Institutional challenges

This subsection discusses challenges that can be categorised as institutional, meaning difficulties in teaching and learning that arise from societal and political frameworks, on the one hand, and from academic structures, such as degree requirements and university policies, on the other. Three themes will be considered: degree requirements, teaching staff resources, and student numbers. It is important to note that the interviewees typically only alluded to each of the issues, as they were considered common knowledge for both parties in the interviews. In what follows, I elaborate on the themes as much as is necessary for the reader to understand why they were perceived as challenges. In this sense, this subsection also provides essential background for some of the issues discussed later, which relate to the institutional environment of the University of Helsinki and Finnish universities in general.

Educational policies driven by efficiency-based models and alleged labour market needs have increasingly shaped universities worldwide in recent decades, and Finland is no exception. Neoliberal economic policies call for tighter state control over higher education. In the name of streamlining degrees and shortening graduation times, degree requirements at the University of Helsinki have been significantly reduced over the past two decades (Korkiakangas and Alho [Reference Korkiakangas and Alhoforthcoming]).

While the pan-European Bologna Process, which modified Finnish university curricula at the beginning of the millennium, has not yet led to a major reduction in degree sizes, the University of Helsinki’s own streamlining reform, known as ‘The Big Wheel’ (Iso pyörä 2015–2017; see, e.g. Merimaa Reference Merimaa2017), had a radical impact on Latin degree requirements. As a result, a master’s degree in Latin Language and Roman Literature at Helsinki now requires only 24 exams of five credits, whereas before the Bologna Process it had required 53 examinations. Before the Bologna Process, a normal exam typically yielded one opintoviikko (study week), which was the unit used in Finland to measure study workload and corresponds to about 1.7 credits. Since the workload of courses and exams has in practice remained the same as before, the same amount of work yields considerably more credits today. Calculated in this way, the ‘price’ of the Helsinki Latin master’s degree has dropped by 55%.

While the majority of basic language proficiency courses have been retained, the reductions have affected text courses and specialised courses. Since 2017, the degree requirements no longer include a single mandatory course on Vulgar Latin. Late Latin has occasionally been studied in one compulsory course, which consists of a selection of non-Classical texts ranging from the Archaic period to Late Antiquity or the Early Modern period, depending on the teacher. A course on the history of the Latin language, which inevitably includes LVLT texts, is an optional component of advanced studies.

Most strikingly, today it is possible to graduate from the Latin Language and Roman Literature programme at the University of Helsinki by passing only the following text courses: Latin Literature from the Classical Period (including three exams) and Non-Classical Latin in the intermediate studies and Roman Rhetoric, Literary Criticism or Historiography; Roman Poetry or Comedy; and Post-Classical Latin in the advanced studies (30 credits in total). Given such degree requirements, it is clear that training a competent Latinist is highly challenging unless students dedicate significant additional time to independent study (cf. the subsection ‘Learning-based challenges: learners’ foundations for knowledge construction’).

The interviewees also mentioned two other institutional challenges: the declining number of both Latin teaching staff and Latin students at the University of Helsinki. Both challenges are even more directly linked to diminishing resources, which in turn, result from the following changes: (1) the university’s core funding now being tied to the number of degrees awarded and the speed of graduation, (2) concomitant significant cuts to university funding, and (3) broader societal shifts in values and ideological preferences.

The official target graduation times are unrealistically short, making it difficult for most faculties even to come close to meeting them. Humanities students are not among the quickest to graduate (Review 2024, 5–6), partly because the faculty includes a large number of small disciplines that struggle to provide enough teaching, partly because humanities typically require multidisciplinary know-how, which takes time to acquire. As far as Latin is concerned, the majority of students are minoring in the subject, with the discipline thus having only minimal influence on their graduation times.

Reduced funding has led to cuts in teaching staff, particularly following retirements. Currently, the Latin Language and Roman Literature courses are taught by only one professor and a university lecturer, although the professor of Classical philology also teaches some Latin courses when necessary. During some years, one or two doctoral students or postdoctoral researchers with teaching duties are available, with each being responsible for half of a course to one course per year. Less than a decade ago, there was still a second university lecturer in Latin as well as a university lecturer in Classical philology, who taught both Latin and Ancient Greek. At the beginning of the millennium, the discipline also had an extraordinary professor and a senior assistant teaching of Latin. In even earlier times, lower-level courses were commonly taught by early career researchers.

