concepts. Yet, at these early stages, the ability to define concepts does not keep pace with ability to form them; definition is a far more developed process. Hence, the analysis of reality or experience through concepts proceeds beyond the analysis of these concepts themselves. It is more difficult to apply a concept from one context to another, and even more difficult to define a concept without resort to a concrete example at all.

Adolescents will often use a concrete example or experience to define an abstract concept. Recalling a little Platonic language, concept formation is not logical or linear but result from a constant oscillation from the general to the particular, from the abstract to the concrete. The word, or linguistic expression, both inner and social, has a guiding function in complex formation, potential concept or pseudo-conceptual formation and conceptual formation itself, as the thought processes mature. Hence, language development and intellectual development are different but not independent; they are closely interrelated (Vygotsky, 1962).

When it comes to school based learning, Vygotsky makes a distinction between two types of concept formation. One is immediate, experiential and spontaneous; the other is transcendent, abstract and not spontaneous. School based instruction is the second.

These two types of concept formation are related but different. For Piaget, the spontaneous egocentric thoughts of the child, grounded in play, give way to the socialised non-spontanious thoughts of the adult. For Vygotsky the two develop along different evolutionary paths and are interrelated (Vygotsky, 1962). A clear example of these two related paths is the relationship of speech and writing. Speech is the result of direct experience and has developed in the child from its earliest days. Writing is quite different from speech, it requires abstraction from speech with regard to sound and sensory experience; it is also without direct interlocutor or direct social aspect. A contemporary chat room, messaging or texting may provide a challenge here, but the distinction still holds. To write a child must abstract from the sound of each word and reproduce this in symbols. Speech, on the other hand, can be unconscious of the mental process involved. Hence, the relationship between inner speech, or thought patterns, and oral speech, differs from that between inner speech and written language.

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The syntax of inner speech is opposite from that of written speech with oral speech standing in the middle. Taking this view, modern texting language is strange to read because it stands between the mind and the page. As such, texting speech leaves out many of the conventions of writing, yet it appears in written form. It is more reliant on mutual understanding than written speech and much more likely to cause offence or misunderstanding when this mutual understanding is absent. My current students regard email as an extension of texting rather than letter writing and so manage to cause a great deal of offence around the teaching faculty without realising it.

Grammatical instruction is a curious case, because it does not appear to add anything to the skills of the learner. When speaking of one’s own language, children are already utilising a great part of the grammatical complexity of a language prior to school-based instruction. From his context of Russian, Vygotsky refers to children using the correct conjugation and case (Vygotsky, 1962). Grammatical instruction makes children aware of what they are doing, so that skills can be used consciously.

Grammar and writing help a child to rise to a higher level of linguistic competence and speech development.

Learning a foreign or second language is a deliberate or

conscious act from the start. For Vygotsky much of First Language Acquisition takes place at a spontaneous experiential level. Given the methods used at his time, foreign language instruction was precisely that, non-spontaneous, transcendent and abstract.

Conscious understanding precedes utilisation; this is the opposite from First Language Acquisition. For Vygotsky, success in Second Language Acquisition is contingent upon a certain degree of awareness and development in one’s own language. This does not contradict the findings of Brown and others against the notion of first language interference, because here the particular languages that are first and second are not the point. Proficiency in a second language and understanding of it feeds back into the first language and facilitates a higher degree of awareness of it. The preceding discussion of development and instruction highlights what Vygotsky considered to be a crucial distinction between himself and Piaget. Piaget considered development and instruction to be independent of each other. For Vygotsky, these two processes are interwoven, interrelated and to a high degree interdependent for higher levels of development (Vygotsky, 1962).

With regard to language learning two further

concepts from Vygotsky are of note; his discussion of memory and the proximal zone of development (Vygotsky, 1978). Memory in young children is different from that in adults. For young children, to think is to remember; this is largely a case of recalling Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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concrete experience. Words are understood in terms of a child’s concrete experience of them. Remembering is with respect to isolated incidents. There is not the ability to abstract from these experiences to form a concept. Hence, word meaning, for a child is a heap or a complex; for an adult is a concept. At adolescence all mental structures move away from organisation according to family or type become organised according to abstractions; complexes give way to concepts. Tying a knot in a handkerchief is indicative of these logical processes of abstraction so that an external stimulus provides the logical links in the memory.

The same process takes place with

memorials, so that we don’t forget (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky acknowledges that there are stages of development appropriate for different levels of instruction and that the two should be matched in some way. He suggests that there is a need to assess two levels of intellectual competence. One is their level of intellectual competence as evident by their ability to perform tasks without collaboration or mentoring. This is their level of intellectual development and it will be related to their age. The second is their intellectual competence as evident by their ability to perform task with collaboration or mentoring. This collaboration or mentoring is called scaffolding because it allows the learner to build upon the assistance of others to aid their own progress. The second competency is higher than the first, but will differ between children who share the same first level of competency. The zone created between these two measured levels of competency Vygotsky calls the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978). The larger this zone, the more successful a learner is likely to be with instructional learning. In school learning activities should be directed at this Zone of Proximal Development, in order to facilitate more rapid intellectual development; this is dependent upon appropriate scaffolding and the ability of the teacher to assess the level correctly.

