REASSESSING LATIN PEDAGOGY: A PROPOSED MODEL FOR SOUTH AFRICAN LEARNERS

Abstract

At present two models of instruction predominate the scene ofmainstream 21st century Latin pedagogy. The first, commonly knownas the ‘philological model’ or ‘grammar-and-translation’ method, hasbeen prevalent since the early days of classical scholarship and stillforms the basis of methodology at most South African universities.During the past two decades the second, the so-called ‘livinglanguage’ method, has become popular in schools and universitiesacross the United States. Both methodologies are examined andevaluated in this article. Based on this short overview of Latinpedagogy, a model is then proposed to accommodate generation Ystudents of Latin at South African universities utilising both the‘living language’ method and the ‘flipped class-room’ approach.Since the student profile of the North West University has changeddramatically over the past few years to include an ever increasingnumber of distance students, the challenge has been to accommodatethe needs of these students without sacrificing the preferred approachor method. Excerpts taken from a learning management system,1developed for the Oxford Latin Course and aimed at distancestudents, will finally illustrate how the learning of these students isfacilitated. The LMS in question is also aimed at secondary schoollearners who are keen to follow an online Latin course.