Since each teacher has a set number of annual teaching hours, the halving of teaching staff in less than ten years has significantly hindered the ability to offer all required degree courses, even though degree requirements were simultaneously reduced, as explained above. The faculty also emphasises that the degree requirements must be sized according to what can be taught with the existing resources. In practice, priority must now be given to basic grammar courses and core text courses, leaving little room for optional courses.

For instance, in the 2024–2025 academic year, 11 Latin courses totalling 59 credits will be offered, of which 5 are grammar courses. The introductory text courses focus on Caesar (Classical prose) and Horace (Classical poetry). There are no dedicated LVLT courses, but two text selection courses may include excerpts from Late Latin texts. Ultimately, the small number of teachers directly dictates both the number of courses offered and the amount of material covered: More extensive degree requirements would no longer be feasible. Additionally, limited course offerings especially in advanced studies are bound to extend graduation times, which, in turn, will lead to less departmental funding in the long term.

The number of Latin students today is considerably lower than in past decades, although it has remained quite stable over the past ten years. Until the late 1960s, all students at the university’s Historical-Linguistic Department had to pass a relatively demanding exam translating from Latin into Finnish. Those who had not learnt enough Latin in school had to attend preparatory courses for the exam, so up to 2,000 students participated in those courses annually in the 1960s.

Latin was, however, rather broadly taught in secondary schools as well, partly because students wished to gain direct access to the university Latin exam. Several students continued Latin as a minor subject, and the total number of active students was 400–500 annually at the time (Pekkanen Reference Pekkanen1997). However, when the mandatory exam was abolished, student numbers quickly dropped and have been gradually decreasing ever since.

The actual number of active Latin students in recent decades is difficult to determine because Latin Language and Roman Literature is no longer an independent administrative unit, and statistics are only compiled at the departmental level. While approximately 30 new major students were admitted annually to study Latin and ancient Greek (combined) in the 1990s, the joint intake for both disciplines, along with ancient near-eastern languages, has typically been 12 in recent years. Consequently, in some years only a couple of new major students enrolled in Latin. However, the majority of students studying Latin are only minoring in it, chiefly majoring in history-related disciplines and modern languages. The typical number of students per course has long been 10–20 in elementary courses and 5–10 in advanced courses.

Primarily, the reduction in student admissions is not due to a decline in the number of applicants but rather to a change in educational policy motivated by a deeper cultural shift. Latin no longer holds the same role in Finnish society as it did until the postwar decades. Since Latin is rarely studied in schools today and graduates no longer find employment as teachers, maintaining the same intake levels as in the past is no longer feasible. In practice, a research career or employment outside one’s major are now the only viable career options for Latin graduates.

The reduction in student admissions is also tied to university finances in two ways. First, since Latin students tend to graduate relatively slowly, the university administration sought to mitigate financial losses by limiting student numbers. If a student fails to graduate on time or at all, the university does not receive a completion-based subsidy from the Ministry of Education, yet the costs of maintaining that student continue to accrue. Another reason given for reducing admissions was the claim that there were not enough teaching staff to accommodate a larger number of students. However, teaching staff numbers have been cut simultaneously, so this justification seems to lead to a vicious cycle.

Before these changes, however, Finnish LVLT research and teaching experienced a notable boom starting in the 1960s (Korkiakangas and Alho [Reference Korkiakangas and Alhoforthcoming]). As a result, the number of Latin researchers, teachers, and students increased noticeably and remained relatively high until the early 2000s. However, as is manifest from the preceding discussion, very little of this boom is evident at present, and even the remnants of the LVLT tradition appear increasingly endangered.

