Is it possible to learn latin to A level standard in just one summer? Watch

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YAH_BOY_ASH

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I'm in a tricky position, I want to learn Latin to A level standard before October so that I can study straight classics at Uni . I only have this summer to learn one of the languages to A level standard. I come from a science-y background and just self taught the whole of A level further maths in 3-4 months (taking exams for it now) soo would it be possible? Also if you could recommend any resources that will be great.

Quirky Object

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Do you speak any other languages (particularly European ones)?

It is possible if you work at it every day, and you seem like a pretty good autodidact. Keep in mind that there is a lot of grammar, a lot of vocab and a lot of tables (tenses, declensions, conjugations...) and if you want to take the actual A-level in Latin you'll need the literature component. Latin is one of those languages where if you know the rules a lot of it comes quite easily, though, with the notable exception of syntax (which can be an utter nightmare especially for native speakers of Germanic languages).

Get yourself a good reference grammar; John Taylor is the absolute God of Latin and I used his Essential GCSE Latin for my GCSE course, which despite being for GCSE is a pretty complete grammar book. For vocab, start with the Cambridge Latin Course lists and work your way up. There isn't that much additional grammar at A-level compared with GCSE, but it's worth getting the OCR-endorsed A-level book just for the extra little bits.

Good luck - Latin is a fantastically rewarding language, and feel free to ask if you need help with anything (I'm doing A-level)

jhgjhgg

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caecillius est in horto

grumio est mortus

puella

artful_lounger

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Learning Latin is a whole different beast to learning maths, especially if you're not coming from a linguistic and literary background. You could certainly get up to GCSE level in a summer, but you may not be able to get up to a satisfactory A-level standard in that time. It really depends how much time and effort you put into it, but you're going to need to be spending more than a couple hours a day doing it, I think...

In terms of resources the only thing that immediately comes to mind is the Cambridge School Classics Project, which aims to provide support for students studying Latin where your school doesn't offer it. However it looks as though their website has vanished in the last couple of months so, you may need to contact someone as noted here. They had resources available for learning Latin up to A-level standard, as well as paid tutoring support (I think you may have needed to pay for some of the A-level standard texts, I could be wrong though).

Basiil17

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(Original post by YAH_BOY_ASH)
I'm in a tricky position, I want to learn Latin to A level standard before October so that I can study straight classics at Uni . I only have this summer to learn one of the languages to A level standard. I come from a science-y background and just self taught the whole of A level further maths in 3-4 months (taking exams for it now) soo would it be possible? Also if you could recommend any resources that will be great.

Trying to learn A level latin in a Summer seems impossible, it's taken me 6 years to get to my current standard, and Latin can get really hard at times

YAH_BOY_ASH

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(Original post by Sonechka)
Do you speak any other languages (particularly European ones)?

It is possible if you work at it every day, and you seem like a pretty good autodidact. Keep in mind that there is a lot of grammar, a lot of vocab and a lot of tables (tenses, declensions, conjugations...) and if you want to take the actual A-level in Latin you'll need the literature component. Latin is one of those languages where if you know the rules a lot of it comes quite easily, though, with the notable exception of syntax (which can be an utter nightmare especially for native speakers of Germanic languages).

Get yourself a good reference grammar; John Taylor is the absolute God of Latin and I used his Essential GCSE Latin for my GCSE course, which despite being for GCSE is a pretty complete grammar book. For vocab, start with the Cambridge Latin Course lists and work your way up. There isn't that much additional grammar at A-level compared with GCSE, but it's worth getting the OCR-endorsed A-level book just for the extra little bits.

Good luck - Latin is a fantastically rewarding language, and feel free to ask if you need help with anything (I'm doing A-level)

I'm going to do this course, both sessions 1 and 2 (link below)
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts...nsive2017.aspx
That gives me a good start I guess.. but I will try to push myself so I can cover more during the course and use the teachers as much as possible.
This is a screen shot of session 2
http://prntscr.com/fkuivm
Wanted to ask to if this is to roughly AS level standard?

Ash8991

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A lot of Modern English has Latin roots so some of the words should be easy for you to remember. Words like, "Domus" which means "House" (Sort of like, "Domain"). But if you are fluent in French, Italian or Spanish, or at least know a lot of those languages, you'd have a very easy time learning Latin!

Asolare

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If you practically lived and breathed it, yes you could. You have the added benefit of the fact that latin is rarely spoken and the A-Level/GCSE doesn't have an oral component, so you won't need to focus on pronunciation & listening - just reading and writing.

You would have to be committing easily 7 hours+ to it a day but you could, in theory, do it.

YAH_BOY_ASH

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Wanted to ask to if this is to roughly AS level standard?
http://prntscr.com/fkuivm

Quirky Object

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#10

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#10

(Original post by YAH_BOY_ASH)
I'm going to do this course, both sessions 1 and 2 (link below)
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts...nsive2017.aspx
That gives me a good start I guess.. but I will try to push myself so I can cover more during the course and use the teachers as much as possible.
This is a screen shot of session 2
http://prntscr.com/fkuivm
Wanted to ask to if this is to roughly AS level standard?

It's mostly higher tier GCSE; we don't do meter etc. at GCSE but that's about it.

YAH_BOY_ASH

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#11

(Original post by Sonechka)
It's mostly higher tier GCSE; we don't do meter etc. at GCSE but that's about it.

ah okay, so now i will need to learn the whole A level in 2 month .-.
That seems almost impossible.

Reality Check

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#12

No - to learn it with any sort of facility takes longer than 7 weeks. It's not a realistic proposition.

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