I found
the Bromley article not only interesting, but infinitely more useful (and
engaging) than the Bauman & Graves piece.
As an aspiring foreign language teacher, I'm going to end
up teaching a good-sized chunk of English grammar alongside Latin. And these
vocabulary-building strategies can easily be adapted to a Latin class (although
there is still a place for vocab quizzes, or at the very least, I can’t bring
myself to jettison them).
Fortunately
for me, I’ll be all over the advice to teach students Greek and Latin roots of
English words and that strategy (unsurprisingly) will do double duty as knowing
Latin roots really helps one build up and strengthen Latin vocabulary. And, as
if the roots weren’t enough, Latin will help students get used to a word having
multiple meanings. My favorite example is the verb “aggredior” which can mean “advance
to,” or “address” or “run up and stab” depending on the context in which it is
used. Or, if that does not help students grow accustomed to words having
multiple contextual meanings, it will show them that they cannot escape that
phenomenon and had best get used to it.
The
mention of “vocabulary notebooks” is particularly intriguing and one which I
will have to experiment with. It sounds far more interesting than a deck of
flashcards or a series of notes sprinkled about the notebook between bits of
grammar and practice exercises.
Micheal, I enjoy reading your blog as I notice those little dry bits of humor that you drop here and there. Always reminding me of summer conversations in the UC.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I agree that the Bromley article was much more intriguing (as you found out upon reading my blog). I also see how well it applies to our classrooms. Using the roots and affixes in Latin are certainly a good way to introduce vocabulary and I think will pay dividends in other classrooms. I can envision a student looking at some foreign math term and saying, "Ah! Mr Ball told me that this prefix refers to _____. I think I know the meaning of the whole term!" And that kind of situation is why we get into teaching. To help students and to see that light bulb flicker above their heads.
We just better turn the switch before they grab their box cutter and "aggredior" us. (too soon??)