Teaching-based challenges: constructive alignment in course workflows

In this subsection, the focus shifts to challenges related to teaching. I investigate how (constructive) alignment materialises in the typical didactic workflows of Latin instruction at the University of Helsinki. The viewpoint adopted here is relevant not only to Latin teaching in general but also, more broadly, to the teaching of any variety of historical language. Before addressing the specific implications for LVLT, it is necessary to examine the topic at a general level.

The interviews made it clear that, although university teaching in Finland has become increasingly more pedagogically informed over the past few decades, the didactic workflows of Latin instruction have not always been ideally aligned in terms of the intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks. Their alignment – meaning an outcome-oriented logical–causal connection between the various elements – is considered key to a student’s successful and interference-free knowledge construction process, according to constructivist learning theories (Biggs Reference Biggs1999; Biggs and Tang Reference Biggs and Tang2011, chs. 4, 11). New information cannot simply be poured into a student’s head; rather, for information to become knowledge, it must be actively integrated by learners into their existing cognitive schemas (Elliott et al. Reference Elliott, Kratochwill, Littlefield Cook and Travers2000, 256). To avoid disrupting this process with conflicting motivations (unwanted backwash), every element of a course’s workflow should contribute to the same goal, clearly articulated as intended learning outcomes (Biggs Reference Biggs1999, 68–69).

In my experience, elementary grammar courses with many grammatical exercises tend to be particularly well-aligned and constructively designed within Finnish university curricula for Latin. In them, grammar theory and assignments are aimed at the acquisition of morphology and its correct application to new lexical material in proper syntactic environments, with these skills subsequently assessed in the final exam. In contrast, an average text course does not appear nearly as well-structured, even though the interviewees reported recent improvements in alignment even in text courses.

The traditional model of Latin courses in Finland, beyond elementary and intermediate grammar instruction, has long been the so-called text course: a lecture-based class in which the teacher recites a specific text sentence by sentence, commenting on grammatical and lexical peculiarities, explaining cultural and historical connotations, and providing a translation. This type of teacher-led exegesis, widely used in many countries, has its roots in the ancient philological method described by, among others, the Alexandrian grammarian Dionysius Thrax (c. 170–90 BC) and has been transmitted through medieval and early modern schools and universities to the present day.

The intended learning outcomes officially defined within the Latin degree requirements at the University of Helsinki promise that, after completing a course on, for example, non-Classical prose, students should be able to linguistically analyse and translate non-Classical prose independently. However, if the course is taught using the Dionysian method, as was typical for text courses until quite recently, the only assessment task consists of a written in-class exam where students translate and linguistically analyse passages that were previously translated and analysed in class (only written exams are in use in Finland). The backwash provoked by this approach is sheer memorisation rather than the genuine acquisition of cognitive skills for independent text analysis, which is the intended outcome. In such a course, students’ only roles are attending lectures, taking notes, and, depending on the teacher, responding to occasional questions about particular words or historical details.

This method has persisted due to its ease for the teacher. It was also the dominant approach during the Finnish LVLT ‘boom’ from the 1960s to the 1990s, which resulted in a substantial number of Latin degrees focusing on LVLT-related themes and the emergence of a well-trained body of researcher-teachers who continued to teach LVLT until recent decades (Korkiakangas and Alho [Reference Korkiakangas and Alhoforthcoming]). It can be hypothesised that fully teacher-centred methods are not as detrimental for adult learners as they are for children, as adults typically possess better self-regulation strategies and know how to compensate for deficits in instruction through independent study. Moreover, before the university policy reforms of the 2000s and 2010s (subsection ‘Institutional Challenges’), the master’s degree in Latin Language and Roman Literature at Helsinki was considerably more extensive. Consequently, students were likely to have better starting levels for Latin text exegesis than they do today, making it perhaps more realistic to give more responsibility for learning to students at that time. It should also be noted that language learning is always a matter of exposure: The more Latin a student is exposed to, the better their linguistic intuition develops, regardless of how systematically the instruction is organised.

