The publication of these two new courses is most welcome and will provide teachers with a much greater deal of flexibility and choice for teaching Latin. They are very different textbooks with different pedagogical methodologies. Suburani follows a story-based reading approach, with a range of diverse characters to follow through the storyline of the textbook, making it an interactive and immersive learning experience for the student. De Romanis follows more of a grammar-translation approach, but precedes each section with cultural topics in order to give students a way into the material which is not solely grammar-based. While Suburani offers more of a page-by-page approach to learning Latin and about the Roman world, De Romanis has much to offer in terms of the amount of learning material and resources provided, which creates flexibility and choice for the teacher and the student.
The format and layout of Suburani provides a refreshing sense of variety. Each chapter typically begins with a ‘comic strip’-style story, introducing key structures, vocabulary, and cultural context to the chapter. The ‘chunked’ structure of these strips is easily processible in steps, with the pictures aiding in comprehension, and the sentences producing a coherent narrative to make it engaging and easy to follow. This is followed by a cultural section, which helps orientate the events and narrative of the strip in its historical context. Each chapter also contains a series of stories, usually 2 or 3, related to the cultural component covered in the chapter. These are usually intersected by pages on history or culture, which complements the subject matter of the stories in an effective manner to give greater depth for the exploration of the Latin stories. Stories are almost always accompanied by related visual sources such as mosaics or sculptures, and more generally the comprehensive illustrations make the textbook interesting and attractive. Also included in each chapter are ‘Language Notes’ to give a summary of the grammar points introduced, and ‘Language Practice’ activities for the corresponding grammar point. The formatting and layout of the chapters in this way is effectively sequenced through variation and the complementary nature of the sections as laid out in each chapter.
The grammar points are introduced in a logical order according to the inductive method, with first exposure given through either the strips or a reading passage, and then explained afterwards by a ‘Language Note’. By chapter 4, students have encountered all of the regular present tense endings, and the nominative and accusative singular and plural, with chapter 5 introducing infinitives. For the remaining cases, the ablative is introduced in chapter 6, the dative in chapter 8, and the genitive in chapter 11. Given the frequency of ablative prepositions in simple sentences, the early introduction of the case avoids the issue of student questions which tend to arise due to confusion about endings after in, cum, e and a. Both the imperfect and the perfect are introduced in chapter 7: the imperfect tense is introduced in the comic strip model sentences at the beginning of the chapter, followed by a ‘Language Note’ explaining it. The perfect tense is then introduced in the following story, although this may potentially add a point of confusion for students with the quick introduction of another set of tense endings which had not featured in the model sentences at the beginning of the chapter. Apart from the present tense, which is introduced in the singular forms first followed by the plural forms, the complete set of person endings is introduced in one go for each of the tenses. This works well as the comic book-style strips for each chapter use direct speech alternating with narrative, meaning that the 1st person and 2nd person verb endings are reinforced equally as well as the 3rd person endings.
The ‘Language Note’ and ‘Language Practice’ sections in each chapter are clear, but not overly detailed, meaning the reading and cultural element of a chapter is the primary focus. The ‘Language Notes’ are clear and concise, most of the time giving a few examples of sentences with an accompanying translation, and then laying out the relevant endings. This minimises clutter and makes the information easily accessible. The ‘Language Practice’ sections consist mostly of gap-fill or multiple-choice sentence completion activities, which ensures that only the new language feature is practised and that the focus is on one language point only to avoid confusion. However, there are no activities which see students writing in Latin themselves, either translation into Latin or creative writing activities (though the website indicates that supplementary activities of this type will be coming soon). The brevity of the language activities means that teachers may have to create supplementary activities for higher-attaining students who wish to be challenged or be more creative in the language side of the course.
The strongest and most impressive aspect of this textbook is its cultural density. Each chapter contains multiple spreads on cultural aspects complementary to the stories, and these are placed between stories and language points rather than feeling as an appendix, meaning that cultural and historical aspects are thoroughly integrated as part of the course. The first part of the textbook focuses on life in Rome, including elements such as life in a Roman insula (p. 18); the Forum Romanum (p. 32); the myth of Romulus and Remus (p. 38); games and festivals (chapter 3); and slavery (chapter 6). The book then moves over to Britain, focusing on life in Roman London (chapter 7); food in Britain (pp. 114–115); Camulodunum (p. 128); the Druides (p. 131); the British tribes (chapter 8); the Roman army and war with Britannia (chapter 9); and Aquae Sulis (chapter 10). More general topics such as navigation and seafaring (chapter 11), crafts (chapter 14), and exploration of family and home life (chapters 15 and 16) are also culturally rich. The cultural elements also act as springboards for intriguing plots in the Latin stories, such as the Druids, pirate attacks or the fire of Rome. There is also significant incorporation of contemporary authors and texts into the cultural sections, with authors including Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, Seneca and Propertius incorporated to give contemporary insight and depth from the very first chapter. There is huge potential to use the cultural sections as springboards for individual or group projects. There are occasionally some incongruous inclusions, such as a page on the Amazons placed at the end of the ‘Britannia’ chapter, although the inclusion of mythology is a strong interest point and does give the opportunity for ‘mini-projects’, such as the ‘Research’ suggestions on the page about Theseus and the Minotaur (p. 102). Through its cultural strength, Suburani provides an excellent foundation for both the Roman module of the GCSE Classical Civilisation, as well as the Literature and Culture module of the Latin GCSE.
