Animating the complex Latin sentence: better comprehension through visual experience of the interplay between syntax and style

Donka D. Markus (University of Michigan)

Visual aids which break down long Latin sentences into manageable segments have proven to be effective in training students to read faster and with better comprehension. These aids, as applied by Pavur (Latin Acceleration Readers), Cerutti (Structural Analysis of Pro Archia Poeta Oratio) and, most recently, in the Visual Syntactic Text Formatting (Walker et al.) for on-line readers of English, have established themselves as very effective. All of these tools, however, represent the broken up text as a frozen artifact. The purpose of this paper is to share my experience of teaching Cicero through in-class modeling of the dynamics of sentence break-up and through video files which enable students to master the process outside the class-room.

The software that I use (Camtasia and SnapZ) is being applied in many fields for training targeted skills, and has been applied to the field of Classics by Antony Hollingsworth. In this paper, I focus on the potential of this technology for helping students make the transition to the reading of original prose texts (famously rife with long periods) faster and more enjoyable.

Teaching students how to break up texts on their own has the advantage of making them independent readers rather than simply consumers of pre-formatted texts. I advocate two principles: 1) The break up along clause boundary lines which holds the key to stylistic features across clauses; 2) keeping the integrity of syntactically coherent units (chunks) which makes stylistic features on the phrase level easier to see. These two principles allow students to appreciate the dynamic unfolding of the sentence with its multi-layered stylistic, visual and vocal impact.

The sentence break-up divides up the sentence in such a way that the features of style in the entire sentence become simultaneously visible. Patterns of symmetry emerge which were impossible to see in a flatly formatted text. Thus, students experience the ancient text as it was intended, i.e. as textus, a fabric of patterns, threads and seams which combine to create a tight, meaningful and enjoyable whole. The approach not only improves comprehension of the long and convoluted period, but also enhances students’ ability to see the intricate pattern of stylistic features both on the macro and on the micro level.

Although the modeling can and should occur ‘live’ in the class-room, supplemental video files prove helpful for students with a slower learning curve and are also indispensable for effective review. The animated files have high potential as supplementary materials that help students internalize not only the final outcome of the reading, but also the processes and the procedures that experienced readers/listeners of such texts unconsciously deploy. These procedures are verbalized in the explanations that accompany the visual component as a simultaneously unfolding sound-files.

My experience of using this approach for the last 3 years has been that students learn to read the original Latin text faster and become more sensitive to features of style in a shorter span of time. The approach, now supplemented with the use of video files makes the complex structure of the Latin sentence more accessible, more enjoyable and more appealing because students can study their Cicero in depth and experience the gradual unfolding of a long sentence with its intricate patterns off their lap-tops or video-capable iPods.