Judging from the interviews, teachers trained after the university-pedagogical turn, which began in the early 2000s, have abandoned lecture-based exegesis as the sole course format. Two interviewees were particularly critical of its application in LVLT teaching, emphasising that the traditional teacher-led approach fails to achieve its main goal: training students to identify and analyse Vulgar Latin features in texts. If a Vulgar Latin text is taught in the same manner as (Classical) literature, too much time is spent translating and explaining issues that are not of primary relevance for learning Vulgar Latin. This may not have been a major problem in previous decades when the degree requirements included several LVLT-themed study units, allowing students ample time to develop LVLT-specific skills even if texts were largely analysed as literary products. However, a more pedagogically sound approach would be to provide students with written translations of the LVLT texts under examination and/or lists of rare vocabulary and grammatical constructions in advance, thus maximising classroom time for linguistic analysis of deviations from Classical Latin.

Another way to better align Latin teaching with intended learning outcomes is to redirect students’ learning strategies by requiring them to analyse and translate previously unseen passages in exams. To ensure the feasibility of such a practice, texts must not be overly difficult, and tools such as dictionaries – and in LVLT courses, possibly even course handouts or textbooks – should be allowed. In my 2024 course on the historical grammar of Latin, which included Vulgar Latin texts, students were permitted to use dictionaries and the course handout during the final in-class exam.

To promote constructiveness in teaching, lectures should ideally be supplemented with student-involving didactic practices. Learners must actively process new information (input) to integrate it into their knowledge base; only through personal engagement does input become intake. Instructional techniques that make participants learn by doing are known as hands-on activities. They give participants direct practical experience, as students apply their learning and learn from their mistakes.

LVLT texts cannot be read without some theoretical (linguistic) background. Accordingly, the few courses in which LVLT texts have been analysed extensively at the University of Helsinki in the twenty-first century have included an introductory theory section. Alternatively, some courses tangential to LVLT have been primarily devoted to theory, such as Historical Latin Phonology and Morphology, which has been taught approximately every 5 years since the 1920s. However, until recently it was mainly concerned with linguistic developments up to the time of Classical Latin owing to the textbook assigned in the degree requirements, Sven Lundström’s Latinets ljud- och formhistoria (1958). Historically, students were required to take an independent exam on set textbooks before attending LVLT text courses (e.g. Veikko Väänänen’s Introduction au latin vulgaire [1st ed. 1961] or Einar Löfstedt’s Late Latin [1959]). One attempt to integrate theory with a text course was Anne Helttula’s 1976 course Introduction to Vulgar Latin using Text Samples (Johdatus vulgaarilatinaan tekstinäyttein), but no record of the course appears in the teaching programme after that year. In any event, theory teaching calls for practical training: Students must learn to apply theory to real-world scenarios.

The interviews and my own experience as a former student indicate that student-centred didactic activities are by no means unfamiliar in Latin or LVLT teaching in Finland. Some teachers already employed them decades ago, and they now seem to have become mainstream. The learning-by-doing principle is encapsulated in the maxim docendo discimus (‘by teaching, we learn’), attributed to the philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD). In various Ancient Greek and Latin literature courses taught at the University of Helsinki, students have long been required to present and explain selected passages to the class, reinforcing their learning by articulating their understanding to others. The idea of peer teaching is that, if something is not clear, that is, solidly established on the foundation of one’s extant knowledge, it will become manifest as soon as one tries to phrase it in one’s own words – a fact that underlines the constructivist nature of knowledge accumulation.

The Latin degree requirements also include one course that consists entirely of students reading and interpreting Latin texts for others under the teacher’s supervision. Students preparing for proper text courses take this course in supervised reading (ohjattu tekstinluku) at the beginning of their intermediate studies. The text typically consists of selections from Caesar’s De bello Gallico or a speech by Cicero, which students parse and translate in turns under the teacher’s guidance. On rare occasions, text workshop courses in which students present and explain texts of their choice in a seminar-like environment have been organised (for a related didactic experiment, see Korkiakangas and Ainonen Reference Korkiakangas and Ainonen2015). Although highly beneficial for students, such hands-on workshop courses are offered infrequently because they are extremely time-consuming compared with the amount of text that can be covered during such a course. To ensure that students receive a representative picture of ancient Latin literature, the degree requirements dictate a specific set of texts that should be covered within each major. It is easier to meet these quantitative requirements, even at the cost of quality learning, if the teacher takes the lead in explaining the texts.

