Latinum - Adler

"One text he [Millner] resurrected was George Adler’s A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language (1858). This text sought to teach Latin through what he termed “a Serial and Oral method”. The way the text is utilised by Millner is similar to the Audio-Lingual method of the 1960s except explicit grammar instruction is also given. Millner argues that the method may not have been popular at the time because it required a teacher to conduct hours of question and response style drills which gradually introduced grammar and vocabulary.

The book comes in at over 1000 pages long but is comprehensive. Millner spent two years recording the exercises into an audio format where a student can run the drills from an audio player.

The audio course follows the textbook, but Millner adds material and expands on the paradigms: if a student wants to use the course along with the book, pre-reading a chapter quickly before listening would be helpful, as the audio course - especially for the grammatical sections, is not simply a read-aloud of the textbook.

The Dictata follow Adler's text pretty much as it was published, presented in Latin English Latin, the repetitions in Latin only.

Millner suggests the book be worked through whilst being supplemented with a large amount of easy extensive reading passages as well. Millner has also created playlists divided by level so that beginners looking for extensive reading or listening practice might find something from the archived books and get audio as well. Locke and Hamilton's interlinear readers are included in his collections. Like Conlon, he notes that traditional approaches do not contain enough actual reading practice and he advocates massive amounts of reading and listening as well as oral practice drills. "

Latin Teachers Embrace Extensive Reading, Shaune Larder, ERJ, Volume 10, No. 1, pg 4. May 2017

METHODOLOGY

The Adler audio course teaches formal grammar in a separate section of each lesson ( Part A).

Part B uses the 'Sandwich Technique'. This technique of language teaching is efficient, and has more recently been studied and written about by Butzkamm, Wolfgang; Caldwell, John A. W. (2009). The bilingual reform. A paradigm shift in foreign language teaching. Tübingen: Narr Verlag and Dodson, C. J. (1972). Language teaching and the bilingual method (2nd ed.). London: Pitman.

Part C of each lesson is on Latin only.

The Adler audio course is The Latinum Institute's second Latin study course, intended to follow on from the Serial and Oral Course.

This course teaches in-depth grammar, but is not a 'grammar' course - most of your learning takes place through the extensive oral exercises.

Alder is a multi-year course, comprehensive and extremely thorough. While working your way through it you are strongly encouraged to use the bilingual student books listed at the bottom of this page - Aesop, Fenton, and other bilingual audio books, to broaden the range subject matter and to maintain your interest; Adler is very strong in some areas, but lacks in narrative.

These other selected resources, carefully curated, should be used together with Adler. Once you are around half way through Adler you will be ready to use the Latinum intermediate bilinguals, and towards the end the intermediate-plus bilinguals.

NEW ADLER RESOURCE

ON THE SPOT PRENDERGAST STYLE QUIZZING

In September 2020, I commenced the development of a fourth section to each Adler lesson - an oral quiz structured like a Prendergast lesson.

I has always been bothered that asking a student full questions was too steep a learning curve, and that something better was surely possible in terms of developing fluency.

Then I stumbled on Prendergast's method - which follows a direct line from Manesca's Serial and Oral Method,, through Ollendorff, and has many similarities to Manesca's original method.

The idea is that you need to master each lesson, before moving on to the next. How do you know you have done this? You test yourself, using the

Adler-Prendergast Quizzes.

3.a ADLER'S LATIN AUDIO COURSE

A STRUCTURED IMMERSION COURSE

ADLER'S PRACTICAL GRAMMAR IN 97 LESSONS

ADLER IN ZIP FILES (DOWNLOAD CATALOGUE)
ADLER FOR STREAMING

Adler's textbook is the Ollendorff Method. If you don't know what this is, have a read of this.

Before you begin Adler, I advise you to study the short Serial and Oral Method Audio Course - especially so if you are new to Latin.

The Adler course took me two years to produce; it is one of my earliest productions, recorded between 2006 and 2008, and so the sound quality is perhaps not as good as my more recent material.

It was originally distributed as part of the Latinum Podcast, which was a victim of the 2008 crash. There are occasional references to the podcast in the audio tracks, and sometimes there are intrusions of sound from outside, and by the end you will know exactly what a City of London police siren and fire engine sounds like ;); a neighbouring apartment building was being demolished during the time I was recording as well, so sometimes you hear a bit of that noise (not too loudly) in the background too.

COMPREHENSIVE

Adler's course is comprehensive - it takes a unique approach, teaching the grammar in pedantic detail in an academic fashion, while teaching the language itself in a more practical intuitive, and immersive manner. The course as produced is a combination of grammar-translation and comprehensible input - immersion.

This audio course is not just an audio recording of the textbook - additional material is provided - however, it follows the order of the textbook reasonably closely. The course is designed to use as an audio-only course, and I did not record it with the intention that the student would be reading along in the textbook.

Studying Adler is like taking two courses at the same time - a formal grammar course, and an immersion style language course. These two run alongside each other; the grammar is not intimately connected with the lessons, in the same way it is in other study methods, but runs almost as a parallel course, intersecting reasonably often with the material in dictata (exercises). Most of the focus of the course is on language immersion.

Adler will take you some time to complete - it is a very long course - without any doubt it is the most comprehensive beginner's Latin course ever written - and the audio course offered by Latinum extends the original printed course even further.

You can (if you access the Zip files) select which parts of a lesson you want to focus on, as these are separated out into sub-units.