The Monolith of Krashen: Second Language Acquisition According to Krashen After stopping for refreshment, the journey goes on from the Maze of Vygotsky to the Monolith of Krashen. Central to Krashen's understanding of language acquisition is his Monitor Theory (Krashen S. , 1988). According to Krashen, adults have two systems for developing linguistic proficiency; subconscious language acquisition and conscious language learning. learning.

This creates a dichotomy between acquisition and

The Monitor is the mind’s conscious activity to correct language

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performance, be it speaking or writing, in accordance with learnt grammatical rules.

The problem with using the conscious formation of grammatical structures for oral communication is that rules must be thought about and employed constantly; this is only achievable by the most able learners and even then communication is stilted by the need for thinking time. When used correctly this enhances communication. When over used particularly speech is slowed down and communication is impaired; the learner may even refrain from speaking at all for fear of making a mistake. Under use of the Monitor leads to language that is inaccurate but none the less fluent. Central to this plausibility of the Monitor Theory is the notion that language is best acquired through meaningful and comprehensible input, the more the better. At higher levels of linguistic proficiency this input should also include reading (Krashen S. D., 1993)(Krashen S. D., 1992). Acquired language is subconsciously taken in using the same process through which the learner gained their first language. The Monitor, or conscious mental process, is then left to edit rather than create language.

Consequently, Krashen is quite dogmatic in his view that formal grammar or a focus upon grammatical structures is of little or no use when teaching communicative language, it is at best peripheral and at worst a hindrance to the flow of communication.

Celce-Murcia

(Celce-Murcia,

1992)(Celce-Murcia,

1991),

Lightbown and Peinemann (Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993) have challenged Krashen on the meaningful input hypothesis with regard to the teaching of grammar. CelceMurcia regards the teaching of grammar to be important alongside meaningful input to allow for the more accurate use of language. Lightbown gives Krashen the credit for bringing the value of meaningful input to everyone’s attention, but also points out that this is not the whole story (Lightbown & Spada, 2006)(Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993). Using his processability model, Pienemann refers to successful and sustained results in proficiency through a focus upon grammatical structures at the appropriate level of difficulty. For Pienemann the appropriate level is just above the current level of proficiency(Pienemann, 2002)(Lightbown & Pienemann, 1993); this recalls Vygotsky’s proximal zone of development. Borg and Burns conducted a study of language teachers in Australia and the Asia pacific quite recently and the majority were in favour of some form of direct grammatical instruction because it enhances linguistic proficiency (Borg & Burns, 2008).

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Krashen also discusses attitude and aptitude as they affect Second Language Acquisition; this is quite a useful section of his book. Working with the idea from Dulay and Burt of a Socio-Affective Filter, Krashen points out that learners will acquire less language as less is allowed in; adolescents will acquire more language from their peers than from their elders. In the classroom it is important to minimise the negative impact of the socio-affective filter. Integrative Motivation can be useful in the language classroom, the desire to be valued as an effective linguistic performer within the context of the class. Instrumental Motivation is the desire to be an effective performer of the language for utilitarian or pragmatic ends.

With instrumental

motivation acquisition may end as soon as the perceived need has been satisfied.

Personality type has an effect upon motivation, which in turn has an effect upon confidence. Those with confidence have lower socio-affective filter. Empathy is significant for language acquisition; the more someone is able to put themselves in the shoes of another the more language they are able to acquire and the lower the socioaffective filter. Attitude towards the classroom teacher affects both learning and acquisition.

A more open and positive attitude towards the classroom teacher will

lead to a lowering of the socio-affective filter.

A positive attitude towards the

classroom teacher will impact positively upon self-confidence and the integrative motivation, further lowering the socio-affective filter.

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The Halls of Halliday on Systematic Functional Grammar Moving around the Monolith of Krashen, with the help of Nunan, we arrive for a brief look at the vast Halls of Halliday. Halliday locates himself within the European functional school with regard to linguistic theory (Halliday, 1985).

He regards

grammar as an attempt to crack the semantic code of a language; each language has its own code. This places the phenomenon of language before the construct of grammar.

From this a given text is an instance of language use within a given context. Any language has the context of its culture. The process of working down to the meaning of a text from culture, language, grammar and situation is one of discovering what goes together. Paradigms, tables of nouns and verbs, are tables of things that do not go together. For this reason the value of learning paradigms is questionable. Halliday advocates functional labelling of sentences so that the interpretation of the grammatical structure of the particular sentence under study can be related to the context of the language as a whole.

Reflection upon the Journey: Implications for the Teaching of Latin Having completed the journey through the monuments, it is time to take stock of where we have been and the relevance for the teaching of Latin in the secondary school classroom. To start with is a cautionary point from Lantolf (Lantolf J. , 1996).

In Second Language Acquisition, and other areas no doubt, theorists are inclined to put forward metaphors to describe observations or to encapsulate concepts.

