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Oxford, Cambridge, Open High Books.. (1 Viewer)

caaal

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Which textbooks do you use to study Latin? I do it through Open High School, so my text comes from the books supplied from them. But I bought all three Oxford books. He stopped giving me work on Oxford Book one. I would like to continue, but how?
 
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Mmmm, we're the "screwed up year" at our school with regards to Latin. They trialled "ecce romani" on us, but it's an awful book, so the year after us they immediately switched back to Oxford. I've had a look at the Oxford course, though, and it looks a lot better.
 

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Back in my day... we used Oxford. Horace on a farm, it was.
 

greeninsanity

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stella8h8chang said:
They trialled "ecce romani" on us, but it's an awful book
I know! But our teacher genuinely likes it. Everyone at our school has to use it.
My old school used Cambridge and I loved it. We had a separate book of exercises to go with it though because there aren't that many in the book.
I also bought Oxford Book 1 to try that and it's pretty good. I thought it was slightly more difficult than Cambridge...
 

Rafy

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Cambridge when i did it years 7-10
 

Frigid

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Cambridge 7-10
then in year 10 we chucked in Duckworth Elementary Latin Grammar Primer (orange one)
then in year 11 we used Duckworth Elementary Latin Prose (light blue)
along with Via Vertendi and some other texts which i vaguely remember

then in year 12 it was a mix of Via Vertendi, Duckworth Prose and the set texts.
 

melon

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we did cambridge up to the end of yr 10 i think, & from then we just did real texts from catullus & virgil, & in yr 12 we've only done the set texts & used austin's commentaries for them as well...oh, & with these really good notes from the teacher at frencham
 
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greeninsanity said:
I know! But our teacher genuinely likes it. Everyone at our school has to use it.
My old school used Cambridge and I loved it. We had a separate book of exercises to go with it though because there aren't that many in the book.
I also bought Oxford Book 1 to try that and it's pretty good. I thought it was slightly more difficult than Cambridge...
Oxford is cool; I bought the whole series and taught myself :p but don't tell my teacher that, he might get offended. I find it a bit more interesting than Ecce Romani. Where are you? We're on like chapter 39 of Ecce Romani...
 

hannah_ryan

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Ecce Romani

I'm thinking about doing latin next year, i'm doing ecce romani and we'r eup to like chapter 34 - is that standard ok or will it be too hard?
 

Jermir Caesar

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Cambridge<Oxford Course

We use Oxford cause its all our school has, but from what I've seen of Cambridge, Oxford has the visual appeal with colours and pictures, and its layout is much more student friendly. Although it has a definite focus on synthetic Latin, you'll find that it is conducive to students writing their own Latin.

It does bring the real Latin in too late, I admit... but that's just like doing no work all of Year 7-10 and having to catch up in Year 11-12 - which is the usual.

The Sydney Grammar Course online has an emphasis on the writing of Latin, rather than reading it... and that is cool, I reckon, but it questions the reason why we do Latin ourselves. To read great literature, to enjoy a language without speaking it, the classroom atmosphere, the marks?

Those are my reasons, at least. And I have to say, Latin wouldn't be all the fun it is if we didn't have an enthusiastic and entertaining class of 17 for 2u, 8 for 3u. And credit also, to our teacher Mr Salter, the smartest, cleverest man alive any of us have ever met. I swear, that guy could've been anything... and he chose the noblest career: a Latin teacher.
 

aimstar

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I prefer cambridge

I learnt from the cambridge books yr seven to ten, and at the moment im tutoring a yr 9 student from another school who is learning from oxford. One definite advantage of cambridge is the grammar, oxford teaches it all really early and i think it may come across as quite overwhelming to some. Cambridge takes it slow, for example introducing the ablative case a lot later and i think that is a more effective method for learnign grammar. Overall the latin prose in both is pretty similar, but as someone mentioned previously Cambridge is lacking in exercises.
 

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