If You've Got It, Use It: Taking Advantage of Existing Technologies to Better Teach Latin Vocabulary

John Muccigrosso (Drew University)

We may finally be at the point where computing technology lives up to the hype we are long accustomed to hearing.

For learning vocabulary—an area in which the kind of rote work computers are good at is typically found— computers have long been used to help students via flash-card-type applications. But more sophisticated software has emerged that improves upon this traditional method. These newer applications apply lessons from research in learning and cognition to present students with the "cards" they need to see the most, gradually dropping those items the students have learned.

In addition, various electronic dictionaries can be accessed directly and nearly seamlessly by students when they need them. On-line resources can be similarly accessed, thanks to the near ubiquity of internet connectivity, and a smattering of features found in the newest versions of popular computer operating systems can make such access a regular part of students' reading of Latin—without any extra work in preparing their texts.

Combine with these kinds of programs easily available electronic texts, text-related tools, inexpensive (free, even!) file sharing, and on-line communities, and the result is a wealth of opportunity for implementing further improvements into the teaching of Latin, and for further uniting the growing number of Latin teachers and learnings throughout North America and the world.

The first part of this paper will survey examples of all of the above, including several tools developed by the presenter, and freely available on line.

The paper will conclude by taking some stock of the current state of affairs with respect to vocabulary acquisition in Latin paedagogy, and ask whether it might be time for some cooperative change both in our textbooks and national testing regimes. It has been many decades now that we have had good information about vocabulary usage frequencies (along with similar data about syntactic structures), and we may well wonder what affect this has had upon the teaching and learning of Latin. Are students studying the most useful material? Are we testing them appropriately? Can we apply this technology we are increasingly using to more successful teaching of Latin?