Unfortunately as these metaphors achieve the status of a theory, by virtue of the acceptance of a number of those in the field, the metaphor it taken literally and loses its dynamism. This is certainly the case with the acquisition and learning dichotomy put forward by Krashen. The distinction is useful to a degree and the notion of meaningful and comprehensible input has gained significant support as a part of a language learning program, but not the whole. Chomsky and his followers suggest that the mind imposes structure onto thought and hence onto language. This gives rise to a conduit metaphor of placing thoughts into words. Vygotsky and his followers suggest that the relationship between mind and language is reversed. Language and linguistically constructed concepts and discourse impose structure onto the mind. The

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metaphor is reversed so words are placed into thoughts. These metaphors are useful as metaphors, but they are always just that, an attempt to drag language from other places in order to describe that for which we, as yet, have no language. Hence, there is no need to be so dogmatic. The same tasks, such as conversation classes, take place from a variety of theoretical standpoints. The need to understand the underlying theories comes when one wants to apply them into a different or more specialised context such as the teaching of Latin. Notions such as the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding have direct application upon classroom practice. The key is to pick the level of student proficiency; from my experience this varies across the class.

The Critical Period Hypothesis is an important consideration when considering the age at which one might commence language learning. Taking a lead from Vygotsky, one would see Latin as an activity for instruction that will bring benefits into other areas.

Krashen seems quite sceptical about the value of learning Latin at all. He cites a study from the 1920’s to the effect that Latin has some temporary benefit on English scores, but that is all (Krashen S. D., 2008). Krashen’s discussion of socio-affective filter and affective considerations in language acquisition are useful as long as the metaphor of the filter is regarded as such.

Likewise comprehensible input needs some

consideration with regard to a program designed for reading proficiency without any speaking component.

To look as some available course material the theoretical

background becomes apparent. The Approach to Latin (Paterson & MacNaughton, 1968 (1983)) is a good example of Behaviourist thinking. There is reference to a sound grammatical foundation in the introduction with very little regard for vocabulary formation or reading beyond sentences. Via Vertendi (Young, 1962), as a course in unseen translation based upon sequential grammatical acquisition, has its roots in the same type of thinking. Having said this, elements of both courses have value so long as there is some meaningful input. The writers of the Reading Latin Course took these ideas on board. The course comprises an immersion reader (Jones & Sidwell, Reading Latin:Text, 1986) that is used alongside a grammar (Jones & Sidwell, Reading Latin: Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises, 1986), vocabulary and exercises book; this was my university Latin textbook. It is a fine adult education resource, but too complicated for secondary students as a textbook; I do use parts of it with my students as the reference grammar is quite good. A key feature of the Reading Latin approach is the modification of Latin so that beginners are able to Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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understand the texts virtually from the start. Classical authors are simplified, in this case Plautus, so that the beginner is able to begin the process of socio-cultural familiarisation along with the text. As the proficiency of the learner increases so does the grammatical complexity of the text until the student is reading passages or summaries of authentic Latin text.

Both the Oxford Latin Course (Balme &

Moorwood, 1996) and the Cambridge Latin Course (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1998 (2000)) follow the general approach of Reading Latin, but at a more simplified level for secondary students. The Cambridge course has been quicker to embrace the possibilities for game playing and on-line learning through the Cambridge site (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009).

A shield for the Latin Teacher A: The Metaphor of the Shield Just as in Book VIII of the Aeneid (Virgil, 1969), Aeneas is given a shield by his mother Venus in order to fulfil his Fate, so too the Latin Teacher needs a shield in order to take up the challenge of guiding students through the perilous journey that is learning Latin. Below is a suggested shield for the uptake of a secondary school Latin teacher based upon the foregoing literary review and the classroom practice of this Latin teacher.

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B: Maximising understandable input From the discussion of Krashen (Krashen S. , 1988) above, a student wishing to acquire a Classical Language for the purpose of reading proficiency needs to maximise that which is read. This may be reading for understanding or reading for translation or both. The process of translation requires an active manipulation of the text from one language to another. Both the Cambridge (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1998 (2000); University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2003 (2004)) and Oxford (Balme & Moorwood, 1996) courses use narrative as a means of holding the interest of the student so that in order to follow the story the translations need to be completed. In addition to this the Cambridge course provides internet resources so that the student is able to translate the material more efficiently (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009).

Figure 1:

As can be seen in figure one above, The Latin Companion, or the “gizmo� as my students and I call it, is a very useful aid to translation. The student is able to click upon any word to find the dictionary entry. From Book V of the Cambridge Latin

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Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2003 (2004)) and into the Cambridge Latin Anthology(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Enterprises, 1996 (2003)), The Latin Companion provides the parsing for each word along with the dictionary entry. This is a useful way to speed up the translation process so that meaningful input is maximised. Students are able to translate significant quantities of text between lessons so that interest is maintained in a flowing narrative. Onto this flowing narrative grammatical understanding and the development of a lexicon can be attached as part of the process. The priority of narrative over lexicon and grammatical understanding is the priority of top down over bottom up. Students work from the meaningful input of a whole text to understand the parts rather than from parts to build a whole.

