Some basics to keep in mind when teaching GREK and LATN at Yale.

Drafted August 17, 2025.

Before the Start of the Semester

• The LPD will place book orders for you, and the Registrar will order your desk copy. If they have not arrived when you need them, let us know.

• Familiarize yourself with your classroom. Make sure it has the board space, tech, and seating you need. If the classroom is inadequate, let the LPD know ASAP.

• Contact the Registrar to get access to your Canvas page. See here for using Canvas.

• When designing your syllabus, follow the guidelines detailed in the “Syllabus Design” document in the Repositorium. You need LPD approval before you can post your syllabus.

• To see the official enrollment number of registered students in your course (and any other course since Fall 2011), see Course Demand Statistics.

• Be sure you know how to use the tech—both hardware and software—in the classroom. If you plan to alternate between, say, slides and/or the docucam and/or the chalkboard in class, practice doing so before the semester begins.

• The LPD will have ITS install a docucam in your classroom for the semester. Learn how to use it before the semester begins. Note that it takes a while to charge, and it needs a sufficiently charged battery even while plugged in in order to work. Otherwise it will turn off after a minute or so. So make sure they are connected to a power source between classes. If you have trouble with the docucam at any time, call ITS. The number should be on the console.

• Think about how to use the space of your classroom, including negotiating its inevitable limitations. If, say, there’s a chalkboard on the side wall, consider how you might use it, if space allows. Don’t just park yourself in the corner behind the console.

Class Time

• Always be early to class. Set up everything you want before class begins—the docucam, slides; make sure there’s chalk/markers. It’s not a good look to still be setting up when class begins or to stop mid-lesson to set up the next thing.

• Your class begins and ends promptly at the scheduled times. Don’t start class late or do anything substantive after the class period is over (but do hang around in case there are questions). If students are late, it’s on them. At the same time, students have other things to do, and your class is only allotted a specific amount of time in their schedules. For this reason exams end promptly when class time is over.

The Textbook

• We use physical books, not eBooks, for technological reasons. The book allows users to have multiple pages available at the same time. In contrast, the eBook renders the book a scroll. This limits access to information.

• We can’t expect students to know how to navigate a language textbook. Show them how chapters are structured and what’s in the back (e.g. charts, a dictionary).

• In a grammar-translation textbook, vocabulary lists appear at the end of chapters. However, students should begin learning this new vocabulary when they start a chapter.

• Every textbook has strengths and weaknesses. If you are unsatisfied, say, with a grammar explanation, supplement it. It is helpful if you make note of difficulties with or mistakes in a chapter in the Repositorium. This way future teachers won’t be caught off guard as you were.

• For a helpful introduction to Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Latin, see here <link coming soon>.

The Repositorium

• The Repositorium is an access restricted space for us to share teaching materials. Previous teachers have uploaded helpful materials for you to use. Pay it forward by uploading your own. The Repositorium is only as helpful as you make it.

• If you have thoughts on a given chapter—pitfalls you wish you knew about ahead of time, typos, successful and unsuccessful activities—make note of them in a file in the chapter’s folder.

• All teaching materials—posted in the Repositorium, published in your textbook, distributed by me—vary in degrees of perfection. The purpose of this material is not always to adopt it outright. Instead, consider whether you’d like to use all or part of it. Perhaps you’d like to update it, or it inspires you to create something different.

• By all means put your name on contributions you make to the Repositorium. Of course, teaching isn’t a proprietary industry. All that we do is somehow adopted from or inspired by something we observed. The best way to make a name for yourself as a thoughtful teacher is by sharing what you do.

Student Backgrounds

• Don’t assume that your students know anything about the classical world. Even students who studied Latin for years may not have received much of a cultural introduction—or not in the way you want them to know the material. So explain the who, what, where, why, and when.

• Learning a foreign language opens windows into new worlds. We don’t normally learn a language purely for the sake of grammar. The more you ground the language in culture, the more your students will enjoy the subject.

