Horizontal Conjugations

A question which CI/ADI teachers often get asked is, "So what about grammar? If you do not explicitly teach grammar, then how do you get your students to learn it?" My answer has always been, "We do indeed teach grammar - it just looks different." Many times I have relied on grammar timeouts in class - drawing attention to a specific grammar point which has come up for about 15-20 seconds and then returning to back to what we were doing. In many ways, that is enough. However, sometimes students need more than that, but I have never realized how to go beyond grammar timeouts without "going all grammar" (and believe me, I LOVE grammar, so I could go on and on about the grammar point). Recently, I learned from Martina Bex about Horizontal Conjugations, and I am loving this concept!

Rather than rehash Martina's directions, here is a link to her post about horizontal conjugations.

Below is also a video which Martina made on the topic:

Recently with my Latin 1 students, I tried out a horizontal conjugation, since I was wanting to draw attention to 1st person singular, present tense verb forms. Students had already been reading these forms, but I had been using the pronoun ego (I) previously as a word clue - I had never fully explained how the verb form changes to reflect the person change to 1st person. I was also wanting to start taking away ego, since in Latin it is mainly used as emphasis and really unnecessary to use. Essentially, I need students to start paying attention to the verb endings.

Here is what I gave them:

I also began to do some horizontal conjugating with bellringers:

Observations

1. I love that students are conjugating verbs without really "conjugating" like I learned to do it! As much as I love doing conjugation charts, since they are novice language learners, students do not need to know how verbs are fully formed, from what conjugation they are, what stem-vowels are, what irregular forms of which to be aware when conjugating, etc. However, they do need to start paying attention to the verb endings. 
2. I really like the communicative aspect of this. Horizontal conjugations take place in a given context of a reading, instead of an isolated verb chart. 
3. Because I am using sentences from the reading with which they are familiar, students are re-reading understood content and gaining more input.
4. I am looking forward to doing this with verb tense changes.
5. Since Latin is an inflected language, I am wondering how to apply this to noun endings and use this as a horizontal declension?

What has been your experience with horizontal conjugations?

More Thoughts on Sheltering Vocabulary

Some random thoughts about sheltering vocabulary but not grammar:

1. Back in February, we were doing registration at my school. One of my Latin 2 students remarked to me how someone in her Advisement class asked her if Latin was easy; her response was "Yeah, it is super easy. We learn words through stories, and then those words appear in the next story along with some new words and then those words are in the next story, and so on. We never have stupid vocabulary lists to memorize. We never have fake dialogues like they do in other language classes. We learn vocabulary through stories and movie clips and through using them in conversation. It never feels like learning." In a roundabout way, unknowingly my student just explained many aspects of CI. I also find it interesting that my student never mentioned anything about grammar in her response, such as conjugating verbs and grammar drills.

2. As I become more versed in sheltering vocabulary but not grammar, I cannot help at times second-guessing myself when it comes to using CI. More than often I feel like I am short-changing my students in terms of the amount of words which they know. Of course, that is the old textbook side of me talking, where vocabulary acquisition was dictated by the lists which the textbook provided (which is usually around 20-30 words per chapter). Then, although I am focusing on high frequency words, I wonder if they are the right high frequency words. There are Latin high frequency lists out there, but they are based on frequency appearance in classical literature - should I focus on that? or on high frequency in language in general? I am still trying to find that sweet spot. I am reminded of the truth that Latin teachers probably know five different Latin words for catapult, but most do not know vocabulary related to themselves or to their daily life in the language. 

3. Just recently, Anthony Gibbins, a dear friend of mine from Rusticatio (Antonius Australianus is his Latin name - you may know him better as Legionum, the one who tweets Latin using Legoes), tweeted the following. It is a great example of sheltering vocabulary but not grammar. If you are a Latin teacher who uses The Cambridge Latin Course, then you will recognize the opening sentences.

English translation of above

Caecilius is in the garden. Caecilius is sitting in the garden. Are you able to see Caecilius sitting in the garden? Do you know why Caecilius is sitting in the garden? Perhaps someone ordered Caecilius to sit in the garden. Perhaps it is very pleasing to Caecilius to sit in the garden. Only I know that Caecilius is sitting in the garden. Where are you sitting?

