The article discusses the issue of access to Classical education in general and Greek and Latin language in particular currently experienced by working-class students in the UK, both at high school and at University level. It then focuses specifically on the provision of Classical languages in the Liverpool region, traditionally an area of deprivation and a focal point of Classics poverty. The article details the results from a survey conducted on 68 students of the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology of the University of Liverpool, which shows that even when the cohort is not predominantly middle class, feelings of marginalisation and estrangement continue to be felt by students. Finally, it suggests a number of recommendations to address these concerns, tackle elitism, and promote inclusion.

For the past several decades, education researchers have devoted a lot of time, energy, and practice to gaining an understanding of literacy and the cognitive processes that control it. This research has developed, evidence has converged around certain findings, and teaching methods for reading and literacy have changed for the better because of it. Unfortunately the information and research, by and large, has not trickled out of the realm of reading education. Nevertheless, there is a great deal that teachers of Classical languages can learn and gain from an understanding of the ideas that have evolved from this research. After all, reading is a key component to any Latin or Greek classroom, regardless of whether the teacher espouses a reading method, a traditional grammar-translation method, or an approach that focuses more on productive proficiency. By using the products of the past years of literacy research, Latin and Greek teachers can perform better as educators, since they will have a stronger construct for how reading works as a cognitive process and they will be more able to provide students with help and support by isolating problem skills and developing activities specifically to remedy those issues.

The following speech was given at the annual Summer School of the Association for Latin Teaching, held at Haberdashers’ Monmouth School for Girls in July 2015.

For countless students of Latin (myself included), prevailing memories of Latin instruction involve being taught to unpick Latin sentences by racing towards the verb and securing the meaning of the main clause before piecing together the rest. However, this ‘hunt the verb’ approach, where one's eyes are jumping back and forth in search of the resolution of ambiguity, is not necessarily conducive to fluent reading of Latin (Hoyos, 1993). If, as so many textbooks and teachers vouch, we are aiming to unlock Roman authors for all students to read, then we need to furnish them with the skills to be able to read Latin fluently, automatically and with enjoyment, not engender in them a process more akin to puzzle-breaking. I chose to experiment with teaching students to read Latin in order, firstly because, as Markus and Ross (2004) point out, the Romans themselves must necessarily have been able to understand Latin in the order in which it was composed as so much of their sharing of literature happened orally. Indeed, as Kuhner (2016) and others who promote the continuation of spoken Latin have argued, this is still a very real possibility today. And secondly, because it is a skill which I, and others, believe to be teachable (Hansen, 1999; Markus & Ross, 2004; Hoyos, 2006; McCaffrey, 2009). Not only that, but whatever our starting point, Wegenhart (2015) believes that by encouraging these reading skills early, we can encourage our students to be ‘expert’ readers who will be able to enjoy reading Latin long after they have been through their exams.

Nearly every – no, every – Greek grammar and course book, even the most comprehensive (in English, at any rate), gives a very skimpy, perfunctory and unhelpful account — insofar as it gives any account at all – of what ‘aspect’ is and how exactly it is related to verb tense and time (which tend to be conflated). Most of the books and articles on the subject of the aspect of the Greek verb are accessible only to the professional philologist, and can't therefore be easily applied by non-specialists to the understanding of the actual usage of Greek writers or to the imitation of their usage when translating into their language. This article sets out to remedy this situation by giving a clear and (within limits) comprehensive explanation of aspect as it applies to the Greek verb.

While observing A-level students at my PP2 school, I noticed that their responses to classical texts largely consisted of the identification of stylistic tropes. The students could identify a text's stylistic features but they struggled to articulate and develop their own personal reactions to the text. They had been well-trained in this sort of ‘feature-spotting’ and therefore their reading experience was narrowly mechanical rather than genuinely exploratory. Every passage they encountered was put through the same analytical process with the unsurprising result that every classical author ended up sounding much the same. This seemed to me to be fundamentally passive way of engaging with literature. I was struck by Muir's contention that ‘the pupil should not be a passive recipient in the study of literature’ (!974, p.515). Hence, I wanted to devise a teaching strategy that would enable my students to be more active in the formulation of a personal response to the text.

On 19th March 2020, the Deputy First Minister of Scotland and Cabinet Secretary for Education John Swinney reported to the Scottish Parliament that, in light of the global coronavirus pandemic, schools across Scotland would close from 20th March, mirroring the policy of the UK government announced by the Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson the previous day. As part of this closure, Swinney announced that there would be no examinations set for the 2019-20 session, and that the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) would instead enact a certification model employing coursework, teacher estimates of grades and evidence of prior achievement. In outlining the Scottish Government's plan to Holyrood, the Deputy First Minister declared: ‘It is a measure of the gravity of the challenge we now face that the exams will not go ahead this year. With the support of the wider education system, a credible certification model can be put in place that can command confidence in the absence of the exam diet – to ensure that young people in our schools and colleges who through no fault of their own are unable to sit exams, are not disadvantaged.’ (Scottish Government, 2020).

