The Effect of Elementary Latin Instruction on Language Arts Performance Nancy A. Mavrogenes The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 77, No. 4. (Mar., 1977), pp. 268-273. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-5984%28197703%2977%3A4%3C268%3ATEOELI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 The Elementary School Journal is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.
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The Effect of Elementary Latin Instruction on Language Arts Performance Nancy A. Mavrogenes West High School Aurora, Illinois
Since about 1967, pioneered by the Philadelphia public school system, an innovative program of a daily twenty-minute period of Latin instruction in the intermediate grades has produced solid results in children's language and reading performance. It is the purpose of this paper to describe these programs and the results. Evidence will also be presented in support of FLES (Foreign Languages in the Elementary School) to indicate "that foreign language learning relates to the needs or interests of children" ( 1: 543). The problem An eroding of the American language has received much national publicity recently. This decline is evidenced by such statistics as a drop of thirty-three points in the average verbal score on the national Scholastic Aptitude Test between 1957 and 1973 and a sharp increase in college remedial English courses (2). Although between 1971 and 1974 there was an increase of two points in the basic reading achievement of seventeen-year-olds, 11 percent of the seventeen-year-olds attending school are still defined as functional illiterates, unable to read even the simplest job applications. Furthermore, in this recent nationwide study on all reading exercises Blacks scored 14.1 points lower than Whites (3). Possible solutions There are various ways to attack this problem of decreased language ability. One way is the Right T o Read effort, launched by the U.S. Office of Education in 1969. The goal of this program is that "no one shall be leaving our schools without the skill and the desire necessary to read to the full limits of his capability" (4). It was this Right T o Read program that reported an increase of two points in basic reading achievement of seventeen-year-old highschool students in recent years (3). John Anderson of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation has suggested other ways to improve verbal ability. One way is to encourage reading as a
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leisure activity. An analysis of how Americans spend their free time has showed that, out of an estimated fifty hours of leisure a week, only .2 percent, an average of six minutes, is spent reading books ( 5 ) , compared with 26.6 hours a week spent watching television (2). Verbal ability can also be increased by direct vocabulary work, using tapes, records, machines, classes, books. However, much of this material has a "haphazard format" (5), and the problem is to get people involved in such a program. Still another way to increase verbal ability is to introduce Latin into the elementary-school curriculum. Rationale for Latin in the elementary school There is a strong theoretical basis for introducing a foreign language to children. The Russian child psychologist L. S. Vygotsky, who had a profound influence on Piaget, wrote in his book Thought and Language: "A foreign language facilitates mastering the higher forms of the native language. The child learns to see his language as one particular system among many, to view its phenomena under more general categories, and this leads to awareness of his linguistic operations" (6: 286). In a foreign language one must consciously distinguish case, gender, and tense, and thus bring to full awareness a knowledge of one's native language. According to Vygotsky, study of a foreign language brings an overall improvement in cognitive skills, since by the process that Piaget termed "decentration" learning a new language forces a person to realign his whole system of ideas, to reorganize his entire world view, and to operate at a higher level of intellectual mastery. Therefore, foreign language training provides a special intellectual training that cannot be offered by any other discipline (6). In fact, several studies have provided evidence that experience with two languages at the elementary-school level enables students to improve their divergent thinking abilities such as fluency, flexibility, and originality (7). Other advantages of FLES as a part of
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the total language arts program are its ability to develop pupils' auditory discrimination and auditory memory and, in the area of vocabulary, its ability to teach context and structural cues (8). Latin is an efficient language for such training, as indicated by test results in Washington, D.C. Sixth-graders who took Latin for one year and who had been unable to begin the study of French o r Spanish two years earlier because they were not reading at grade level actually "came from behind to achieve significantly higher reading achievement scores in the categories of Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Total Reading Ability" (9: 26). Latin would seem to be a language that stimulates linguistic awareness because its complex and precise declensions and conjugations reveal clearly its syntactic structure so that the innate language sense of verbally deprived students is put to work. Also, because about 50 percent of English words are derived from Latin, especially "abstract terms used in communicating on a high level of generality," vocabulary is increased (9: 6). Furthermore, because word endings are important in Latin, training in this language emphasizes clear pronunciation in an area where inner-city children have a tendency to slur. Finally, Latin provides "experience in careful silent reading of words that follow a consistent phonetic pattern" (9: 12). Results of specijic programs The results of six programs of Latin instruction are reported here. In the first four we are talking about a daily instruction period of fifteen to twenty minutes for one school year in Grades 4, 5, and/or 6. These reports are only preliminary: data are still being collected. Therefore, the research method on which the reports are based is likely to be the inadequate method of pilot studies, which may suffer from the limitations of a small number of subjects and a failure to account for a possible Hawthorne effect.