As far as LVLT texts are concerned, student-led learning-by-teaching assignments or text workshops are virtually unfeasible owing to the linguistic complexity of the material. Therefore, it is more advisable to use interpretative assignments. The interviews suggest that home assignments in which students focus on a well-defined grammatical phenomenon or analyse short texts, such as inscriptions or excerpts from Cena Trimalchionis or Peregrinatio Egeriae, appear to be the most common student-involving learning tasks in LVLT courses. Recently, similar home assignments have been used in many courses on non-LVLT texts as well, but while LVLT assignments predominantly focus on linguistic exegesis, those in non-LVLT courses may emphasise simple translation into Finnish or, for example, the author’s communicative strategies (e.g. ‘How does Seneca construct his argument in this passage?’).

The interviewed teachers also strongly emphasised the need to properly contextualise the LVLT texts discussed in class. While historical, cultural, and other contextual explanations are important when reading ancient literature, they are even more crucial in the case of documentary LVLT texts preserved in their original form, such as inscriptions, papyri, or Late Latin legal documents. In such cases, the exact wording of the text may depend on the interpretation of its material and/or formulaic context. Additionally, many Vulgar Latin texts from Late Antiquity that have survived through a manuscript tradition only exist in a single manuscript (e.g. Peregrinatio Egeriae) or have been transmitted through a highly vague textual tradition (e.g. Mulomedicina Chironis, Antoninus Placentinus). Thus, basics of textual criticism should also be incorporated into classroom discussions of these types of texts.

To be properly understood, LVLT texts therefore require comprehensive linguistic, philological, and other contextual analysis. In fact, an LVLT text may be the first time a student encounters a real linguistic and philological dilemma, providing an excellent opportunity to teach the central methodological problem-solving skills needed in academic research on a step-by-step basis. The low disciplinary boundaries within Finnish classical studies have probably ensured that teachers at the University of Helsinki have always been committed to providing students with sufficient information on, and the necessary tools to analyse, the socio-historical and material contexts of the LVLT texts under discussion. Some interviewed teachers, for example, reported always taking the time to offer detailed descriptions of the graphical and physical properties of Vulgar Latin inscriptions, even before modern epigraphical databases with images became available. All the interviewed teachers stated that they devote considerable time to familiarising students with the context of LVLT texts, even at the expense of quantitative targets.

An important aspect of the contextualisation of LVLT texts is understanding their relationship to Classical standard Latin. In fact, in accordance with the framework of variationist linguistics, the concept of ‘Vulgar Latin’ has been largely abandoned in Latin teaching at the University of Helsinki, given that the term is misleading: It lumps together highly diverse and chronologically varied texts under a single label, suggesting a false unity, which in reality, makes it difficult to appreciate their different non-standard features. Second, the word ‘vulgar’ implicitly suggests that the vulgus, the common people, spoke a different, somehow worse Latin than the elite, who supposedly spoke Classical Latin. However, the codes of spoken and written language form a diasystem distinct from the linguistic variation between social classes, although, of course, such social variation did exist in ancient Latin as well.

According to two of the interviewees, it is of primary importance in LVLT teaching to make clear to students that Latin was, in antiquity, a normal spoken language that varied and changed as all spoken languages do. What is exceptional, by contrast, is the strength and longevity of the standard of Classical Latin, which obscured from view the vast majority of the regional and social variation that must have existed in spoken language across different parts of the Roman Empire. Since all the surviving evidence is written, and since the segment of the population that could write used standard Latin when writing, we have no access to the Latin spoken by those not exposed to the classical standard apart from exceptional cases – on the basis of which that variety can be tentatively reconstructed (Halla-aho Reference Halla-aho, Halla-aho, Leiwo and Vierros2012).

