Assessment
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Learning & Testing Vocabulary
Learning vocabulary isn’t simply a matter of learning what roots mean. However, many or most of your students will assume it is. You need to be sure they know that vocabulary is both lexical and morphological. Take amō, amāre, amāvī, amātus. This string of words does not mean “I love.” Only amō means that, and…
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Mini Quizzes
More low stakes assignments (e.g. lots of quizzes, mini tests, etc.) are preferred to fewer high stakes assignments (e.g. one midterm and a final). No assignment should be worth more than 20% of one’s final grade. Low stakes assignments are preferred for a variety of reasons: • Less stress on the student (a single quiz…
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The Zoom Classroom
There is nothing ingenious in what I write here. My objective was to replicate my normal classroom, not to use tech for the sake of using tech, and it all worked out fine, at least for the language classroom. To summarize Communications for pedagogy, there are three things to attend to at any given moment:…
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Macrons
Why Macrons Matter There are some obvious places where macrons matter, e.g. the ablative singular of the 1st declension (Rōma versus Rōmā), infinitives in –ere versus –ēre, the future perfect –eris versus the perfect subjunctive –erīs, and so forth. Sometimes they help distinguish similar looking words, like peritus versus perītus, os versus ōs, and cecidī…
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Grading Translations
Here is one system for grading translations that is efficient and can produce a numerical score that reflects the quality of the work.
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Correct Mistakes
A “correct mistake” is an error that occurs when predicting morphology, correctly using the rules of that language, yet producing a form that happens not to be the preferred form in the target dialect—or the textbook used. For instance, forms of κακώτερος appear six time in Homer, though according to your textbook this is not…
Classics Teaching 