The difficulties which students can encounter when making the transition from school or college to university are widely recognised. In some ways, of course, starting university should bring new challenges. Higher education is so called because it takes learners beyond what they have done at school, exposing them to new material and new ideas, and helping them to grow and develop in new ways. But it is in the interests of the students themselves, their school teachers, their university tutors and society at large to help them progress as smoothly as possible from the one environment to the other. Bridging the gap successfully enables students to make the most of their university education, rather than floundering needlessly.

As for the benefits of moving away from grammar-translation to more comprehension-based and communicative language teaching (CCLT), few can argue they are insignificant and dismissible. In fact, the more one hears about thriving Latin programs, reduced teacher stress, increased student engagement, and inclusivity of all learners, the harder it becomes to justify pedagogical practices of the last 300 years or so (Musumeci, 1997). Still, hearing about current changes to teaching practices often leaves teachers perplexed. Where to start? Not only can navigating 40 years of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research be daunting, but teachers are often left with a lack of support and practical resources to affect any change. In many cases, even the change itself is feared.

Terence Tunberg is a professor of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He is a world-renowned proponent of Latin speaking as a means of helping with language learning and, for more advanced students, as a way to consolidate knowledge of the language. He is the founder and convener of the Lexington Latin Conventiculum, a week-long total immersion seminar in active Latin that takes place each July. Mair Lloyd, a PhD student at the Open University, first met Prof Tunberg when she attended the 2014 Conventiculum and that experience became central to her PhD researching the communicative approach to Latin teaching through a sociocultural perspective on Latin learning. This interview was recorded shortly after she and Prof Tunberg took part in a panel on Living Latin at the Classical Association conference in Edinburgh, in April 2016. A link to recordings of the four panel papers can be found at the end of this article. The fourth recording shows Prof Tunberg demonstrating some of the techniques he uses in his teaching at the Conventiculum.

In late 2017, the Classical Association of Scotland, in association with Classics for All, hired a co-ordinator to commence a programme of outreach and public engagement activities across the country. In this article, the national outreach co-ordinator reflects on the progress made to date, the difficulties faced, and hopes and plans for the future.

The objective of this case study is to consider the role of pupil talk in the translation of Latin. I consider that ‘talk’ within the Latin classroom is an important pedagogical tool to support the development of pupil knowledge and understanding and to promote independent learning. Firstly, I am particularly interested in pupils’ early acquisition of the Latin language through ‘talk’. In this study, I wanted to explore how they use talk to support each other and the issues they encounter, the use of available and additional support resources and the extent of grammatical terminology within their talk. With the latter, I was curious to investigate how much terminology infiltrated pupils’ speech, or indeed if it was absent, and the subsequent effect both of these might have. The oral translation of Latin is an accepted and traditional part of learning for pupils. Throughout my PGCE teacher training course, I have observed that the majority of pupils frequently and independently consult or choose to work with another pupil when translating. I considered it was both a valid and valuable learning strategy to explore and analyse in some depth. Such research would provide a constructive insight into this accepted but sometimes overlooked learning tool, and therefore could realistically inform and improve my future teaching practice. Lastly, research into pupil talk has its own intrinsic worth, as transcripts provide both thought-provoking and informative evidence of their own. Thus, I was keen, within my placement school, to discover and consider how the pupils responded and talked about the language together in pairs.

Despite the challenges which are involved, some secondary schools show determination to get Classics onto the timetable and into their curricular provision. The following three case studies draw on interviews with the people directly involved in doing so: the Principals and the teachers themselves. These experiences were captured at the time when they were getting Classics into their schools. The first is derived from an interview with a qualified specialist Classics teacher, ‘Rachel’, working in London. Latin already had a presence there from when the school had employed a part-time teacher; the remit was the development of a full Classics department. The second is based on interviews with the school head teacher and a non-specialist Modern Languages teacher ‘Yvonne’ who had been employed to start a Classics department from scratch in a school in the Midlands. The third is based on an interview with the Principal of an academy which had decided to introduce Latin not only into her own school with a new teacher ‘George’, but also into one that was not yet built. The respondents’ real names have, of course, been changed.

This research will investigate whether the teaching of prose composition to a group of students with no or very limited experience helps improve their linguistic knowledge and performance. The investigation covers two different strategies: a step method and an annotation method, The new WJEC Eduqas GCSE Latin paper was first examined in 2018 and contains an optional prose composition section. This comprises three sentences to be translated from English into Latin.

