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GCSE Latin

Hi all,

I was just wondering if anyone on TSR did Latin GCSE. I'm about to start Year 11 and was hoping for advice on effective revision strategies, particularly for learning the complicated tenses.

Thanks in advance,

Banana

(edited 8 years ago)

Bump.

I did GCSE Latin!

I was terrible at it. Utterly terrible.

I can't be of much help I'm afraid XD somehow scraped an A* in the unseen translation, though. I think the trick in that exam is to try to remember as many definitions as possible without going into much detail of conjugations - quantity not quality - to maximise your chances of figuring out what the hell's going on in the story, thus staggering your way through the finer points of the translation.

I got a U in the poetry exam, however, which in theory should be the easier section as it it literally just a matter of memorising the translation and themes.

Reply 3

Banana00

Original post by sjgriffiths

Okay, thank you :smile:

Reply 4

martin7

I took GCSE Latin in 1989, after 5 years of studying it (starting at age 11).

You don't say how long you've been learning it, and I obviously have no idea of how it is taught these days; but when I did it, we covered all of the indicative mood in the first two years, and then the subjunctive and participles etc were covered in years 3 and 4.

So to some extent, I'd say (perhaps not very helpfully) that I'd expect you to know this before entering year 11.

Of course, if you've only been studying Latin for 2 years at this point, then it's rather different.

Things are not as daunting as they might appear, though; the 1st and 2nd conjugations are rather similar to each other; as are the 3rd and 4th. The perfect, future perfect, and pluperfect tenses are all formed in the same way; you just need to know the principal parts of the verb to do this. Please tell me you do actually learn the 4 principal parts for each verb (e.g. amo, amare,amavi, amatum (to love))

Reply 5

Euphrosyne.

Hey, I did GCSE latin 2 years ago and got an A*.

I'd say learn your vocab- make that your main priority, that includes the principle parts. That's the most important for GCSE. Also, make sure you know your noun tables so that you know what agrees with what. The verb tables are incredibly useful so that you can recognise who is doing what verb and know what tense it is. If you dont already, purchase the john taylor textbook. That's the best one.

For literature, just know it off by heart. There's not that much to learn (in comparison to A level) and you can afford to learn it off by heart. Make sure you know style points and can waffle effectively.

Reply 6

the-future-medic

Original post by Banana00

Hi, I'm currently in Year 11 as well and I done my level one papers last year and somehow managed to get an A*, all I would say is that you learn the vocab and for the different tenses you could probably use flashcards or get someone to test you on them.

Reply 7

pixiefuller

I am taking GCSE Latin and am also in Year 11!
For the language exam, learn to recognise tenses so you can translate them and learn lots of vocab.
Translating loads of passages will help you learn tenses and you can use the Latin Cambridge Course website which I think is very helpful!
Then for the literature, learn the translations of poems + lit. off by heart and have some points prepared when analysing the language (similar to English GCSE).

Reply 8

LIB142

Is there anyone who has the online version of John Taylor's Latin to GCSE part 2, and could send the practice papers that come in the book? Thanks, this would really help