When I first began to learn latin many years ago the highlighter pen had not been invented, If it had I would have believed that highlighting vocabulary would have resulted in the information traveling up my arm into my head.
I believed that you listened to the teacher and went home and did your homework and hey presto! you would remember your vocabulary. It never worked but many of my classmates remembered everything. I watched them in awe and thought they must be very clever.
It was years before I understand that these things had to be worked at. There was a way to learn and recall and that was by using what is known as “ACTIVE RECALL”
Active Recall as a method is particularly useful in Latin language learning, as it strengthens long-term retention and helps you become more confident in your ability to remember vocabulary, grammar rules, and expressions.
You can read this and listen to the audio.
Study Routine for studying Latin
- Work with a pen and paper.
- Listen to the audio of the lesson.
- Play the audio through from start to finish in order to get used to the sounds. After a few lessons you will be able to recognise Latin words you learned in previous lessons. Focus on the recording to see how much you remember.
- Now begin the lesson for real.
- Go through the lesson making sure you understand what the lesson teaches you.
- Read the vocabulary making sure your pronunciation is correct.
- Now you must write all your lesson out as you speak it.
- You should now have a foundational understanding of the lesson.
- Question and Answer Self-Testing: Write out some questions for yourself such as “How do I say: ‘I am a farmer’ in Latin. Or what is the Latin word for ‘water’. Check your work for mistakes. This will alert you to anything your don’t know. This will help you retrieve information from your mind.
- Make your own flash cards that you can carry with you. The Latin word on one side and English translation on the other. This can be done for vocabulary and also for grammar. Little sentences are a great help for practicing Latin usage. The sentence method has a huge positive learning support as it makes you learn how to use the Latin word in context.
- Teach your lesson: This method has you go through your lesson pretending you are the teacher. Explain the lesson and all you have learned to an imaginary person.
- Cover and Recite: Write out your own vocabulary lists with Latin words on one side and English on the other. Cover the English and work your way down the list of Latin words and recite the translation from memory.
- Chant, Chant, Chant: There is no avoiding this one. To learn Latin you must chant your latin conjugations and your Latin declensions.
If you follow these steps you will actively engage with the material rather than just reviewing it passively.
Active recall encourages you to take ownership of your learning, helping you retain information long-term and gain confidence in using Latin independently.