C: Use of memorisation of lexicon and paradigms.

The lexicon can be reinforced with weekly vocabulary test from both Latin to English and English to Latin.

Likewise there is no substitute for regular drilling with

declensions and conjugations, so that the students memorise noun, adjective and verb endings.

Figure 2:

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Figure 3:

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Figures 2 and 3 show a weekly vocabulary quiz or text and the solutions, based upon the vocabulary list for Stage 27, Book III of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

Figures 4 and 5 above show a paradigm quiz and its solution based upon the conjugation of the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive in pattern of the third and fourth conjugations of more regular verbs. Such drilling has long been part of the teaching of Classical Languages and Latin in particular. The question is not one of relevance, but rather one of balance and proportion. There is also the question of how to memorise vocabulary and paradigms. Below in Figure 6 is a mind map prepared as part of a brainstorm with a group of Year 10 students at the beginning this year. On this mind map a range of strategies are suggested to cater for different learning styles.

Placing charts up on a wall or a door may suit more visual learners. Recording the words onto an audio file may suit those who take more in aurally. Involving others with flashcards may help those who learn more through interaction. This may be done face to face or via the web through messaging or video-conferencing. The Cambridge online site provides a vocabulary drill which functions along similar lines to flash

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cards but this can be adjusted to limit the time allowed to pause for each word and the number of words to be tested (Cambridge School Classics Project, 2009). The words are organised according to the chapter lists in the textbooks. As indicated on the map in Figure 6, I encourage the students to work with memorisation tasks more frequently in short sessions rather than less frequently in long cramming sessions.

Figure 6:

The memorisation of vocabulary and inflections is an attempt to replace the rapid language acquisition of a small child. As noted from Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 1962), a second language is acquired more through instruction than experience, more through abstraction and the concrete. At year nine, the secondary students that I teach are experiencing this change from complex structures to abstract concepts, each in their own way and time as Vygotsky would have it. Memorisation techniques are just like the Vygotsky’s knot in the handkerchief; they are a useful part, but not the whole of language acquisition.

These long time friends of the Latin teacher need to be

augmented with some new top down tools with which to bring further understanding of the structures of the Latin language.

D: Functional Grammatical Analysis Taking the lead from Halliday (Halliday, 1985), it is important to look at language as it occurs, so that word forms, morphemes, are understood in the contexts in which they are found. The student needs to be able to spot the imperfect or pluperfect in the wild and see an ablative of place in situ. Functional Grammatical Analysis is a way of Mark Andrews - UB Student ID: 2821634

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identifying the function of a word in a given sentence or clause. The student looks for the job that a given word undertakes in each context. In Latin, nouns have a range of roles and so need to be identified in a range of ways. The student is then able to see the same word performing a range of functions across a range of contexts and as such the inflection or endings will change accordingly. Students are furnished with the Sentence Attack Skills Sheet and build up proficiency in indentifying function. Much of this corresponds to good old fashion parsing. Figure 7 shows the instructions given to the students for Functional Analysis.

Figure 7:

By asking this series of questions students are able to identify the function of each word in the sentence or clause. Students are introduced to such tasks through weekly quizzes along with their vocabulary. Figures 8 and 9 show a weekly analysis and solution taken from the text of Stage 27 of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

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Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10 shows a solution for a more extended exercise in preparation for the Year 10 first semester exam, again based upon a text from the Cambridge Latin Course(University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

Figure 10:

In the early stages of learning the value of Functional Analysis is that it enables students to see the function of words in context rather than as isolated items on a chart.

In conjunction with more traditional memorisation techniques, Functional Analysis

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provides more top down way for students to become familiar with inflections or morphemes as they apply to real grammatical contexts.

E: Nominal Grammatical Analysis and Syntax Charts A number of years ago, when working at Penleigh and Essendon Grammar, I was introduced to Syntax Charts by my colleagues there. Syntax Charts help students to reinforce an understanding of parts of speech and adopt a more nominal approach to sentence analysis. Again looking at a word in the context of a given passage of text, the student is asked to parse the word according to what the word is rather than what it is doing. The reason box at the end is an explanation of the word’s function. As such, the completion of a syntax chart dovetails with paradigm learning and Functional Analysis.

Figure 11 shows a text from Stage 27 of the Cambridge Latin

Course(University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)) in which ten words have been marked.

Figure 11:

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The words marked on Figure 11 are then placed into the chart as seen in Figure 12.

Figure 13 indicates some hints or pointers provided for the task.

Figure 12:

Figure 13:

Figure 12 shows the solution for the task, the student is given the chart with the Word column filled in and the rest is left blank. Some columns do not require any input. On examinations, especially with the less experienced students, it is best to black out these

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boxes to save confusion. I find that this is not necessary with Year 11 and 12 students.

Syntax Charts provide another more top down approach that encourages students to learn word forms, morphemes, in context. When completing a Syntax Chart the student is reading and translating so that the correct understanding of the word can be gained.

