Customer Reviews

Vocabulary Cards and Grammatical Forms Summary for Wheelock's Latin

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was quite disappointed in this product.

The information on these cards is perfectly valid and useful in that they match the progression of the Wheelock chapters. These cards come in a book form with 10 perforated cards to a page. There are about 86 pages of cards total. You have to tear out each edge of every card and build two box bottoms and two box tops to hold the cards. This was a very time-consuming process. It took me about two hours to assemble the first box of cards.

This would be acceptable to me if the paper were not of a very low quality. The flimsy and course-grained paper is easy to tear in the wrong direction when separating the perforations. The box top and bottom templates are also made of thin paper not well suited to constructing a box. Also, the cards fit poorly in the box. There is a lot of room in the box, and the box will crush easily. Lastly, the flimsy cards have a fuzzy perforated edge around them, so that when you flip through them, they tend to stick together.

These cards area good idea, but physically they are executed very poorly.

When picking up Latin again I went rather crazy with impulse buys, and this was one of them. It's also the only buy I regret thus far, the 501 Latin Verbs was worth it, the cumulative chapter vocab lists for wheelock's was too, and this seemed like a great idea but it wasn't.

The quality is exceedingly poor, not to mention their laughable attempt at a build-it-yourself storage box for the cards. When you tear the cards apart the edges make shuffling them somewhat difficult, and they're just messy looking. It also dawned on me that the idea of how to fix this product is incredibly simple.

Why not just sell a box of pre-cut vocabulary cards, last time I took Latin someone gave me such a box as a gift, though sadly I have no idea what happened to them, they were acurately cut and came in a sturdy storage box.

My other gripe with these cards is that they include the vocab from the chapter lists but not the other vocab found throughout the chapter such as "Quod Agis Hodie?" (How are you today?)

My advice, save your money, make your own flashcards, you'll learn more that way anyway.

Despite all the reviews here about shoddy construction, I bought this set of vocabulary cards. Since I already knew about the cheap paper boxes, I devised a plan - I laminated the box sheets before assembling them. That made them much stronger. When tearing the cards apart, you have to crease them first. I was able to separate the cards with only a couple of difficult spots. I separated the cards and assembled the boxes in less than an hour with my sister's help.

The cards themselves are well laid out and have all the information you need. They are easily used to study Latin-to-English and English-to-Latin.

I read the two reviews available at the time, so I must say I was warned. I should have paid more attention to the "Latin Student" review about the poor quality. I will not repeat them all, but I concur on every point. The physical quality of this product is very, very low.
The content of the product is a good idea. The publishers/editors should completely remake them and abandon the whole format that requires tearing apart cards and assembling flimsy boxes. They then should offer the new product at a very low price for those of us who wish to trade in this version.

As the other reviewers point out, this is a good concept with very poor execution.

A better investment of your time and money is a box of Avery microperf business cards. Buy the business cards, download their free template, type the key verbs and nouns as you need into the template, then print and easily snap apart. Any business card box will hold your cards and they'll last you for years.

One would think that vocab cards - would be "cards". But noooooo, these "cards" as advertised were not cards at all but slightly (and poorly) perforated cards in pages in a book that you get the privilege of tearing out yourself at the cost of several hours of tearing, trimming and sorting. I have Greek vocab cards, Hebrew vocab cards and have seen vocab cards for most modern languages - all in card form. Amazing. But not Wheelock's Latin cards. They are in a book, not readily usable and a time consuming pain to manually tear out and put into usable form. Of all the products I have ever purchased from Amazon and their partner vendors, this is by far the worst advertised and biggest rip-off product I have ever purchased. Let the buyer beware (or caveat emptor for those learning Latin) this product is not at all what's advertised!

The "cards" match Wheelock, and should work great for their designed purpose. However, the individuals who approved these for production and sale at the publisher, Bolchazy-Carducci, should be horsewhipped or complained about to the FTC for calling these cards. Doubtlessly one of their slick, sharpie bean-counters got a promotion for figuring out to sell cards in cheap book form. What you get for your money is a book of bleached pulp paper that is perforated to be torn into cards. This doesn't even qualify as being card stock (which it should be if they are supposed to be cards, right?). This is merely heavy pulp paper that is only slightly thicker than that which is used to make colouring books for crayons out of. Be prepared to spend up to 8 hours tearing the "cards" apart along the perforations. (This was not a fun task as I have diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome.) Even if you decide to save time by cutting the cards with scissors or a papercutter, you still have to prefold them if you want to see where to cut along the perforations. The "boxes" are separate pages that must be cut and folded a la 2nd or 3rd grade paper assembly projects. These pages are not any thicker than the ones that constitute the "cards," so the "box" that you will have assembled by the time you are done is made of flimsy paper. Be prepared to guard this box to keep it from being easily crushed. Don't expect it to survive very long in your backpack without ending up with a total mess of loose "cards" floating around in there that will be time consuming to gather up. Come on, Bolchazy, how much more would it have cost you to have mechanical paper cutters slice these cards up on your mechanized assembly line? Probably next to nothing. How much to have mechanical box-making equipment assemble real boxes for these...probably not much more in cost. But, most critically, you didn't want to spring for the card stock, though, did you? Don't expect me to buy any more products anytime soon with your name on them. Captive market here, eh, because the students should have the cards to get good grades right? Amazon did a great job of sending me these quickly, but the publisher gets an "F" for this assignment. I doubt my local used book store will be interested in buying these "crude" cards from me for resale when the course is over. Sheesh.

Before buying this product I read a number of negative reviews about it. Most of which talked about the poor quality of the paper used for the cards, how the cards themselves tore easily. As for the provided box to hold the cards in I agree that it is useless, but the cards themselves have been quite a help in my studies. The cards are fine as long as you have a decent box to put them in to keep them from getting smashed or torn.

Toss out the box and the whining (smile)! These cards are excellent when laminated with 54 by 86 mm Laminating Pouches!

I trimmed off about 2 mm in length and they fit perfectly in the pouches. When you use the laminator alternate where you insert the pouches so the heat will distribute evenly away from heated rollers. I put one pouch in the middle and let it run completely through, then I insert two pouches, one to the far right and I let it run about halfway through, then the second one to the far left, when these are laminated go back to one pouch through the middle and so forth and so on. Also, let them cool down on a towel or some other like material seperate from one another, don't stack them right after they have been laminated.

I carry these flashcards with me everywhere (sic), and I'm always able to stay ubdated with the vocabulary and after being laminated they will last a lifetime. You can continue to build your vocabulary with new flashcards by using a Microsoft Word Document with ten frames per page, Latin on one side English on the other, adding sample sentences, idioms etc. if you wish, then just cut them out and laminate.

Of course you can also laminate the fifteen pages of Grammatical Forms Summary that come with the cards for handy reference.

Listen, use some elbow grease and build a solid foundation right from the beginning and laminate these cards so they will last and always be handy.

Good luck!
Gonzo,

Dough one could of course have wished for better paper quality etc., it doesn't really matter. They'll easily take the kind of abuse which results from ordinary use; and, besides, you shouldn't really care how the cards look once you're through with them anyway: their purpose is simply to allow you to increase your Latin vocabulary - not to become heirlooms.