The basic phrase which Anthony uses is Caecilius is sitting in the garden, but look how many different ways grammatically he uses that phrase in the passage. From a Latin teacher perspective, Anthony incorporates a present participle, indirect statements, an indirect question, and some infinitive usage with the verb iussit and the impersonal form perplacet. He then ends it with a PQA. 

Now in Latin 1, you probably would not present this full paragraph in the first weeks, but you can see in many ways how naturally you can take students through various structures with known vocabulary. Now you probably would not introduce all of these structures at once but in many instances, based on known vocabulary, new structures are very easy for students to comprehend based on context. I have found that present participles, indirect statements, and indirect questions are very quite easy for students to comprehend. We teachers are the ones who made them difficult for students, because we get caught up in teaching sequence of tenses, formation, stem change vowels, naming structures, making students parse the forms, etc.

Rejecting a Grammar Syllabus

One of the common misconceptions about CI which I often hear is "But you CI teachers don't teach grammar." Quite honestly, to a degree there is a nugget of truth in this statement but just not in the way that people think:

Yes, grammar is indeed covered in a CI classroom, but it is just NOT taught EXPLICITLY as we think it should be done.

An adage which you may have encountered with CI implementation is "Shelter the vocabulary, not the grammar." In other words, limit the vocabulary to high-frequency words and other "icing" words, but milk the @*#! out of these words grammatically. This completely goes against a grammar-based textbook/syllabus, since the grammar topic for the chapter determines what is going to be taught, along with a prescribed list of vocabulary words (of which probably half are "Why the heck does the textbook think that this is a necessary word for students?"). 

Traditionally in a grammar-based syllabus, certain language structures are considered upper level grammar topics (subjunctives, indirect statements, gerunds, gerundives, etc), and often we preface teaching these topics by telling students, "These are really hard to learn, so pay attention." But why do we hold off on introducing structures like these until later instead of in Latin 1 when for students, they are actually quite easy to understand in context, and for me as a CI teacher they seem very natural to incorporate? But yet we feel the need to teach all six tenses by the end of Latin 1, when in reality, we know that the future, pluperfect, and future-perfect tenses are not high frequency structures? 

If you learned Latin in the traditional grammar-based way in which I did, you will recall that the opening grammar concepts which we learned were the first declension and first conjugation. Or if you used the reading method, then instead of by declension/conjugation, you first learned the nominative and accusative cases. In each case, however, each chapter's lesson was determined by grammar. 

So if not guided by a grammar syllabus, how does one introduce grammar then? Simply this: Teach the grammar that you need for the situation/reading. If you shelter the vocabulary but not the grammar (and not get into LONG explanations of the grammar behind it), there is no reason why you cannot use periphrastic phrases or indirect questions in Latin 1.

I myself am still learning this concept of "sheltering vocabulary but not grammar." I am currently creating the Latin 2 lesson plans for my instructional team, and as I write them up, I am constantly thinking, "Why did I not introduce this particular strucuture back in Latin 1 when it seems like such a natural structure to introduce there." A good example is the temporal use of cum + indicative to mean express "when" - Latin textbooks hold off on this concept until later chapters because it is lumped together with the subjunctive for causal and concessive clauses. Yet, the use of cum + indicative as a temporal use is perfectly okay, so why not it implement it in Latin 1? 

Last year in Latin 1, I introduced indirect statements very early, because we were reading Brando Brown Canem Vult, and these structures appear very often in the novella. I found that indirect statements were quite easy for students to read in context when I GOT OUT OF THE WAY with teaching these structures explicitly.

When it comes to what my students know about grammar:

• Do my students know the grammatical mechanics behind the formation of the particular clauses, e.g., what specific change is made to the root form of the verb based on its conjugation, sequence of tenses? No, not at all. 
• Can they identify grammatical forms by their formal names, such as purpose clause, temporal clauses, indirect questions, and noun clause of characteristic? A few 4%ers may be able to, since I have mentioned them in passing, but quite honestly, no, not at all.
• Main question: Is it 100% necessary for them to need to know these grammatical specifics? If my goal for them as novice and intermediate level learners is to be able to read level-appropriate Latin, then the answer is quite easy: no, not at all. 

NOTE - after 3-4 years of language learning, ACTFL classifies learners around an intermediate-mid level of reading. Most classical literature rates at the SUPERIOR level of reading, yet tradition says that students should be reading (insert rather, translating/decoding) Caesar (which rates about Advanced Mid/High), Ovid, and Vergil at the 3rd year of Latin.

Many Latin teachers would say that I am failing my students in the long run in not teaching them explicit grammar according to a traditional syllabus. These teachers need to remember that I LOVE grammar and was attracted to Latin because of the explicit grammar teaching, but I also know that the average learner is not like I am. When I do discuss explicit grammar, it is only in passing for about 30-seconds. I still will point out certain grammatical features, e.g, "See this -ba- in the verb? It is translated as "was/were _________ing." If I feel like the explicit grammar is something important for students to know, then I will assign certain students to be the grammar expert for the topic.

If you are transitioning to/dabbling in CI and still wish to use the textbook but want to move away from a grammar-based syllabus, then consider the following: 

• In the textbook, what MUST I absolutely cover in a semester? What topics are considered non-negotiable? This can be determined by state standards, common exams/assessments, progress on Student Learning Objective (SLO) pre-tests/post-tests, instructional team decisions, etc.
• If there are restrictions, can I still cover all of these grammar topics but yet on MY timeline? Just because I need to cover participles or X vocabulary words since they are on of the final exam, do I have to teach them in April since that is when the textbook and my colleagues do? Can I introduce these concepts/words in January since that fits better into my curriculum?
• Leave out anything which is then superfluous. Carrie Toth's Vocabulary Chuck-It Bucket is a great example of this.

I will admit that leaving behind a grammar-based syllabus approach seems very weird and scary, but now that I have left it behind, I actually see that I have a lot of freedom in what I want to do.

Know Thyself

On last week's Tea With BVP show (episode 56), Bill Van Patten had a great discussion about explicit grammar. A listener had called in asking if there were advantages in explicit grammar instruction in a language class, as he and his wife felt like they had both greatly benefited from it when they were learning Spanish; knowing endings and grammar charts considerably aided their learning experience. I really liked Bill's answer: while there are explicit learners, there are also implicit learners. There are indeed those for whom explicit grammar lessons are beneficial, but for most, explicit grammar is not effective, but rather affective. In addition, in a research experiment of two groups where one was given explicit grammar instruction but the other was not, there was no difference between the two groups in terms of performance.

Why I enjoyed the discussion so much was because I felt like the caller perfectly described me and my experience of learning language. I LOVE grammar, so for me, when learning Latin (in a grammar-translation setting), the language made perfect sense to me. Visually, I could see the charts in my head, identify the patterns, and isolate words into its various parts. In fact, in my learning of other languages, I cannot help but to see the patterns and to create a working grammar chart in my mind. Grammar just makes sense to me.

About four years ago, though, I came to this realization: the majority of my students are not like me and do not share the same passion for grammar. For my first 16 years of teaching, however, I taught as if they did (and should), and I blamed them for not being like I was. In reality, the issue did not lie in my students, but in my thinking that they should be like me and learn exactly like I do. 

I think that the problem lies at times when our classes are composed of explicit learners. As an explicit learner myself, I LOVE those kinds of classes. Unfortunately soon that becomes the norm, as only explicit learners are the ones who take my class. But essentially all I am doing is replicating myself. If we wish for our language programs to grow, we need to attract all kinds of students in the building. This syndrome is not just limited to explicit grammar instruction, as I have seen teachers who flourish as learners in "incomprehensible" (and I mean that to mean "incomprehensible to me") immersive-language environments replicate the same setting in their classrooms. Soon, unintentionally, it becomes a rather exclusive setting where only certain types of students succeed.

On today's Tea With BVP show (episode 57 - Blaine Ray was his guest!), Bill Van Patten addressed this issue, calling it a situation where we teachers are projecting ourselves onto our students (starting at 38:57 in the episode): "If all students were like language teachers, then they would be teachers of language, and they're not. We're the weirdos." When we transpose ourselves and our natural passions/strengths onto students and expect them to learn in the same manner which we do, then we are only successful in teaching students who are like us. In the episode, Blaine even says that we teachers cannot think like teachers by focusing on the textbook and where we think that learners should be by X, but rather we must think like students and focus on their needs (starting at 37:17 in the episode). Well put, Blaine.

To me, this is the key: know thyself. We need to be aware that whatever attracted us as students ourselves to language learning is not what will attract the average student to our classrooms. We as language teachers sometimes are the biggest obstacles to our own students' learning. When we can get past ourselves, then successful learning can occur.

Grammar "Errors" in a CI Classroom

Today, in my study hall, four of my Latin 1 students began to converse in Latin with each other. I was rather surprised to hear them doing this, because three of them had NEVER demonstrated any interest during class to converse in the language (outside of scaffolded output). What transpired between the four of them was a rather spontaneous 10-minute conversation in Latin, using language which we had been going over this semester. Now to be honest, it was not a high-level dialogue about anything in particular, and their language usage was FAR from correct - it was messy, full of "errors," and would have hurt the ears of many Latinists - but all I could think was "Oh my gosh, these students are communicating IN LATIN!" I cannot tell how happy I was to hear them conversing in simple Latin, errors and all. I just sat back and let them talk, not even trying to correct them and only giving them corrections when they asked. 

What transpired today reminded me of something which I had seen on Twitter not too long ago:

Which teacher are you - the one on the left or on the right? I can honestly say that I once was the teacher on the left for the longest time, because isn't error correction what we are supposed to do as language teachers? I think, however, that we as world language teachers forget just how difficult it is to for language to come out of the mouths of our students for the purpose of communication, let alone correctly.

How do I know this? Because I myself have been there when it comes to speaking Latin. To understand my situation, you need to understand that I learned Latin in high school, college, and graduate school with the grammar-translation method - quite honestly, I had no idea that any other method existed. Why should there be if our goal was simply to translate classical works into English and to discuss them in English, in addition to parsing the heck out of every word? Yes, being a 4%er, I really liked that (and still do to a degree now)...

So going into my first Rusticatio in 2010, even though I knew that I would struggle some since I had never had spoken Latin before, in my opinion, as I had both my B.A. and M.A. in Latin, and since I "knew" grammar, speaking should not be too difficult. Boy, was I wrong. Yes, although I had a brain full of grammar knowledge, I had never used it for communicative purposes. When it came to speaking Latin, I had no clue what I was doing. I remember how absolutely difficult it was to SAY ANYTHING in Latin, let alone communicate in a conversation in the language. For me, just to get ANY language to come out of my mouth was a major victory. I found myself making TONS of grammar errors, and I was absolutely frustrated that I was making what seemed to be very basic mistakes.

Luckily, Nancy Llewellyn, the leader of Rusticatio that summer, had warned us on the opening night that making grammar errors in the language was part of the process. In what I always call her "red pen" talk, she said,

You are going to make the same kinds of grammar errors that if your own students were to make them, you would skin your knees running to grab a red pen to correct them.

Rusticatio even has a rule about grammar correction: it is to only occur when the delivered message is incomprehensible and not understandable. This is a rule which I believe that we need to apply in our classrooms. But even at that, I think that we need to exercise a degree of caution, because in its speaking proficiency guidelines, ACTFL itself states that even "Intermediate Low speakers can generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors, particularly by those accustomed to dealing with non-natives." The key word is sympathetic - even if what my students say is horribly wrong grammatically, can I still understand what they are trying to say? At my first Rusticatio, I remember saying "ego cena parat," and even though that is so grammatically wrong on so many levels, I remember as a beginning speaker how difficult it was for me to get that to come out of my mouth, but at the same, those around me knew what I was attempting to say.