F: Marking Up texts.

As the texts become more complex, and sentences become longer with subordinate clauses and other complex structures, it becomes more important for students to be able to decode the structures in the language along with specific word forms. Either with seen text from the textbook or with an unseen translation task, it is vital that students identify linguistic structures. Many key structures have signals or warning signs. One example is that the Latin conjunctions ut, ne and cum frequently introduce a subordinate clause in the subjunctive mood. If students are taught to mark these words as key joining words, then they can be looking for the appropriate structure to match. Figure 14 shows the instructions students are given for marking up a text.

Figure 14:

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Students are able to complete this task using a pencil or using the Mark Up tools in Adobe Acrobat. The advantage of using Adobe Acrobat is that the Marked Up files can be combined to form a class set. Students are then able to see that other students have come up with similar responses. Areas of difficulty for the entire class or significant portions of it are able to be identified and discussed. In Figure 15, four Year 10 students working in pairs have collaborated to Mark Up a text from Stage 27 of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)).

Figure 15:

The speech bubbles in Figure 15 indicate the allocation of lines to students, when in Acrobat the students pass the curser over the bubble to see who is to Mark Up which lines. The students have marked sentences with vertical lines, clauses with brackets, verbs with underlining and key joining words with boxes, as indicated in the

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instructions in Figure 14. Students complete these tasks with Adobe Acrobat as part of their classwork or homework and then use a pencil during unseen translations and exams. In conjunction with Functional Analysis and Syntax Charts, Marking Up text provides a third top down teaching and learning strategy to be used along with the more traditional bottom up approaches.

G: Fluffy - The use of familiar narrative

When preparing for the first semester exams this year, my Year 10 students were looking for a way to combine all the aspects of inflection that they needed to deal with onto one concept map. After a little thought a three-headed monster appeared on the board during our brainstorm; nouns, adjectives and verbs. Fluffy, the Cerberus like pet of Rubeus Hagrid, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone(Rowling, 1997), came to mind and before long a three-headed monster appeared on the board with an appropriate lyre with which to put it to sleep, namely the set dictionary with a grammar in the back (Collins Latin Dictionary and Grammar, 1997). Two students decided to complete their own version of this mind map as part of their preparation for the examination; these were submitted to me to make available to other Latin students.

Figures 16 and 17 show these two concept maps.

Figure 16:

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Figure 17:

Students from Years 9-11 found Fluffy a useful way to group together a number of ideas that do not hold together naturally. Fluffy provided the context of a familiar narrative onto which unfamiliar and otherwise disjointed concepts could be grouped and kept together in the memory; another use of Vygotsky’s knot in the handkerchief concept(Vygotsky, 1962).

Shouldering the Shield When taking up this shield, as mentioned above, the crucial factor is the mix of the teaching and learning strategies. With too little emphasis upon the memorisation of lexicon and morphology the students become overly dependent upon the dictionary and are not able to perform under timed conditions. Yet if this bottom up work is the focus of attention then the students have difficulties decoding words and structures in context. I find that weekly vocabulary quizzes, such as that in Figures 2 and 3 work quite well up to about two weeks prior to the semester examination. Functional

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Analysis (Figures 8 and 9) and Paradigm (Figures 4 and 5) quizzes alternate. At this stage I set one Paradigm quiz for every four to five Functional Analysis quizzes; this ratio may need to be reassessed to give a little more emphasis to Paradigms. I have used Marking Up as preparation for classwork or homework during the term and as revision for examinations. In the first instance students are asked to mark up the texts for a chapter or a stage of the Cambridge Latin Course (University of Cambridge School Classics Project, 2001 (2007)) prior to working through the text for their own translations. In the second case, after having worked through a number of Stages or Chapters during the school term students focus upon about three to prepare for the examination. These will be marked up in collaboration, with each student or pair of students taking a section of a text as shown in Figure 15. This use of Marking Up does impact favourably upon results with both prepared and unseen translations under timed conditions.

In the two to three weeks prior to the semester examination,

students complete four to six Syntax Charts based upon the set texts for the examination. These are completed during class or as homework to be corrected in class. The success of Fluffy with the students has encouraged me to search with students for other literary allusions from which similar scaffolding might flow, either from the Classical tradition or in other narratives familiar to the students.

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Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

White, L. (1987). Against comprehensible input: The input hypothesis and the development of second language competence. Applied Linguistics , 8 (2), pp. 95-110.

Wittgenstein, L. (1968 (1990)). Philosophical Investigations (3rd ed.). (G. Anscombe, Trans.) Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1922 (1990)). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. (C. Ogden, Trans.)

London: Routledge.

Young, B. W. (1962). via vertendi: a Latin unseen course. London, United Kingdom: Longmans, Green and Co.

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Appendix B

UNIVERSITY OF BALLARAT SCHOOL OF EDUCATION PLAIN LANGUAGE INFORMATION STATEMENT PROJECT TITLE:

From Pergamum to Pallanteum: a look at the landscape of Latin teaching and learning.

