Do you think you’re bad at Latin? Chances are you just need to rethink the way you’re learning. Take a look at our 10 top tips for people who think they’re really bad at Latin. Give them a go, and you might find it all becomes a lot more manageable!
1. Make links
The easiest way to learn vocabulary is to make mental links. This might be to words you know in English, like laboro and labour. It might be to words you know in other languages, like arbor and the French arbre. It could be completely mad links that just mean something to you. My Latin teacher in secondary school told us: ‘a tandem bicycle gets there at last’, and I still use that phrase to teach tandem twenty years later!
You could also use pictures. Make a picture sheet to go with your vocabulary: when you get set a list of vocabulary to learn, turn it into a sheet with pictures for every image as a clue. To practise, you can make a blank sheet with all the pictures on them, and then add the correct words in Latin and English.
2. Use colours
Make yourself a standard set of colours and codes for revising your grammar and then applying it in translations. For example, I use yellow for nominatives, and green for accusatives when I teach. You can highlight the nominative and accusative endings in those colours when you learn a new noun, pronoun, or adjective, and then use them when you’re doing a passage, too. For example:
3. Practise English to Latin
It’s one thing learning to read Latin sentences, which are often straightforward to begin with. To be able to understand how the language really works, you ought to have a go at translating the other way round. Don’t skip those exercises just because you think they’re hard!
4. Use Quizlet
Quizlet is one of the best resources for learning vocabulary and grammar endings. You can make your own online flashcards, or use one of the many sets already there. The best thing about it is that you can just revise a few words any time you have your phone and nothing else to do. Try it on the bus, or even on the loo!
5. Play games and quizzes
You can play loads of online quizzes using Quizizz or Kahoot. They are excellent for improving recall, but fun at the same time. You could also turn your grammar tables into cards, where you have to put them into the right order, or create sentences out of words. There are some great games at Legonium. estne bos in templo? is a favourite of mine! You can try harder games, too, like Latin Scrabble!
6. Find a study buddy
Having someone to test you on your Latin is really useful. Sometimes this might be a parent, but that can be tricky if they never did Latin themselves. In that case, ask a sibling or a friend. You can test each other, especially on vocabulary. Even better, get into a group, buy yourself a Roman rubber duck, and play the great game of ‘catch the duck’. Whoever gets thrown the duck has to answer the next vocabulary question.
7. Read lots of stories
if you read lots of stories in English about the Romans and their myths, you’ll quickly find you are much more likely to know the famous incidents that come up in translation passages. It won’t help with the Latin per se, but you’ll have a much better context and idea about what’s going on, and that always makes things less confusing!
8. Work on your memory
You can improve your memory in the abstract, and it will help your Latin. Play old games like ‘how many objects can you remember from a tray’. Instead of a tray, you can use a picture sheet like the one below. Another good one is ‘Mrs Brown went to town’. The first player starts the game by saying, “Mrs Brown went to town and she bought a ____,” identifying an item she would buy. The second player continues, “Mrs Brown went to town and she bought a (names the first player’s item) and a ___ (adding a new item to the list).” You could even learn poetry off by heart. All of this will help with Latin memorizing, too.
9. Read aloud
Reading Latin aloud may make you feel silly, but it’s an excellent way to make sure that you have grasped every single bit of every word. If you miss the middle, you might get the tense of a verb wrong. If you miss the ending, you might confuse the nominative noun with the accusative. Too many students also lose marks for missing out whole words or sentences! This is also a good technique for improving your reading accuracy in other languages. It may make Latin more straightforward if you are dyslexic, as it helps with breaking down every word.
Don’t worry too much about pronunciation, though it helps to get sounds like -i (pronounced ee) and -ae (pronounced like eye) the right way round. Principally, this is about accuracy.
Reciting tables with a steady rhythm may be old-fashioned, but it’s also invaluable.
10. Work hard, work smart
I know, it sounds so stupid, but it’s partly about working hard, and partly about working smart. Latin is not an easy language. You need to have the building blocks in place. Ten minutes a day, learning vocabulary or grammar endings, or practising with exercises, will be better than one big chunk of Latin revision just before your lesson! Make sure you always look back at a topic before the next lesson so that you can move forward each time.
Need more help?
If you struggle with Latin, just a few 1:1 lessons may help you turn the corner. It can be much easier to ask a tutor to explain something than to put your hand up in class. Vox Clara Tutoring offers specialist 1:1 tuition in Latin and Greek. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about how we can help.