A Latin course designed for middle school (5th–7th) students new to hearing and speaking Latin. This course sets up students to begin a living Latin study of “Lingua Latina”.

This course is for students who wish to begin understanding Latin directly. Through many conversations, fables, pictures, and potentially silly scenes, students will practice listening to spoken Latin. As they listen, students will also begin to practice speaking Latin with the teacher and other students. It is designed for students with little or no knowledge of Latin, though students familiar with the grammar of Latin will certainly benefit from oral learning as well. The course will prepare them for Beginning Grammatical Latin, as they age, as well as for the Latin I course, offered through CiRCE Online, using Lingua Latina. 

Oral Latin is focused on the two first arts of language: hearing and speaking. As such, reading—and to a greater extent writing—will be only secondary; these more advanced skills rely on the solid foundation students build hearing and saying Latin themselves. The motto of this course is Latinam discere Latina (to learn Latin using Latin). This means that the teacher will use as much Latin—and as little English—as possible, allowing the students to absorb the language directly. Without much English, students will connect the words and sentences they hear with actions, images, and other Latin words to build their knowledge.

Since the primary work of this course will happen during classtime, ‘homework’ will be minimal: practicing the new Latin and sometimes listening to or watching Latin recordings.