PRINCIPAL RESEARCHER:

Karen Felstead Phone: 03 53276167 Email: k.felstead@ballarat.edu.au

STUDENT RESEARCHER:

Mark Andrews Phone: 0419 586 940 Email: mandrews@geelongcollege.vic.edu.au

I am a Masters of Education Studies student at the University of Ballarat. As part of this course, I am undertaking reflective research into the teaching and learning of Latin in the light of more recent scholarship on First and Second Language Acquisition. I invite you to become a participant by reading a proposal of 9000 words and participating in an online forum over three weeks hosted at Wikidot.com. I am looking for six participants who currently teach Year 12 Latin or who currently mark the VCE Year 12 Latin Examination.

This research has the potential to be of benefit to myself through improved practice and a more informed approach to future curriculum development and may form the basis for further research in the field. In addition the thesis will be presented to you, my colleagues, in the area of Classical Language teaching, at the Classical Association of Victoria Teachers’ Wing Conference in March 2010, following the completion of the study.

The research process will be conducted in four stages. Firstly, a description and analysis of the current practice of the student researcher as a Latin teacher will be undertaken. Secondly, the student researcher will survey current literature with regard to first and second language acquisition with a view to composing a proposal for classroom practice. This document is anticipated to be 9000 words long and will be referred to as The Proposal. Thirdly, an online forum with fellow Latin teachers in which this proposal is analysed and evaluated by practicing teachers of Latin will take place. Fourthly, a revised proposal for classroom practice incorporating the aspects that have arisen from the online forum will be drafted.

It is the third stage of this research process that I would like to invite you to participate as a member of the online forum.

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You will have received an email from the Principal Researcher, Karen Felstead, who has contacted the Secretary of the Classical Association of Victoria Teachers’ Wing via email with a request for the involvement of those Latin Teachers with current Year 12 Latin teaching experience or current experience with marking the VCE Year 12 Latin examination papers.

If you are willing to participate in the research please send a completed Informed Consent Form to the Principal Researcher. Once the Principal Researcher receives the responses, the Student Researcher will send a message to each of the participants from the secure Wiki (https://quidfac.wikidot.com) that has been established to host the discussion with an invitation to join the Wiki as a member. The Principal Researcher will have Moderator rights on the Wiki.

The online forum will take place during the first three weeks of Term 3 (Sunday, 12 July 2009 until Saturday, 1 August 2009). You will be sent the proposal by email two weeks before the start of this period on the 27 June 2009. This will allow time for you to read the 9000 word document and to discuss it in some depth over the three weeks of the forum.

After the three weeks of the forum the discussion board from the forum will be copied from the site and analysed as the data for this research. On the basis of this analysis a new proposal will be drafted.

The Wiki will remain open until 31 January 2010, so that you can review the discussion should you wish. At this point the Wiki and the data therein will be deleted from the online forum. This site has been chosen for its good reputation on a number of online blogs relating to setting up a wiki. The administrators of Wikidot have given an assurance that all the data from the Wiki including backups will be erased upon request to maintain confidentiality of the data on the Wikidot servers.

The only data collected in this research will be the transcript of the discussion forum hosted in the Wiki (https://quidfac.wikidot.com). Due to the technical skills required to set up and maintain the Wiki, the Student Researcher will administrate this site and the Principal Researcher will have Moderator rights. This will allow the Principal Researcher to remove data, should the request be made by participants at any stage.

At the end of the research process the Wiki will be deleted including the record of discussion. The data and identifiers will remain on the password protected computer of the Student Researcher and will be kept for a period not less than five years.

As all participants will know each other, the identities will not be concealed on the forum and due to the small sample size, confidentiality cannot be guaranteed. The participants will be referred to as Teachers A through to F in the thesis and in any subsequent discussion or papers. The only known subsequent publication of this material will be at the Classical Association of Victoria Teachers’ Wing Conference, March 2010. Within the limits of the law, the identity of the participants will not be revealed to other parties by the researchers.

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If in the course of participation in this online research, you feel at all uncomfortable or distressed by your participation, your own thoughts or the responses of others, you may withdraw yourself from the process at any time. You may wish to have part or all of your responses withdrawn from the data for this research; this will happen upon your withdrawal. This is your right and no explanation is required. Whilst it is not anticipated that this research will cause you any distress, you may wish to access Lifeline (13 11 14) should you require assistance.

If you wish to participate, please indicate your informed consent by providing your email address and dating the Informed Consent Form and returning it to the Principal Researcher, Karen Felstead, k.felstead@ballarat.edu.au.

Should you have any concerns about the conduct of this research, you may contact the Principal Researcher, Karen Felstead, University of Ballarat via email k.felstead@ballarat.edu.au or telephone her on 03 5327 6167 or you may wish to contact the Executive Officer, Human Research Ethics Committee, University of Ballarat, ph: (03) 5327 9765; fax (03) 5327 9602 I will be pleased to provide you with a copy of the final thesis as a pdf document once it has been submitted for assessment.

