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Cambridge Latin Course, Unit 4, 3rd Edition
Keep the excitement of learning going. . . . Unit 3 and Unit 4 of the Third Edition of the Cambridge Latin Course continue the stimulating, historically accurate story line of Units 1 and 2. They are wholly compatible with the new Fourth Edition Units 1 and 2 and
416 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 13, 2018
The conclusion of the CLC curriculum, and certainly the strangest.
The first part of the book continues the loose narrative of the previous three Units; the second is essentially a completely disorganized anthology of Latin literature.
The original passages are, I have determined through classroom experiments, far too easy for 4th and 5th year Latin students (after all, the book is designed for the 3rd year). They introduce the last few major grammatical concepts, e.g. gerunds/gerundives, just as these topics are introduced at the end of Wheelock's. However, once the narrative ends, the book abruptly moves into poetry and prose ranging from Dido and Aeneas to Romulus and Remus, from Icarus to Lesbia. There is no organization whatsoever. At least the second volume of Lingua Latina had the city of Rome as the urbs aeterna as its organizing principle. Furthermore, this anthology is not presented in the proper order of difficulty. Catullus should precede Ovid; Livy should probably precede Vergil, etc.
A couple of other minor complaints about the book:
1) Very little grammatical support is provided for the unadapted poetry and prose, which makes the reading difficult when idioms, ellipses, and other oddities appear. High school students would normally be reading these texts with commentaries; there are none here.
2) The historical/cultural writeups become much, much shorter in the unadapted chapters.
3) The grammatical instruction seems to lose focus completely. The latter chapters include little more than mentions of the poetic plural and alternative perfect and passive forms rather than introducing more of the common case usages (double dative, subject/objective genitive, genitive of characteristic, etc.). It is much easier to say that "-ēre" and "-ērunt" are equivalent when one encounters it in the wild for the first time than to go into detail about all the types of genitives when the students are reading real Latin with only half of them learned. To point to an analogous vocabulary example, the numbers from eleven to nineteen are irrelevantly and inexplicable tacked onto the very last lesson of the course. What the heck?
Let me remind the reader that these are actually relatively minor. The curriculum as a whole is still excellent, including this fourth unit. And the CLC is not the only Latin textbook series that seems to peter out at the end, like this review.
The first part of the book continues the loose narrative of the previous three Units; the second is essentially a completely disorganized anthology of Latin literature.
The original passages are, I have determined through classroom experiments, far too easy for 4th and 5th year Latin students (after all, the book is designed for the 3rd year). They introduce the last few major grammatical concepts, e.g. gerunds/gerundives, just as these topics are introduced at the end of Wheelock's. However, once the narrative ends, the book abruptly moves into poetry and prose ranging from Dido and Aeneas to Romulus and Remus, from Icarus to Lesbia. There is no organization whatsoever. At least the second volume of Lingua Latina had the city of Rome as the urbs aeterna as its organizing principle. Furthermore, this anthology is not presented in the proper order of difficulty. Catullus should precede Ovid; Livy should probably precede Vergil, etc.
A couple of other minor complaints about the book:
1) Very little grammatical support is provided for the unadapted poetry and prose, which makes the reading difficult when idioms, ellipses, and other oddities appear. High school students would normally be reading these texts with commentaries; there are none here.
2) The historical/cultural writeups become much, much shorter in the unadapted chapters.
3) The grammatical instruction seems to lose focus completely. The latter chapters include little more than mentions of the poetic plural and alternative perfect and passive forms rather than introducing more of the common case usages (double dative, subject/objective genitive, genitive of characteristic, etc.). It is much easier to say that "-ēre" and "-ērunt" are equivalent when one encounters it in the wild for the first time than to go into detail about all the types of genitives when the students are reading real Latin with only half of them learned. To point to an analogous vocabulary example, the numbers from eleven to nineteen are irrelevantly and inexplicable tacked onto the very last lesson of the course. What the heck?
Let me remind the reader that these are actually relatively minor. The curriculum as a whole is still excellent, including this fourth unit. And the CLC is not the only Latin textbook series that seems to peter out at the end, like this review.
July 27, 2017
The end of this series winds up the story from the preceding 3 volumes (in the first six chapters) and then continues with readings quoted or closely based on Roman Literature (at least several of which were clear sources of inspiration for the stories of the first 40 units), including Catullus, Vergil, Ovid, Petronius, Martial, and Pliny the Younger.
The student who completes the series will be able to move right into the Aeneid or the Gallic Wars (or comparable lit.) without much difficulty (ref. dictionary and grammar)
Grammar continues to be on the light side, an accompanying grammar will help a lot.
The student who completes the series will be able to move right into the Aeneid or the Gallic Wars (or comparable lit.) without much difficulty (ref. dictionary and grammar)
Grammar continues to be on the light side, an accompanying grammar will help a lot.
May 25, 2012
I spend a good deal of my day as a high school Latin teacher using this text. The first half concludes the series and introduces some grammar including indirect statements. The second half provides annotated excerpts from classical authors. Some excerpts are well chosen - those by Petronius (heavily adapted) and Catullus (unadapted) but others are odd choices.
March 3, 2017
Finally, exposing students to authentic Latin literature. Found it kind of weird there was a Salvius story in there, too. It took me so long to get through this book only because I don't teach out of it when my students reach Latin IV.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews