Students will gain a solid basic Latin vocabulary of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and interrogatives, thereby enriching their English vocabulary. The ability to recognize derivatives in Romance languages as well as English is strongly emphasized. Students will identify singular and plural verbs in all tenses of the present system, practice subject-verb agreement, and use nouns in the nominative, accusative, and dative cases. Learners in this course will deepen their awareness of Roman culture and history, especially in the areas of education, local government, and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

By the time I received my degree in Philosophy and Classical Studies, I had gained skills in four languages and a passion for two of them: Latin and Ancient Greek. In over a decade of teaching Latin, my proudest achievement is the number of students who go on to pursue their own studies in the language through the college level. Each year I have prepared classes to take the National Latin Exam, and each year my students have been rewarded with certificates of outstanding achievement and ribbons for perfect scores. What means so much more than the awards and scholarships, however, is the enthusiasm they express for diving into a subject that is too often dismissed as a "dead language." A treasured memento from one of my classes is a drawing made by a student with the caption: "Latin never, ever, EVER dies!" My goal in teaching it is to ensure that my students' love of it never dies, either.

The course utilizes the Cambridge Latin Course, Fifth Edition, Unit 1 (see Learner Supply List).