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Philadelphia In 1970-71, in Philadelphia, Grades 4, 5, and 6 received fifteen to twenty minutes of daily Latin instruction. T h e Vocabulary subtest of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills was used to compare scores of pupils who had studied Latin with scores of pupils who had not. The performance of Latin pupils on this test was one full year higher than the performance of matched control pupils who had not studied Latin (10, 11). Washington, D.C. I n Washington, which "has the closest thing to an all-ghetto school system of any city in the nation" (12: 71), three public school groups were measured on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills. One group had had Latin instruction for one year; o n e g r o u p had had French o r Spanish instruction for four years; and one group had had no foreign language. In total reading growth there was five months' difference between the Latin group and the no-foreign-language group. This result is statistically significant at the .05 level. In grade equivalents, the Latin g r o u p progressed 1.49 years, the FrenchlSpanish group 1.36 years, and the no-foreign-language group 1.02 years, again all differences in scores significant at the .05 level (9). In sum, students who had had eight months of Latin instruction "climbed from the lowest level of reading ability to the highest level for their grade, equaling the achievements of pupils who had studied French o r Spanish for thirtyeight months" (13: 57). Easthampton, Massachusetts I n the Park School at Easthampton, Massachusetts, fifth- and sixth-graders were given a program of Latin instruction similar to that evolved for the public schools in Washington, D.C. T h e purpose was to strengthen the reading skills in English of the pupils, many of whom read below grade level. On the pre- and the posttests of the Vocabulary section of the Stanford Achievement Test, the scores of the Latin
pupils were compared with the scores of the previous sixth grade, which had not studied Latin. Latin pupils showed marked improvement in all six categories of scoring: 11 percent more scored above grade level, and 24 percent showed more than two years' growth. (14) Indianapolis I n Indianapolis, sixth-grade inner-city children who had studied Latin (the experimental group) were compared with sixth-graders who had not studied Latin but who had similar economic, social, and academic profiles (the control group). The Metropolitan Achievement Tests were used, including the categories of Word Knowledge, Reading, Language, Spelling, Math Computation, Math Concepts, Math Problem Solving, Science, and Social Studies. In all areas "the control group made significant gains, but in comparing the T values the gains of the experimental group far exceeded those of the control group" (15: 10). The mean T value of the experimental group on all nine tests was 8.31, of the control group 3.25. The difference is statistically significant at the .O1 level of confidence in favor of the experimental group (15). T h e greatest gains were in Word Knowledge, Reading, Spelling, and Math Problem Solving. Gains were also reported in Math Computation, Math Concepts, Science, and Social Studies (16). In Reading, the experimental group gained 1.0 in mean grade equivalent and the control group .5, although on the pretest "the mean scores were very close to being statistically different at the .10 level of confidence in favor of the control group" (15: 7). Furthermore, on a criterion-referenced pre- and posttest on vocabulary, 70 percent of the experimental group advanced to a mastery level of more than 80 percent, while only 2 percent of the control group advanced to that level (15). Other studies Two other studies should also be noted. In MARCH 1977
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Washington, D.C., the Human Engineering Laboratory of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation has compared the foreign-language backgrounds of 220 examinees with their English vocabulary levels. "Those examined with no foreign language background had an average English vocabulary percentile of 28, those with Latin and another language averaged 58" (17: 2). Finally, in a private high school in Boston two groups of juniors who had equivalent scores on verbal ability were compared: one group had had two years of Latin and two years of a modern language, the other group had had two years of a modern language but no Latin. On a 150-word vocabulary test the Latin group scored an average of 5.1 words better than the non-Latin group, a difference statistically significant at the .05 level. On a test of Latin-derived words, the Latin group still scored higher but at a slightly lower score than in the previous test. The researchers suggested: "That the Latin group's score did not increase when based solely on Latin-derived words would seem to be an indication that the primary effect of Latin study on vocabulary may not be an increased ability to recognize Latin derivatives, but in fostering a more general word-awareness" (18: 3). Other Latin programs have been instituted in elementary schools in other parts of the country for the express purpose of learning the influence of the study of Latin on English reading skills and verbal functioning: five classes of sixth-graders in Montgomery County, Virginia; fourthgraders in three schools in West Lafayette, Indiana (19); fifth- and sixth-graders in the Belle Sherman Elementary School in Ithaca, New York (20); and thirty classes of fifth- and sixth-graders in the Los Angeles Unified School District, in schools where there is a large Spanish-speaking population (21). Test results for these groups have not yet been made available. Popularity of FLES Latin programs These programs have shown a general in-