It is easy to see that LVLT texts afford stimulating material for problem-based, hands-on assignments, provided that students already possess relatively advanced skills in the field. In problem-based learning, students acquire knowledge by solving real or real-world-simulating, usually open-ended, use cases. In a university setting, such mock research assignments imitate the knowledge-production practices characteristic of academic research communities, allowing students to develop scholarly connoisseur skills – from identifying research questions to seeking information in databases and specialised dictionaries to reporting findings (Biggs and Tang Reference Biggs and Tang2011; Elton Reference Elton2005, 151–158, 267–268; Sadler Reference Sadler2010, 546–547). This approach to cognitive research in education has gained considerable attention at the University of Helsinki under the name of ‘progressive inquiry’ (e.g. Muukkonen et al. Reference Muukkonen, Hakkarainen, Lakkala and Roberts2004). However, problem-solving assignments based on progressive inquiry require much time, making them best suited as major assessment tasks or as part of a final course examination.

In my 2020 course on the history of the Latin language and its research, which necessarily included excerpts from a range of early and late Vulgar Latin texts, the final home exam included a text analysis component, which took the form of a simulation. Students were asked to imagine themselves writing a linguistic report on a newly discovered Latin papyrus for a journal publishing excavation results, that is, a scholarly publication directed at a non-linguist audience. They were given a transcription of an ‘unknown’ text, which was in fact a fragment from Cato the Elder’s Ad Marcum filium – something they were expected to find out themselves. Using all possible aids, students had to prepare a description placing the text within its proper historical and language-historical context on the basis of its linguistic and philological features. To accomplish this task, they had to apply everything they had learnt about the history of Latin and its stylistics. The results were encouraging, and students rated the task as both useful and challenging.

Learning-based challenges: learners’ foundations for knowledge construction

While the previous subsection discussed the challenges related to what is taught, that is, the didactic input, this subsection focuses on the challenges related to intake, that is, what students gain from what is taught. However, it is evident that the intake and input perspectives cannot be entirely separated, as the ultimate purpose of teaching should always be to adapt to learners’ needs. Today’s universities can no longer afford to overlook challenges arising from students’ inadequate foundations for knowledge construction, even though acquiring academic learning skills and sufficient prerequisite knowledge was traditionally considered each student’s personal responsibility. As a whole, examining learning-related challenges offers a sharper picture of the needs that teaching must address.

The image that emerged from the teacher interviews regarding today’s Latin undergraduate and graduate students was highly polarised, potentially reflecting the increasing differentiation among students recently observed in both lower and higher education (e.g. DiLeo Reference DiLeo2024; Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson2014). The primary concern among teachers was students’ overall Latin proficiency, which, according to most interviewees, has declined in recent decades. Since Latin is taught in only a few Finnish schools, most students start from scratch at the university. As degree requirements continue to be reduced in scope (subsection ‘Institutional Challenges’), the proficiency levels attained by students completing their master’s degrees appear lower and lower, particularly in terms of vocabulary breadth, idiomatic expressions, and ease in handling complex syntactic constructions. Consequently, even in advanced courses, considerable time must be spent revising basic grammar, making it especially challenging to teach specialised themes such as LVLT. As one teacher put it: ‘How can you analyse non-standard features of Latin if you do not know the standard?’

This topic is particularly sensitive, as it risks labelling students unfairly. Although the interviewees were highly analytical in their comments, retrospective evaluations often contain an element of the nostalgic ‘everything was better before’ bias, in which younger generations are perceived as weaker than the idealised youth of the evaluator’s own time. I know from personal experience how difficult it is to avoid this line of thinking. The main problem with verifying such potentially nostalgic judgements is the lack of systematic comparative data on students’ Latin proficiency across different decades, which would be necessary for a neutral analysis. While teachers’ personal experiences suggesting a decline in Latin skills are certainly valid in a general sense, it would be unfair to attribute these deficiencies to students themselves so long as they are largely the result of structural factors, namely, less Latin being studied in schools and the narrowing of university degree requirements.

One related problematic discourse frequently encountered around academia, especially among alumni who no longer have first-hand contact with contemporary university life, is the lamentation that today’s students need to put in far less effort for their degrees than previous generations did. Notably, the interviewees who had been involved in designing degree requirements, that is, most of them, did not raise this type of concern.