I have even heard a number of CI teachers say that in many ways, there is no such thing as "conscious errors" for speakers, since they are applying their known knowledge of the language at that particular moment. Someone once told me that even recasting (the act of restating the speaker's error with the corrected form) is not always effective unless the corrected speaker actively knows that he/she is being corrected. 

So while we can make overt grammar correction for beginning speakers, in many ways, I firmly believe that these speakers simply need more input. If we as world language teachers believe that all students learn at their own pace, then we must also believe that students will produce correct language at their own pace. I believe Michelle Kindt says it best in this tweet regarding language acquisition:

Some random observations based on my students today

1. Even though I am nowhere speaking anywhere near the 90% target language goal in class, whatever I am speaking and having students read in the target language is still effective, as these students were able to produce language on their own without being forced. That makes me feel good that I am doing something right!
2. At the end of study hall, I told these students that I was impressed by their spontaneous dialogue in Latin. I told them, "You do realize that I never once made you make flash cards to learn those words." One student responded, "That is really weird. Somehow I just know these words inside me." That is proof to me of subconscious input and acquisition!

Grammar Experts

One of the myths about Comprehensible Input is that grammar is never taught. The truth of the matter is that grammar is indeed taught in a CI classroom (see my former post called Grammar is Not One of the Five C's), but it does not hold a preeminent position in the teaching of the language.  

For the past few years, I have been incorporating "grammar experts" into my classroom, whose sole purpose, like the title implies, is to serve as the "grammar experts" on particular forms. This is a take on Ben Slavic's student jobs, and for all I know, maybe the "grammar expert" is on his list - quite honestly, I do not know from whom I learned this or if I indeed just thought of the idea myself (so if you are the one who taught me this, please let me know so that i can give you proper credit). Regardless, I have found it incredibly useful.

The idea is quite simple: whenever I cover a new language structure, I assign a student to be the "expert" for that structure. The job is simply to shout a particular set answer to the class and to me whenever I ask for it during a 30-second grammar timeout in English. Here are some examples of my "grammar expert" jobs and their lines:

• -BA- person - whenever I ask "What does -BA- mean in a verb?", this student yells out "was/were BLANKing"
• -RE person - whenever I ask, "What does "-RE" mean at the end of this word?", this student yells out "-RE means "to BLANK"
• VSUX person - whenever I ask, "What does this V (S, U, or X) tell me in this verb?", this student yells out "BLANKed"
• -UR- person - whenever I ask, "What does this -UR- in the middle of the word translate as?", this student yells out "about to BLANK"

Observations

1. Because these are done during a 30-second grammar timeout, it is done very quickly and does not take up too much time.
2. It is actually a fun way to do a grammar timeout, because if I ask a question requiring a grammar expert to respond, heaven forbid that this student not respond quickly enough, because the class will immediately let that student know and in many instances will respond for that student!
3. I am not the one always having to explain the structure but rather the grammar expert does with a quick line.
4. I used to have grammar experts for the names of verb tenses and of noun cases but not any more, since I do not ask for tense names and noun cases too much. I do ask for word function (subject, verb, direct object) due to the inflected nature of Latin.
5. It is a great way to foster community and a sense of belonging in the class. I have students BEGGING me to be the grammar expert for the next upcoming language structure, because they want to be able to shout out the grammar line to the class.

"Events" - Working in Past Tenses in Latin 1

Here is a great way to introduce past tenses and to use them in a way which demonstrates the "past tense" nature as compared to the present tense.

At NTPRS 2014, during my group's session with Blaine and Von Ray, they introduced the concept of "events," which essentially are flashbacks in a story with which students are already familiar.

Now this concept of "events" was a departure from what I had learned at my first TPRS workshop in 2008, where Blaine Ray himself had said that it was important to teach past tenses as soon as possible, since most stories were written in the past tense; he posited that we should just begin telling stories using the past tense and expose students early to the concept. At NTPRS 2014, Blaine's changed his tune a bit, as he and Von explained that the use of "events" now allowed for past tenses to be used in a meaningful context, while at the same time distinguishing themseves from other tenses. After having implemented "events" in stories, I can definitely say that they work and are a wonderful tool to use.