‘That's amazing! I can see what he's doing.’ These words, from a thirteen-year old boy in London, were extremely encouraging. Moments earlier he had been complaining that our imminent ancient history session would stop him playing pool. At his words, his friends looked up from online gaming, and they too began taking an interest in images of ancient vases and learning about ancient warfare. An hour later they hit the pool tables, but for the duration of our after-school session, these reluctant learners had engaged well and taken real pleasure in finding out about the ancient world.

The ‘Advocating Classics Education’ (ACE) project is an initiative led by Professor Edith Hall and Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson, based at King's College London. The project seeks to extend the availability of Classical Civilisation and Ancient History (CC/AH) qualifications to learners in non-fee-paying schools across the United Kingdom. To do so, Professor Hall has been awarded a Leadership Fellowship of £250,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project's full title is ‘Studying Classical Civilisation in Britain: recording the past and fostering the future’ and it runs from 1st May 2017 to 31st August 2018.

This therefore suggests that the Year 11 class will not concur with studies to suggest that choice provides students with the motivation to achieve, rather that the boys are more likely to obstruct their learning by choosing the easier choice of task. The second class is a Year 9 Latin class, and there is a lower percentage of mixed-ability students in this class. Owing to this, the class will, I hope, further demonstrate whether choice in the classroom is linked to motivation and high performance. The reason why I have chosen two different classes and subjects is because, generally, the atmosphere in the classes and the preparation of lessons in each are very different from each other. It will therefore be worthwhile to determine how choice theory works in both instances.

The Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project (AshLI) is a three-year collaboration between the universities of Warwick and Oxford, and the Ashmolean Museum. Its remit comprises, aside from photographing, cataloguing and translating the Museum's collection of more than 350 Latin-inscribed objects, a wide-ranging programme of public- and schools-engagement: as well as the epigraphers (inscriptions specialists), imaging experts and digital encoders, Professor Alison Cooley's team also includes a PGCE-qualified Classics teacher and blogger, and a trained podcast producer. Their aim is to tell stories of Roman life, using inscriptions as a starting point, through INSET days, free teaching resources, short films and regular podcasts made available through the project's blog ‘Reading, Writing, Romans’. In 2015, the team organised the first in a series of large-scale, direct public engagement events, when it staged a Roman funeral procession in the Ashmolean Museum.

If the past two years have proven anything, it is that students today hold a tremendous capacity to adapt to incredibly difficult learning environments. This paper explores student learning experiences in one such learning environment, the period of online learning that occurred between January and March 2021 due to COVID-19-related school closures. Investigating the effectiveness of the digital learning platform Padlet in terms of student engagement with the Latin curriculum and its cultivation of Latin comprehension skills, this case study of Year 8 students in a state-maintained girls’ grammar school demonstrates the value of collaborative, discussion-based approaches to remote teaching. The value of digital learning platforms in our post-pandemic educational environment is demonstrated in its potential to bridge the communicative gap felt by many students when taught online, simulating the lively classroom climate which so often generates exciting and effective learning opportunities for each student. As this paper demonstrates, digital learning platforms hold the potential not only to assist educators in coping with the challenges of remote learning, but also to extend student learning in ways once considered unimaginable beyond the realms of the physical classroom. As a result, this paper argues that the position of such platforms in the post-pandemic classroom must be advocated and supported further.

As a Latin teacher, I think a lot about reading. Without texts I would not have a subject to teach, and the goal of many Latin programs (including my own) is teaching students to read Latin texts. I began my Latin teaching career while teaching the language to myself as well. The goal (both for myself and my students) was to read Latin confidently and fluidly, from left to right, processing the meaning of the words as my eye scanned the pages. Yet my good intentions were soon frustrated, and I was baffled by a problem which I soon realised was not unique to my situation: despite years of training, neither I nor my students could read Latin in a natural, fluid way. Furthermore, textbooks and colleagues seemed resigned to the view that such a goal was unrealistic or unobtainable. Best to treat language as a puzzle to be solved, or linguistic knot to be untangled, rather than a language expressing a message. Only the most intellectually gifted students continued in my ‘puzzle-solving’ course; consequently, my enrolment dropped off steeply after the second year. Looking for more help, I even implemented various ‘rules for reading’ and ‘reading strategies’ advocated by others, yet rather than improve student reading ability, I felt my curriculum begin to feel increasingly cluttered with activities and processes that stole away from my students the valuable time needed to interact with the language itself. It was not until I began investigating the field of Second Language Acquisition (hereafter SLA) that I discovered some simple, yet fundamental principles about language that helped explain my students’ struggles and helped me rethink language teaching in general.