Although the number of courses and exams required for the master’s degree in Latin Language and Roman Literature has decreased significantly, as demonstrated in subsection ‘Institutional Challenges’, it is probable that the concurrent shift towards more constructivist and better-aligned teaching has compensated for some of this loss. The cognitive engagement of a student in a traditional, fully teacher-led lecture course may, depending on the individual, have been significantly lower than in most modern courses, which often incorporate extensive student-activating assignments. This shift is not unique to Latin instruction but reflects a broader pedagogical transformation in university education.

Put bluntly, one could argue that, in the past, the responsibility for intake rested more heavily on the student than it does today. If a student possessed good self-study skills, self-regulation, and discipline, they were undoubtedly able to acquire expertise across a much broader range of stylistic and textual genres under the old degree requirements than is possible within the current curriculum. It definitely made them more comprehensive and versatile Latinists than those trained solely within today’s degree structure. However, according to the interviewees, students are still expected to undertake significant independent work, but now it is primarily needed to compensate for gaps in content knowledge resulting from the reduced scope of degree requirements.

While self-discipline and independent study are thus accentuated in the acquisition of a decent Latin proficiency, teachers reported that undergraduate and graduate students are increasingly lacking some fundamental academic skills necessary for effective knowledge construction. The interviews indicated that even basic academic competences, such as taking notes during lectures, independently revising material, and reading and comprehending longer texts, appear to be concentrated among fewer and fewer highly capable students.

Two teachers even questioned whether today’s students had ever been introduced to the concept that learning a language requires active effort, a necessity for such a difficult language as Latin and particularly its non-standard varieties. Assuming that students’ falling short of making the effort is indeed a generalisable phenomenon, part of the explanation might be that, in school, most Finnish students only learn English as a foreign language (apart from Swedish, which has a minimal number of lessons nowadays), and English is well-known for its meagre morphosyntax. This partial explanation could also account for the observation that some students have only a weak grasp of basic linguistic terminology, including fundamental concepts such as parts of speech, subjects, or subordinate clauses. However, this limitation reportedly varies considerably on the basis of students’ academic backgrounds. Most Latin students at the University of Helsinki are minoring in the subject, and those majoring in modern languages are generally well-versed in linguistic terminology and, for example, the phonetic alphabet. From the perspective of LVLT research, it is noteworthy that Latin instructors’ expertise in linguistics has also improved in recent decades as a result of the general linguistic turn in Latin studies.

As mentioned earlier, most teachers emphasised that, although fewer students seem to meet the expected proficiency levels, some students are exceptionally strong, perhaps even stronger than before. This kind of differentiation creates serious difficulties in LVLT teaching: If only a few students in a master’s-level course are capable of analysing non-standard grammatical features, while others still struggle with understanding basic sentences, designing effective instruction becomes extremely challenging.

At the beginning of this subsection, it was noted that most learning-related challenges can also be viewed as teaching-related challenges requiring didactic solutions. Some interviewees, particularly the younger ones, explicitly acknowledged this point. The University of Helsinki has recognised the deficits in students’ general learning skills, and various forms of academic guidance are now available, including personal study counselling (HOPS), the interactive HowULearn feedback tool (https://studies.helsinki.fi/instructions/article/unihow-system-and-howulearn-questionnaire), and various specialised courses. Teachers also guide students directly in their own instruction, for example, by introducing effective note-taking techniques. Above all, however, teachers are encouraged to design their courses in a constructively aligned manner so that independent study and revision of the material taught become an integral part of the course workflow. For instance, it is hardly realistic to expect students to be able to read and interpret longer academic texts unless such texts are systematically incorporated into the curriculum well before the seminar phase.

Regarding LVLT instruction in particular, relatively little can be done to improve students’ general Latin proficiencies within the current institutional framework. Since achieving comprehensive language mastery appears impossible under the present degree requirements, emphasis shifts to self-study. What teachers can do – and what the university administration does not want them to do – is to inform students openly that, if they aspire to a career in research (which is practically the only viable career path for Latinists in Finland today), they must undertake substantial additional work to be on par with Latin students in many other countries. This may sound discouraging, but on the other hand, it could motivate ambitious students by helping them recognise that the prospects of their chosen academic field extend well beyond their university studies.