The set up is very simple: Take a story which you have already used with students, but the key part is that it needs to have been written in the present tense (I suppose you can take a story written in the imperfect/perfect tense if you wish to introduce the pluperfect tense). The idea now is to create a flashback which will either explain details of the original story or add new ones.

So here is how I used an event to introduce the imperfect and perfect tenses in Latin 1. After roughly six weeks of school, I "revisited" the very first story which I had used with students.

Part of Original Story

Earl elephantum vult. Earl est tristis. Aliyah elephantum habet. Aliyah est laeta.

Event (with original story embedded in it)
hodie, Earl elephantum vult, sed heri Earl leonem volebat. heri Earl dixit, “ego leonem volo!”  mater leonem ei dedit. Earl erat laetus. sed leo patrem consumpsit. nunc Earl est tristis.

hodie Aliyah elephantum habet. heri, Aliyah elephantum non habebat. Aliyah erat tristis. heri Aliyah erat in Arbys. Aliyah elephantum et senem vidit. Aliyah dixit, “ego elephantum volo.” Aliyah senem pulsavit. nunc Aliyah elephantum habet. Aliyah est laeta.

Obsevations

1. I was surprised by how seamless it was for students to pick up the imperfect and perfect tenses this way.
2. Using flashbacks in a meaningful context truly allowed for students to distinguish between the different tenses, because they were being used and contrasted at the same time.
3. Because I was taking a story with which students were already familiar and one which involved their classmates, the flashbacks were compelling for them.
4. Because I was limiting vocabulary, I could focus on taking known words and "milking the heck out of them grammarwise." When introducing the new language structures, because I was using known vocabulary words, students could focus purely on the new form and meaning. 
5. The only new vocabulary words which I introduced were hodie, heri, and nunc, which served as adverbial timemarkers necessary for introducing the time shifts in the story. I also had to introduce the word erat.

Now I try to write some type of "event" in all of my stories in order to work in both past and present tenses at the same time. There is no reason why I cannot introduce future tenses this way too!

For some reason, "events" used to be known as "bird walks" - I do not quite know why...

Grammar is Not One of the 5 C's

Much like most of you: I love grammar. I love the structure of a sentence and taking it apart. I consider myself to be the "King of Parsing" - I can easily tell you about a word in a particular Latin sentence, giving you everything (and more) about its form and function without even thinking - it just seems to roll off of my tongue. As Latin was taught in a grammar-translation fashion when I was in high school and in college, this is why I loved the subject - it came very natural. NOTE - I am still shocked that I was planning to major in Sports Medicine at UCLA.

But let's be honest: grammar is not language itself. To quote Kato Lomb, a self-taught polyglot: "One learns grammar from language, not language from grammar." That does not mean that grammar does not have its place, but just not the HUGE, OVERARCHING, EXPLICIT and ALL-ENCOMPASSING place which we have given it in the past. As my dear friend Donna Gerard has said, “Grammar is not one of the 5 C’s” (referring to the 5 C’s of the ACTFL Standards for 21st Century Language Learners).

The grammar-translation books from which most of us learned Latin had the paradigm chart at the beginning of the chapter with a lengthy explanation of a particular grammar topic. Next came a list of somewhat random vocabulary words. Following that were even-more random sentences using the vocabulary and grammar in order to get in some practice. If we were lucky, there was a short story to read in Latin (I do not ever remember reading stories in the Jenney book when I was in high school). We spent time in class conjugating verbs and declining nouns aloud, writing out synopsis of verbs and parsing isolated words for their possibilities. We learned songs to memorize our noun declension endings. For vocabulary quizzes, we wrote out the dictionary entries for the nouns and all four principal parts of the verb. To us, this was Latin. As 4%ers, we loved it. But 96% of our own students do not, as it has no bearing in their lives.