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crease in popularity in two large metropolitan areas. In Washington, D.C., between 1966 and 1972 there was an increase from 620 to almost 2,500 children in elementary Latin, in spite of budget crises during these years. Of the fifty schools that have not yet been able to be included in the program, principils of forty-one have asked for it. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages chose this Washington program as one of the thirty most innovative foreign-language programs throughout the USA (9, 22). In 1974-75 in Philadelphia sixteen thousand children were studying Latin in the public school system, including more than ten thousand in the FLES program. I n 1967-68 the total Latin enrollment in Philadelphia was 490. In fact, popular demand restored the budget cut of 50 percent for the 1975-76 Latin FLES program. The cut had been scheduled because that year the Philadelphia School District faced a budget deficit of twenty-seven million dollars (23). Also, in 1974 notices were being placed announcing openings for Latin teachers in Philadelphia, even in these days of a severe teacher glut (24)! Methods used T o teach these FLES Latin classes, a whole new approach toward teaching Latin has evolved. The purpose is not to produce language scholars, but to present pupils with a view of language as a set of symbols that can be controlled, to help pupils improve their English language skills, and to enable pupils to understand a different class culture as relevant to their own lives (9). The approach incorporates recent innovations in foreign-language teaching: much aura1:oral work, abundant use of multisensory aids (films, filmstrips, tapes, pictures, cartoons, records, transparencies, games), programmed learning for individualization, reading materials all in Latin-stories, grammar sections, drill. For inner-city children, the exercises must be easier with constant repetition and reinforcement and many translation aids. Ma-
T H E ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL
terial can be incorporated from African authors (Terence, Apuleius, St. Augustine) and on slavery and minority groups in the Roman Empire (25, 26). Instruction is presented to fourth-, fifth-, and/or sixth-graders in classes of twenty-five to thirty for about twenty minutes a day by itinerant teachers who travel from school to school. A typical lesson might include a review in Latin of words and structures learned previously, the teacher asking orally in Latin where objects and places are in the room. Then a new dialogue might be read by the teacher, perhaps about a Roman family, with pupils repeating the lines all together, in smaller groups, and individually. In drill on these sentences transparencies might be used, with pupils repeating and varying the sentences. There might be some work on grammar in English o r work on derivatives, the teacher presenting related words (feline, canine, equine, bovine), words taken from Latin without change (forum, veto, senator, recipe, stimulus), English words broken down into Latin components (postpone, predict, expel), picturesque origins (mercury, tribune, cardinal, index), or abbreviations (e.g., i.e., lb.). Finally there might be a review drill in Latin with pictures, a Latin motto or a song, Bingo in Latin, or math problems in Latin ( 9 , 13). T h e school districts of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Indianapolis have developed their own materials along the lines described here (27, 28, 29). In addition, three innovative Latin textbooks commercially published since 1968 have had an impact on Latin teaching (30-33). Any of these can be used in an elementary-school or intermediate-grade Latin program. Because of the seriousness of the linguistic problem facing the USA and because of the difficulty of finding a solution, many approaches would seem to be needed. This article has presented a case for Latin instruction in elementary schools. Richard Thompson and Janet
Blackwell ( 1: 542) complain that FLES is in "a fence-straddling state": "A national need for FLES has not been identified. . . . No large-scale lasting results have been reported. . . . No sizable volume of research has convinced educators as a whole to take another look." Perhaps if educators do now take another look at even these preliminary reports of the efficacy of FLES Latin, an already crowded elementaryschool curriculum can be strengthened in the critical areas of reading and language arts. Such an improvement in language abilities can help to preserve and improve not only our language but also our civilization. References 1 . Richard A. T h o m p s o n a n d J a n e t M . Blackwell. "FLES: T o Be o r Not T o Be," Elementary English, 51 (April, 1974), 541-43, 556. 2. "Can't Anyone Here Speak English?" Time, 106 (August 25, 1975), 34-36. 3. Nancy Hicks. "Study Finds Gain in Reading Skills," New York Times, September 8, 1975, p. 28. 