Yours sincerely

Mark Andrews Student Researcher

If you have any questions, or you would like further information regarding the project titled From Pergamum to Pallanteum: a look at the landscape of Latin teaching and learning. please contact the Principal Researcher, Karen Felstead of the School of Education: PH: 03 53276167 EMAIL: k.felstead@ballarat.edu.au Should you (i.e. the participant) have any concerns about the ethical conduct of this research project, please contact the University of Ballarat Ethics Officer, Research & Graduates Studies Office, University of Ballarat, PO Box 663, Mt Helen VIC 3353.

Telephone: (03) 5327 9765, Email: ub.ethics@ballarat.edu.au

CRICOS Provider Number 00103D

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Appendix C: Responses from the Forum The Literature Mark Andrews 8 Apr 2009, 22:14 +1000 Do you agree or disagree with the implications drawn by the student researcher from the literature as presented in the proposal?

Re: The Literature Teacher E 1 Aug 2009, 21:42 +1000 I entirely agree with the connections made.

I have little patience with psychological theory of any kind, but if some of these pseudo-intellectuals, whose devastating influence has been instrumental in reducing the capacity of a generation of learners to learn anything useful, have nevertheless created the stimulus for the work of the Nuffield Foundation in the 1960s to produce the Cambridge Latin Course, thus saving Latin and Classics from oblivion in the English speaking world, then I dare say that aspect of their influence has been good.

If, on the other hand, educational theory were to be grounded from a philosophical standpoint, then we would have an entirely different education system and an entirely different attitude to learning. This is very clear in the tortured language of these theorists which defies precise definition, but this is not the fault of the researcher, who has made a competent job of deriving meaning from the vocabulary of the pseudo-intellectuals.

That said, the implications drawn by the researcher seem to be the necessary ones, and the discussion of these is ellucidating and cogent.

Re: The Literature

Mark Andrews 23 Aug 2009, 16:54 +1000 From Krashen comes the idea of maximising understandable input. That is to say that, in the case of Latin, with frequent translation students will build a facility with the language. Do you think it is valid to transfer across this understanding of language acquisition from the modern language classroom into the classical language classroom?

Re: The Literature Teacher C 24 Aug 2009, 09:06 +1000 I am sure that the more students read, the more command of the language they acquire. That is why I have taught the CLC for so long, because the passages suit the interests of students at a particular age group, and by the end of Unit IV students read with considerable sophistication. I am equally sure that there is a transfer of understanding between modern and classical languages. Latin assists greatly with modern Romance languages, and I believe also with Japanese. A major part of the value of learning Latin in current society is the knowledge of linguistics that it fosters. Students find this fascinating, as well as enlightening. Every vocabulary lesson we push this aspect of language cross-referencing.

Re: The Literature Teacher C 24 Aug 2009, 11:30 +1000 Further to my comments on constant reading and the importance of semantics, the CLC Worksheet Masters have many exercises to help do this. They are intelligent and lively, such as comparing the numbers 1-10 in 6 languages, 5 of them Romance. Students love working them out from Latin.

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The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Mark Andrews 8 Apr 2009, 22:16 +1000 From your own experience, what do you agree with and what would you disagree with in the Proposal concerning suggested classroom practice?

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher E 1 Aug 2009, 21:23 +1000 Mark's discussion on classroom practice is excellent.

All the necessary bases have been covered. The use of computer technology places the study of Latin within a context that the children find acceptable, given the current culture of the young, and this is the kind of thing we need for Latin to continue as a necessary part of the Western curriculum.

I highly commend Mark's efforts.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 5 Aug 2009, 19:12 +1000 I admire the intensely analytical approach to translating, but have found that some students never master the finer points of grammar analysis, but translate really well in an intuitive way. I would not wish to block their intuitive flow by insisting on parsing prior to translating. I find that some students with excellent analysis skills translate in an over literal or stilted way, where other students find the exact modern equivalent for a Latin phrase. Often funny, or uncannily accurate.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 5 Aug 2009, 19:16 +1000 In regard to drilling verb and noun endings, some students find this boring, but never tire of me "testing" them orally on a one-to-one basis. It seems to motivate them that I go around the class listening to them individually, and it does wonders for the tardy ones.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher B 6 Aug 2009, 15:54 +1000 There is a tension in studying Latin between grammatical excellence and content appreciation and enjoyment. I know that some students may be able to do the both, but the reality I have found is that very few students find grammar intrinsically interesting and the extrinsic value is diminished for a nolonger spoken language. What students do find intrinsically interesting is the Romans - the ability to gain insight into an ancient culture that offers both a window on another world and insight into our own. to some students grammar is a means to this, but to many it is either a hindrance or a necessary evil. while teachers may get antsy because students can't recall the present subjunctive 3rd conjugation by heart it is a very rare student who finds this an issue. when teachers keep harping on grammatical excellence as a prerequisite for Latin all we do is turn otherwise keen students off. the grammar is a means to an end, not the end in itself. consequently tools which make grammar easier such as the Cambridge gizmo are welcome and are not the end of the world as some would have us think!

