An Electronic Reading
Card for Latin

Daniel V. McCaffrey (Randolph-Macon College)

Many of the first researchers who applied technology to reading were most interested in the speed of reading. Their first device was a tachistoscope which flashed an image or a word on a screen for a set length of time, down to some hundredths of a second. It was soon adapted to force readers to read at a faster rate than usual until that became their new norm.

The reading specialist Evelyn Wood developed a number of tools which would scroll through a text and carry the reader along at increasing speeds. Among these was a large card which had a sizable notch removed from the upper left corner. As the reader moved the card through a text, they learned to focus on the new material entering the sentence. They had little time for rereading and no opportunity to skip ahead. Students would then learn how to quickly incorporate each new word or phrase into the earlier parts of the sentence.

While Latin reading instruction has never stressed speed reading over accuracy of comprehension, the reading card proved very adaptable to the goals of reading Latin The card focuses the reader’s attention on the new information which must be incorporated with the old. With each successive word the reader is taught to ask a series of question. The first question, “What do I see?” directs the reader to identify the part of speech and morphological information of the new word. The second question, “Therefore what do I have?” directs the reader to fit the new word into the structure and expectations of earlier part of the sentence. The third question, “What do I expect?” directs the reader to define the revised structure and expectations of the developing sentence after this new word has been added. Then the card is advanced and the process is repeated with the next word and the revised sentence start. As the reader becomes more fluent, they may begin to process a sentence in larger contiguous units than the single word.

Modern technology allows a teacher to down load a text to their computer, edit it and project it onto a white board or Smart Board in the classroom. I have written a macro for Microsoft Word which enables the teacher to reveal that text one word at a time. The technology gives the teacher the chance to model the correct procedure for reading progressively in the Latin order. The teacher can also make the students to follow those procedures without recourse to notes in their book, a written translation or the remaining words in the sentence.

Research into the strategies for resolving the ambiguities of Latin noun forms has shown that the practice of jumping ahead to find the verb actually makes it harder to read a Latin sentence than the practice of looking back and making use of all the information already present in the sentence. The electronic reading card enforces reading in the Latin word order and allows the teacher to model and the students to practice reading in this way.

The presentation will discuss this background of the electronic reading card and the importance of reading in Latin word order. The main part of the presentation will show how to record this macro and then will model its use in the classroom to understand a passage of complicated Latin.