Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Latin: The Oxford Latin Course 3-Volume Set

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To use this course for independent study, one really needs the corresponding series of teachers guides (Oxford Latin Course: Teacher's Book (part one, two, etc.) for comments, explanations, keys to exercises.

We are using the Oxford series for homeschooling. My eight-year-old twins enjoy the stories and have easily learned to read and translate Latin with the series. They particularly like the focus on Horace as a child and the historical lessons that are attached. As a teacher I found it easy to use, but a background in language and a working knowledge of Latin helps if you are going to use it to teach younger students.

I am a historian who uses Latin on a daily basis -- I learned it the old-fashioned way -- with Wheelock. My son is learning Latin at the sixth-grade level and has made great progress using this series -- which seems to me to be the age level they are best for. If I were teaching high school or college Latin this would NOT be my series of choice. But my son has just finished the first book (I'm buying the second one today for summer study) and has a pretty good knowledge of nouns, adjectives, all four conjugations in the present, future and imperfect tense, some present tense irregular verbs, and knows to be careful with prepositions. He's also got a pretty good understanding of Roman mythology, and domestic life thanks to this series.

I had never had any interest in learning Latin, although languages and grammar come easily to me and are enjoyable. I picked up the first part of the Oxford First Latin Course and flipped through it only because its design was so appealing. I found the curriculum so well organized and accessible that it seduced me into learning Latin, a hobby I'm continuing to pursue through the whole excellent series. It's so well designed that one can slide through it almost effortlessly. Wonderful.

I took a latin course for both Part one and two of this book. It was extremely chalenging and the book would've been almost useless without a teacher. Also, the cartoons (which are not drawn very well) get a tad dry with the never-ending "Cena Parata est!"

This book is rather bipolar in its usefullness. It is nice (though often annoying) that it does make things easy on the user by using easy stories. "Quintus goes to the pub" will allow you to concentrate on the language and not the complex meaning of the story. Furthermore, it allows for a sort of "catch up" phase in that every four chapters or so there is a chapter in which nothing new is introduced. A time to really concentrate on what you are suppose to have learned. These are its good points.

This will sound trivial but still bothers me a year after having finished this book...the art is wretched. Who drew these pictures? People often are drawn without arms or legs and switch shades of colors between images that are directly beside on another. And never (NEVER) look into the background. Whoever did draw these books not only had little skill in art, but had no knowledge of Roman life. Secondly, the book has this "tell you later" aspect. They allow little things to pop up here and ther and then explain them in the next chapter. Sure, some will say that this is a good way to slowly move into the grammer, but it does you no good to see a word and have no idea whatsoever to do with it. Beyond this, often when they do explain things they do so in a small context. "A" is used for 1. And you shall go on like that for some time before they tell you "A" is used also for 2 & 4, which up until this point we have been using "B." Later, we learn that "B" is the exact same but they cared not to let us in on that little fact. Of course, maybe they don't want to push too much on us, which is a fair argument. But, then, they should put annotations to further chapters so that if we want to we may look further ahead to gain, no understanding, but context. The book also, has its fair share of mistakes, which you will may not realize and which then may really hinder your learning.

So, the book has its good and bad points. Overall I think it is a good book to learn with, but it definately could be revised and some of these problems fixed.

These four books make a great introductory course. They many not be the easiest, by any means, but they are far and away one of the best and most rewarding. While on one level it is definitely a "reading course" (i.e., it has you reading extended narrative prose from the very beginning) it really does combine the best of the modern and traditional approaches. The course develops reading skills as much as any "inductive" textbook (even one at the end of the spectrum like Cambridge Latin Course), and yet it teaches grammar explicitly and from the very beginning. Furthermore the grammar is presented in manageable amounts (though not in dribs and drabs), and authors tend to present things in a more sensible sequence than a strictly traditional textbook. Thus someone who finishes this course will have very strong reading skills and yet will have as solid an understanding of grammar and syntax as someone who has used an old-fashioned grammar-translation textbook like Wheelock.

The premise of the course, which follows the life of the Roman poet Horace, is absolutely brilliant. We know a fair amount about the personal life of Horace through his Satires and Odes, and Horace lived through (and was even an active participant in) some of the most interesting events in Roman history. Hence, the entire course breaths Roman history. Also, the Latin of the narrative passages -- almost from the very beginning -- feels like real Latin (much more so than almost any beginning Latin book), and at times can be quite lovely. Book III (the last third of course that presents basic Latin grammar and syntax) introduces extended excerpts from the poetry of Horace and Vergil. This is a bit of a stretch for the beginner, but it's well worth the effort. Someone who has completed this course, unlike most other textbook, will have had some significant contact with the grandeur of Roman literature.

The Reader (the fourth book in the series) is a bit of a stretch for beginning students. There are no long marks (though an argument can be made that this is a good time to dispense with them), and the selection of authors, on whole, is a bit tough (Caesar being by far the easiest). An easier author like Eutropius or Nepos might have been a good addition to this reader (of course, it could be supplemented with War with Hannibal: Authentic Latin Prose for the Beginning Student or Cornelius Nepos: Three Lives -- Alcibiades, Dion, Atticus, or the like). On the other hand, perhaps the students' exposure to Horace and Vergil in Book III prepares them for the tougher literature.

There is also a very good teacher's manual that gives both historical background to each chapter (remember this course is absolutely saturated with Roman history!) as well as a full answer key to the exercises and reading passages. This would make the course very user-friendly for the independent learner.

I am happy with the Oxford Latin course because you learn the language through interesting stories as opposed to repetitive exercises that can sometimes be boring.

I use this book for may Elementary Latin 2 course. The professor teaches straight out of this workbook. I enjoy the cultural section of each chapter, as it gives a bit of history of Rome as it pertains to the latin vocabulary and concepts just learned in the section. The illustrations are terrible, but kind of funny because they are so bad. One has to assume that they are intentionally drawn badly.

While this book is excellent in teaching grammar and vocabulary, some phrases are repeated over and over and over again. It seems that, in a span of 4 chapters, the same phrase was used 5 times. However, the passages are a great help in learning latin, why? Because they progressively become harder and use concepts learned in previous lessons, not letting them get stored in the back of one's mind. I do reccomend this book for anyone who wishes to learn latin.