This textbook has taken care to ensure the balanced representation of genders, as well as embracing the diversity of the Roman Empire. Female characters are prominent from the start, and chapter 1 features a ‘Women at Work' section (p. 17). The characters in the illustrations and stories are ethnically diverse, and there is a shift in terminology whereby ‘enslaved person’ is used rather than ‘slave’ in the cultural sections on Roman Slavery (chapter 6) to reflect modern critical representations of history. Activities in the cultural sections also encourage students to think about the similarities and differences between Roman society and modern-day society, prompting critical thought about societal values and how the Romans are similar to or different from us today. Overall, this is a well-organised and effective reading course which is well suited to early KS3 teaching and updates the Latin coursebook for the 21st century classroom.
De Romanis Book 1: dei et deae.
Radice (K.), Cheetham (A.), Kirk (S.), Lord (G.). Pp. xii + 246, b/w & colour ills. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Paper, £19.99. ISBN: 978-1-350-10003-9. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/de-romanis-book-1-9781350100039/
De Romanis Book 2: homines.
Radice (K.), Cheetham (A.), Kirk (S.), Lord (G.). Pp. x + 278, b/w & colour ills. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Paper, £17.99. ISBN: 978-1-350-10007-7. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/de-romanis-book-2-9781350100077/
De Romanis is broken down into two volumes. The first, dei et deae, is based around the gods and aspects of Roman religion, and the second, homines, focuses on Rome's history. The first thing to strike about this course is the ‘meatiness’ of it: the amount of learning material which it provides. Anyone teaching from this course will not go wanting for both cultural and language resources. The structure of the course is built around five strands, and each of the chapters follows this format: an ‘Introduction’, which provides cultural context to the theme of the chapter; ‘Sources to Study’, which each include four different ancient sources; ‘Questions for Discussion’; ‘Core Language’, containing the new language material for the chapter; and ‘Additional Language’, with further practice activities designed for a range of abilities. There is an impressive amount of material contained both in the cultural sections as well as the language sections, and particularly the ‘Additional Language’ section provides a lot of varied activities for language reinforcement. The structure of the chapter sections and the amount of material means that teachers will have to ‘curate’ the material a little more in a classroom environment, but as the authors themselves suggest in the teacher's guide, it is unlikely that one class would do all the available exercises.
An attraction of this course is that Book 1 focuses on gods and goddesses, as mythology is usually a strong selling point to students for the study of classical subjects. Book 1 covers the Olympian Gods, Roman Heroes and Roman Gods, while also including thematic studies of Favour and Punishment, Festivals and Games, and Prophecy. These thematic chapters work well to introduce interconnected myths and legends, and stories such as Cerberus (p. 126) and Spartacus (p. 160) are interesting for the young Latin learner. The second book covers the history of Rome itself, the Kings and Republic, Julius Caesar and Augustus, but also includes chapters on Egypt and Roman Britain. While the cultural and historical sections in the first two parts of each chapter complement the Latin stories, the books have the feel of being both a Classical Civilisation course as well as a Latin course, perhaps due to the nature of the structural divisions in the chapters. This means that it would be a good KS3 textbook for schools that offer both Classical Civilisation / Ancient History and Latin at GCSE level, particularly for schools where students can only take one of the options, as it would serve as equally as preparation for both options.
The Latin element of the course tends towards ‘grammar-translation’, with the explanation of new material followed by its consolidation in language exercises and the stories. Typically, the ‘Core Language’ sections commence with practice sentences and grammar explanations, followed by stories, which are all based on the cultural material covered in the introduction of the chapter, thus allowing students to utilise their recently gained cultural knowledge to aid them in translating. There is a focus on vocabulary learning before translation, and all the chapter's vocabulary is printed at the start of each ‘Core Language’ section, so that the translations are a means of reinforcing knowledge rather than generating it. In terms of the grammar sequencing, this course deviates from many other courses in several areas. The first tense that it introduces is the perfect tense, followed by the imperfect tense and then the present tense. This may perhaps help to avoid the common problem that many students who are new to Latin tend to automatically translate the present tense as a past tense in reading material of courses which introduce the present tense first. The course also introduces the ablative after the nominative and the accusative, and the present participle relatively early in chapter 5, with the aim of avoiding a bulge in grammar at any point. The pace of the grammar slows down in book 2, to allow more time for consolidation, with specific consolidation activities built into the final chapters.
In terms of the language activities to help consolidate grammar and vocabulary, this coursebook has a lot to offer. The ‘Additional Language’ sections offer a wide variety of differentiated activities, including crosswords, anagrams, match-up activities, and English to Latin sentences, consolidating both grammar and vocabulary, meaning that teachers are able to select the most appropriate for their classes and SoW, or indeed the students can self-select. The variety of consolidation activities on offer in this section is undoubtedly a strength to this course.
There are extensive online resources which accompany this course on its companion website. As the book provides more material than any one class could cover, there are useful resources with suggestions of essential content, and teaching guides for each chapter. There are downloadable worksheets built around short-answer questions which are designed to make the introduction more accessible, and these go some way to breaking down the large quantity of information which may be difficult for students to access independently from the textbook. Online there are also malleable word documents for each Latin story, comprehension worksheets, vocabulary quizzes, and links to Quizlets which have been set up. The amount of support material is impressive and will significantly reduce the burden on the teacher of creating materials to support the course.
While the amount of material contained in this course may initially provide overwhelming, it gives the teacher a lot of scope to pick and choose to construct a SoW most suitable for their classes. This is not the type of textbook where students would work their way through page by page, but it would be an incredibly useful coursebook in situations where students have variable numbers of hours, as is often the case in the teaching of classical subjects.
Open access