When one gets right down to it, is it really important for students to know grammar, as in being able to name that the verb is 3rd-person, plural, imperfect, subjunctive, passive used in a relative clause of characteristic, if they understand what that word means in that context? In math, is it truly important for students to know the term additive inverse if they understand how to do that particular math problem?

But shouldn’t students know grammar? I heard at ACTFL this past November that parents have 100% success rate in teaching language to their children and that they never teach explicit grammar to them. You will never hear a parent say to their 2-year old child, “It looks to me like you have mastered the use of the present tense, so let’s move on to the imperfect tense. You are now ready to start talking about an event which has happened in the past but yet is either habitual or is in motion at the time of discussion.” Parents simply speak to their children in understandable, contextual messages and pattern language for their children to mimic. Essentially, that is what we should be doing with our students.

So how does one teach grammar in a Comprehensible Input classroom? Let’s dispel a myth by establishing that grammar is indeed taught in a CI approach; it just is not the centerpiece of a lesson. Just introduce a new grammar concept in an obvious, understandable way.

This is how I taught present participles (stage 20 CLC) last semester:

Day 1 - Dictatio where present participles were used in a story, but the meaning was obvious based on the context. Students wrote out the sentences in Latin as I dictated it to them, and afterwards, if they did not understand the meaning of a word or form, especially a participle, they asked, and I told them the meaning. Following the dictatio, we did a group translation in English of those sentences and quite honestly, many were able to translate the participle correctly due to the context. I never said the word participle nor got into an explanation of the form.

Days 2-3 - TPR and TPRS storytelling where present participles were used. In TPR, an example:

Teacher: O Joseph, bibe aquam (Joseph begins to drink the water).

O discipuli, videtisne Josphem bibentem aquam? (ita).

Ita, videtis Josephem bibentem aquam. O discipuli, videtisne Josephem bibentem an consumentem aquam? (bibentem)

Ita, videtis Josephem bibentem aquam. O discipuli, videtisne Josephem consumentem aquam? (minime)

Minime, non videtis Josephem consumentem aquam. quam ridiculum! videtis Josephem bibentem aquam. What do you think bibentem means? (drinking). Yes, bibentem means “drinking.”

In a TPRS story, this time, I wrote the participles on the board with their English meaning and pointed to the words whenever I used them. I circle-questioned the participle form in order to get in repetitions. Over these two days, students started to catch onto the form based on context and sounds; acquisition was subconscious due to the amount of repetitions. If a student asked about the -nt- or -ns, I explained that it meant “_____ing” but I did not make a big deal about it.

Days 4-5 - As a class, we read through a short story where present participles were used. I read through it aloud first, while I acted it out. Again, I wrote the participles from the story on the board along with their English meaning and pointed to them when they were used. We then did a read/discuss in Latin and then did a read/draw. Following that, the class did a timed-write in Latin of that story. Still no major discussion about participles.

Day 6 - Word Chunk Game, where many of the sentences had present participles in them but the meaning was obvious based on context.

Day 7 - As a class, we read through another short story where present participles were used. Finally, I began to do short 30-second “grammar timeouts” in English and explicitly brought attention to the -nt- or -ns and told them that it meant “_______ing.” - I said “Whenever you see a word wearing PANTS, that means “______ing.” This was done for those students who need explicit explanations (in reality, I have found that many of these types of students have already figured it out but they just want explicit confirmation). So as we continued reading, I took a time-out, saying something like “”Hey, this word is wearing PANTS - what does that tell us?” or “How did we know to saying running and not ran or was running? Yep, it’s wearing PANTS!” Although I now use the term participle, I do not use the full term present active participle. I just do not think that it is necessary.

Day 8 - micrologue story involving present participles.

By the end of the chapter, students were pretty familiar with present participles, and I never had to create a worksheet for them to practice the structure. Have they mastered the present participle yet and are able to use them? Not at all - as language acquisition is a spiral and not linear in fashion, that will come over time as they experience more of these forms in context.

So university Classics departments and College Board AP Latin folks: asking students to know labels and parts of speech explicitly is not language itself. Grammar is not one of the 5 C’s