Teaching Oneself Intermediate Latin

[cadences]

Hi All,

 

I'm thinking of teaching myself Latin up to an intermediate level so I can register for a third-year Latin class, and I have received great advice about covering first-year Latin on my own (I'm using Lingua Latina with Wheelock on the side as a reference grammar), but I'm unsure how to proceed from there, materials and method-wise. I'm wondering whether anyone has done this before and might be willing to share their experience/advice/tips as well as point me to any helpful material that's available on the market?

 

Thanks!

[heliogabalus]

Keller and Russell's book should take you through intermediate.

[ἠφανισμένος]

Keller and Russell is the first-year text at my university, though they finish it up early in the third semester.  I think it's certainly possible to do what you propose and skip the entire second year, but I know my own Latin was aided considerably by taking a fourth-semester course (the first formal Latin instruction I'd had) before going to a third-year reading course.  I realized that in my self-study, I had missed some of the finer points, and I'm glad I had a chance to acquire them before I moved on.  (Of course, you very well might be a more thorough autodidact than I was, in which case disregard.)

 

As far as materials, what usually happens in intermediate Latin is that you start to read (slowly and in small quantities) original texts.  So if you can make it through something like 100-150 lines of Ovid in a week, you’re probably ready to make the jump to a third-year course.  I’ve seen a variety of authors used for intermediate Latin: Ovid, Virgil, Catullus, Nepos, Suetonius, Cicero . . .  Pick one of those or another “easy” author, find a good intermediate-level reader with notes and vocabulary, and see how it goes.  Lingua Latina has a variety of additional readers for people who’ve finished Familia Romana.  Dickinson College Commentaries have some free texts online with notes and vocabulary, as does Geoffrey Steadman.  The Bryn Mawr commentaries are also good for the intermediate level.

[cadences]

Thanks, everyone! This was really helpful. Cheers!