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Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher E 7 Aug 2009, 00:21 +1000 Quite so! Some, however, find it thrilling to identify aspects of syntax independently. The early days of CLC, especially first edition, allowed students to ask the necessary questions about the accidence. This way, they "discovered" the various systems of verb aspects and tenses, persons etc and were well motivated to systematise their experiences of adjectives and nouns. (real Chomsky stuff!!)The interesting thing which has emerged over the years is that people still interested in Latin who were students in the eighties, declare that they remember very little about the grammar/accidence/syntax. One of these was a colleague at my school who taught French and German, recalled loving Latin in her UK school but could barely remember syntax. Anecdotally, the causes may have had nothing to do with CLC. Back to Mark's paper, the use of the marking up technique seems to me to turn the CLC online window into a source for more technical activity. Students are encouraged by this to do some "traditional" accidence and syntax identifiction. In a classroom, the game has largely been to keep the students in there and learning. The Latin teacher has the worst (andbest) job in the school just to keep the class at all. That is the priority requirement, such is the nature of "education". Therefore,whatever works, goes.

My fellows receive"shock cakes" ( green cup cakes) when learning the third conjugation in year 8, because it is a "shocking" conjugation- a memnonic, not a method. (Skinner cannot be blamed!)

Marrying classroom practice to the theories of learning postulated by "the sophists" may have some point. If indeed the "behaviourists" informed Paterson and Mcnaughton which is still in use in some quarters, they were successful, because the material is excellent, so described because it has has had positive effects on learners. ( My younger son learnt with this as well as CLC in tandem. he declares it to have been a successful mix and suggests that modern languages could improve teaching techniques by emulating it. I think he means that modern language teaching is so intent upon avoiding adequate grammar explanations that it is seriously wanting in this respect.)

Obviously, my colleagues, we should conclude that successful practice is an eclectic mix of many styles and techniques. Bloom's taxonomy was "scripture" long ago, and using techniques based on Bloom is very successful, I have found over a long time. It appears to me, in a climate where the intrinsic disciplines of many studies are not understood or simply unknown, (geography, history being distinct disciplines)and knowledge has been redefined as a set of "skills" virtually devoid of specific subject matter, students like the security of tables and charts while they enjoy the motivating effect of narrative.

In short, they like a definite body of recognisable items to support them through their reading. CLC is predominantly about reading. The Cambridge Latin Grammar is a nice reference. Explanations are adequate with examples. Lists of common verbs in neat categories, and no plural for "unus"! are well set out for the young. The year 12 class finds it frustrating, so now we have a set of Kennedy.

A nearby school was about to pitch out a whole library of old Latin books and offered them to us. What a collection of gems we were given. Among them we found the "direct method" books "Principia" and "Pseudolus Noster." My own at home are precious so I leave them there but we have had lots of fun with selected extracts from this source. Direct Method gave students very effective control over using the langauge as a language. One notable proponent of this technique was Helen Gordon, long retired, from University High School who was also a Method lecturer at MU. Perhaps the tension we have over grammar derives from the changed nature of our task. The ability to write Latin - English to Latin - at VCE examination level was last tested as an option in the pre 1990 HSc examinations in Victoria. One needed a good grip on accidence and syntax to write four short sentences. Now that this requirement has disappeared, the accidence and syntax has become a more residual aspect of total time spent learning Latin. In the 1960s, there were two three hour Latin papers at matriculation level. It would be nice to believe that we are doing things more creatively now.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 7 Aug 2009, 09:17 +1000 I like Mark's combination of grammatical precision combined with modern gizmos and Fluffy. Keying into current fashion is important to link with students. I have always enjoyed the dialogues and colorful stories in the CLC which enable classroom plays. Getting students moving is important for kinesthetic learners, and improvising costumes and props is fun. The younger students enjoy making masks. the best of which I keep for all age levels to use.

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Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 7 Aug 2009, 09:21 +1000 Another technique for syntax is to structure a passage in such a way that groups of students work out the "rule" for themselves. I have used this for time phrases, and it generates some excitement; students seem to have a competitive streak, and love to be "first" to attain the goal.

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Mark Andrews 23 Aug 2009, 16:58 +1000 Given what Teacher B was saying regarding the need to balance excellence with turning students off, how important is it to have a viable study of Roman History and Culture alongside the linguistic study?

Does such study provide meaning and a context for the language work?

Re: The Suggestions for Classroom Practice Teacher C 24 Aug 2009, 11:25 +1000 Many students find background studies fascinating, and since keeping alive Western European ideas of the importance of individuals to society, rationality, justice, fortitude,etc is one of the major reasons for teaching classics, I cannot see how you could leave them out. It is impossible to read tracts on law, architecture, engineering etc except in translation, but films showing the mighty achievements of Greeks and Romans in terms of these things are essential. It also helps to link other curriculum areas such as Art. Our Classics Club has run a mosaics class with the ceramics teacher at lunchtime Term 1 for the past 3 years. Many students (about 20 a year, quite voluntarily) have enjoyed this activity.

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