4. James E. Allen, Jr. "The Right T o Read -Target for the 70's," Elementav English, 47 (April, 1970), 487-92. 5 . John D. Anderson. "Latin, English Vocabulary, and Declining SAT'S," The Classical Journal, 70 (February-March, 1975), 42-46. 6. S. C. Fredericks. "Vygotsky on Language Skills," T h e Classical World, 67 (March, 1974), 283-90. 7. Richard G. Landry, "A Comparison of Second Language Learners and Monolinguals o n Divergent T h i n k i n g Tasks a t the Elementary School Level," T h e Modern Language Journal, 58 ( January-February, 1974), 10-15. 8. Elizabeth H. Ratte. "Foreign Language and the Elementary School Language Arts Program," French Review, 4 2 (October, 1968), 80-85. 9. Judith B. LeBovit. The Teaching of Latin in the Elementary and Secondary School: A Handbook f o r Educators and Administrators. Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1973. 10. "The Influence of Latin Study on Reading Skills," Council for Basic Education Bulletin, 16 (December, 1971), 5-6. MARCH 1977
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1 1. "News a n d Notices: Philadelphia," T h e Classical Outlook, 49 (March, 1972), 74-75. 12. Susan L. Jacoby. "Big City Schools IV -Washington: National Monument to Failure," Saturday Review, 50 (November 18, 1967), 71-73, 89-90. 13. Eleanor R. Cederstrom. "Quid Agunt Discipuli? Latin in Philadelphia." T h e Independent School Bulletin, 33 (February, 1974), 56-57. 14. "Latin for Fifth and Sixth Graders in Easthampton, Massachusetts," T h e Classical World, 68 (April-May, 1975), 444. 15. Rita S. Sheridan. Evaluation Report. Indianapolis, Indiana: Indianapolis Public Schools, 1975. 16. "Evaluation of the Indianapolis Public Schools' Sixth Grade Latin Program," The Classical World, 68 (February, 1975), 350. 17. "Comments on Some Current Vocabulary Research," Bulletin 115. Boston, Massachusetts: Human Engineering Laboratory, no date. 18. Richard Bowker. English Vocabulaq Comparison of Latin and Non-Latin Students. Technical Report 831. Boston, Massachusetts: Human Engineering Laboratory, 1975. 19. John F. Latimer. "The Pendulum Is Swinging Back-Slowly-in the Breeze," Classical Action, 10 (September; 1974), 2. 20. "Fifth and Sixth Grade Latin in Ithaca (N.Y.) School District," The Classical World, 68 ( April-May, 1975), 443-44. 21. "News and Notices: Latin in Los Angeles," The Classical Outlook, 53 (November, 1975), 26. 22. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Options and Perspectives: A Sourcebook of Innovative Foreign Language Programs i n Action, K-12. New York, New York: Modern Language Association, 1973. 23. "Budget for Philadelphia FLES Latin Program Fully Restored," T h e Classical W o r l d , 69 (December, 1975-January, 1976), 269. 24. "Professional Opportunities in the School District of Philadelphia," T h e Classical World, 67 (April-May, 1974), 392. 25. Rudolph Masciantonio. "Latin Materials for the Inner-City Public School," The Classical Outlook, 45 (February, 1968), 61-62. 26. Rudolph Masciantonio. "News of the Classics in Philadelphia," The Classical Outlook, 49 (February, 1972), 6 1-62.
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27. Philadelphia School District, Division of Foreign Languages, Instructional Services. Romani Viventes et Dicentes: A Humanistic Approach to Latin for Children i n the Fifth Grade (teacher's guide); Legite Latine: Lectiones Latinae Tironibus Gradu Quinto (fifth-grade reader); Voces de Olympo: A Humanistic Approach to Latin for Children i n the Sixth Grade (teacher's guide); Legite Plura Latine: Lectiones Latinae T i r o n i b u s G r a d u Sexto (sixth-grade reader); Look f o r the Latin Word: A Gamebook on English Derivativesfor Fifth Grade. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Instructional Services, Division of Foreign Languages, Philadelphia School District, ongoing. Order from Dr. I. Ezra Staples, Associate Superintendent for Instructional Services, the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19103. 28. Washington (District of Columbia) Public Schools, Department of Foreign Languages. Via Romana: A First-Year Textbook for Latin i n the Elementary School; 'Modus Operandi: Teachers' Manual for the Students' Text Via Romana. Washington, D.C.: Department of Foreign Languages, Washington, D.C. Public Schools, 1973-75. For information, address Dr. Judith B. LeBovit, Director, Latin for the Modern School, 8542 Georgetown Pike, McLean, Virginia 22101. 29. Indiana State Department of Public Instruction, Indianapolis Public Schools. Augmenting Reading Skills through Language Learning Transfer. Indianapolis, Indiana: Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana State Department of Public Instruction, no date. Information from Rita S. Sheridan, Director of Title I11 Project, Indianapolis Public Schools, 120 E. Walnut Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46204. 30. Richard T . Scanlan. "A Critical Survey of New Elementary and Intermediate Latin Textbooks, 1969-1973," The Modern Language J o u r n a l , 5 8 (November, 1974), 322-25. 31. The Cambridge Latin Course. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970. 32. Hans H. Oerberg. Lingua Latina Secundum Naturae Rationem Explicata. New York, New York: Nature Method Language Institute, 1968. 33. Waldo Sweet and Others. Artes Latinae, Levels 1 and 2. Chicago, Illinois: Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation, 1966-7 l .
