June 2024 has seen the launch of the first of our completely independent online Latin courses, which offer a more affordable and flexible alternative to live online tutoring. Starting with Beginners’ Latin 1, for complete beginners, learners can now enrol in a ten-unit course that mirrors the experience of our online tutoring by means of videos, handouts, exercises, and quizzes.
What’s in the course?
In the first of these courses, we cover all the basics of Latin grammar and vocabulary, up to the point of being able to translate a passage of Latin text. If you’re a complete beginner, this first course will introduce you to the nature of an inflected language, how you recognize the person and tense of verbs, and how the cases of Latin nouns function in sentences.
Who is it for?
While the course is suitable for English speakers of any age and from any country, it follows the vocabulary requirements of the OCR GCSE course, and can therefore begin to prepare school pupils beginning Latin for the first time, as well as offering a revision option for pupils in Key Stage 3. However, the course functions entirely independently, and therefore would suit home-educated pupils and university students who haven’t had the chance to learn Latin at school or who require basic Latin for graduate studies. It would also suit adult learners who want to learn an ancient language for fun.
How does it work?
For each lesson, you’ll find a series of short videos to watch, filmed by one of Vox Clara Tutoring’s tutors. In each section, you’ll be taken through new points of grammar and vocabulary, assisted through worked examples, and given the chance to pause the video to complete exercises on your own before the answers are explained to you. At the end of each section of a lesson, you’ll be able to reinforce and confirm your learning using self-marking quizzes. At the end of each lesson, there are further exercises to complete on your own, with an answer key for checking your work.
Why choose an independent online Latin course?
So why do an independent online course rather than having lessons with a 1:1 tutor? Well, here are just a few reasons!
Affordability
Well to begin with, it’s more affordable. While we have always endeavoured to make Classics as accessible to all as we are able to, we know that paying for 1:1 lessons is an expensive option. To cover the equivalent amount of learning as a 10-lesson online course in a 1:1 setting would cost a minimum of £400, and to reinforce it to the extent you can do with the online course might set you back twice that. At only £99.99, a 10-week online course is, frankly, a bargain! Furthermore, our courses supply all resources you’ll need, so there’s no need to pay for textbooks either.
Flexibility
An independent online course is also far more flexible than tutoring. Rather than needing to commit to an hour each week before or after school or work, you can complete the independent online course whenever you have some free time, with some sections taking as little as 15 minutes to complete. If you need to take a break from your learning, you can go back as many times as you like to catch up on previous learning, and, of course, it won’t cost you any more to do so. Enrolling in a course gives you lifetime access, so you can even do the whole course again if your learning lapses.
Accessibility
We’re also aware that for much of the year, our tutors may be running a waiting list. There are not a lot of Latin tutors out there who have the level of experience and expertise that Vox Clara Tutoring offers, and our spaces fill up fast, especially for popular after-school and weekend slots. With our online courses, we hope that our teaching can reach even more people.
We also hear from pupils whose learning needs make face-to-face tutoring too daunting. We hope that our independent online courses may be suitable for anyone who finds the idea of 1:1 learning a challenge.
Compatibility
And finally, the online courses don’t need to be separated from 1:1 tutoring. You might like to do an online course alongside tutoring, or you may like to arrange some tutoring to consolidate or continue your learning once you have completed an online course. Current students of any of Vox Clara’s tutors can request a code from their tutors to receive 50% off the price of an online course.
More to come!
While at the time of writing, only the first of our Latin courses is available, the second is already well underway, and will launch in summer 2024. We will also be adding courses in Classical Greek, so watch this space. If you have a particular course you think we should be offering, you can email us to let us know, and we’ll see what we can do.