Engaging the Students

• In L1/L2, think of class not as a 50 minute chunk of time but as a sequence of mini units. So if you have something big to introduce, break it up into bits, and have activities for students to do along the way. It is usually best to avoid lecturing in a language class. The same is true when doing grammar review in L3/L4.

• Instead of answering a question immediately, perhaps open the question up to the class. Similarly, before correcting someone’s translation, you might ask the class if they did things differently.

Translating in Class

• Students sometimes think that there is a single correct answer, and all else is wrong. This mindset can hinder language acquisition, when there may be different correct translations, and in any case one learns best through trial and error. When it comes to translating, the process is as important as the result. Indeed, one can only arrive at a correct translation if we have refined the process whereby we arrive at it. Thus, the focus of class should be on the process of translating as much as the result. Help students grow comfortable with the imperfect mess—with all the mistakes and revisions we make along the way—that is this process.

• Students are not allowed to read from pre-written translations, even their own. When translating, students should always work from a clean text and talk their way through a translation. Using the docucam, with text projected nice and big, encourages this approach. Students should feel welcome to consult their notes after they’ve done what they can with a sentence.

• “Find the verb first” is rarely the right way to begin translating, and word order does matter in Greek and Latin, even if it’s not exactly the same as in English.

• Encourage students to work through the text from left to right, knowing full well that this will not be the final translation. Have them chunk word units. Once they’ve seen the whole sentence, comprised of its various word groups, they can step back and attempt a final translation of the sentence.

• When students say “I don’t know this word,” they usually mean “I don’t know/remember the meaning of the root.” But they can still translate the morphology, and this can get them far. “I blank the blanks and the blank” is a good translation of arma virumque canō. “Arms man and I sing” is not.

Pronunciation

• Use and teach the reconstructed classical pronunciation of Greek and Latin with a stress accent. See here for Greek and <here, eventually> for Latin. There is certainly no harm in telling students about postclassical pronunciations at some point, but for instance ce is /ke/ not /če/.

• You are welcome to use the Modern Greek fricatives /f/ and /θ/ for the aspirates φ and θ (I do), but since /χ/ (for χ) is is both anachronistic and foreign to English speakers, I would avoid it. Same goes for Latin. If you use fricatives in your pronunciation, be sure the students know how the letters were actually pronounced.

• Pronounce diphthongs as diphthongs (e.g. ae and αι are /ay/, not /e/). The letter combo eu or ευ is the diphthong /ew/, not two separate syllables.

• Use and teach macrons (Latin, at least in L1 and L2) and accents (Greek, always). Stressing a word incorrectly may change its morphological category and even its meaning.

• The breathing mark in Greek is a grapheme, not an accent. A word that begins with a vowel is spelled incorrectly if it doesn’t include the breathing mark. For comparison, consider “our.” This is not an acceptable spelling of the English word “hour.”

• We are well aware that the reconstructed pronunciation isn’t—and can’t be—perfectly accurate: we do not nasalize Latin m and n, English speakers struggle to deaspirate word-initial voiceless stops, and so forth. At the same time, we aim for an approximate pronunciation of the language of our authors.

Vocabulary

• Tell your students to start learning a chapter’s vocabulary as soon as you begin that chapter, even if the vocabulary list appears at the end of the chapter.

• Students don’t learn vocabulary if they’re not forced to. Be sure to quiz students on each chapter’s vocabulary.

• Vocabulary is both lexical and morphological. English speakers don’t necessarily know this, so explain it to them.

• Students don’t instinctually know how to learn vocabulary. Spend some time talking about strategies.

• Some lexical entries are out-of-date or incorrect. Where applicable, explain and offer contemporary meanings. See <here> for more.

Grading

• Assessment (quizzes, exams) is integrated into our lesson planning, and we build upon what they cover. Under normal circumstances quizzes and exams should be returned, graded, to the students the next class day. If time allows, it doesn’t hurt to go over a quiz quickly right after the students have taken it.

• The LPD must approve all assignments worth 10% or more of the student’s grade.

Observations

• I will observe your class twice, the first time in the first third of the semester, the second time around the 2/3rd mark. It is helpful if you are proactive about scheduling observations. For more on observations, see here.