New England Classical Journal

CLASSICAL COMPUTING

LATIN WORD MATE and LATIN SENTENCE WORKSHOP

LATIN WORD MATE WORKSHOP: Explorer Series $79.95; LATIN WORD MATE WORKSHOP: Challenger Series $79.95; LATIN SENTENCE WORKSHOP $ 149.95. Merit Audio Video, P.O. Box 392, New York, NY 10024; phone (800) 753-6488.

These programs are available for IBM compatibles with color displays or for the Apple II series computers. I received and tested the IBM versions. Each package comes in a plastic bag with an eight half-page folded loose leaf pamphlet (two 8.5' x 11' pages printed on each side) about the program with directions for the teacher, a four half-page 'manual' on installing and setting up the program, and two (three for SENTENCE WORKSHOP) 3.5' disks, one with the student programs and the other with the teacher's materials, including record management and facilities for printing current modules or adding one's own teaching modules to the program. The hardware requirements are very modest, because the programs come from the early days of the technology; the programs were written for CGA and floppy drives. They do require color monitors, but the display is the old Apple display (forty character screen width) with the large letters, even when run on VGA.

The programs are not stand-alone programs, but were written in a BASIC that requires a master program, BRUN41.EXE, to be in the same directory with your program; moreover, since some of the programs use homonymous, but different, files, you can not put all of the programs in one subdirectory. If you are installing on a hard drive (a good idea), I suggest that you create a subdirectory called LATIN or MERIT, and then under it create sub-subdirectories for each program; otherwise, follow the directions given in the "manual." The facility for printing the current module directs you to be sure that the disk is in drive #1, which I presumed to be A:. I tried this in every possible way to no avail, but when I put the disk in drive B:, it printed out just fine, albeit in a continuous dump of a whole section. The record-keeping facility did print from drive A: with no trouble.

EXPLORER LATIN WORD MATE WORKSHOP:
The pamphlet described this as "designed for intermediate language students"; in my opinion it should be used with intermediate students only for a rapid review. It seemed tailored more for beginning students, covering just the first three declensions and the first two conjugations in the active voice. Each module provides two formats: 1) arrow-key selection from three choices for either a grammatical match or the Latin for an English meaning or 2) "fill-ins" of a blank in a Latin sentence from four choices of two Latin words each in two forms. If the student chooses correctly, there is a nice animated display of the teacher walking across the screen to point at the word whose number the student had entered.

The questions are all preset; the order of the questions will vary from session to session. There is no partial help on wrong answers; after the second error the student is given the correct answer. After a segment is completed it is recorded in the record file; however, if students do two sessions in which they do half of the same module each session, it counts for nothing.

CHALLENGER LATIN WORD MATE WORKSHOP:
This set of programs is exactly like the set described above, except that it covers the rest of the declensions and conjugations (excluding the irregulars) and the passive. I assume that the operating restrictions of the original hardware for which these programs were written required them to be written on two separate levels and on two separate sets of disks. It would be nice to have the program updated so that one main program and disk could handle both the EXPLORER and the CHALLENGER programs.

LATIN SENTENCE WORKSHOP:
This WORKSHOP consists again of two sets of programs, just as the previous WORD MATE WORKSHOPS. The format of the display is also like the second format of the WORD MATE WORKSHOPS, viz. a Latin sentence with a blank to be filled. In LATIN SENTENCE WORKSHOP, however, the format also gives a minimal label in the blank such as (3s) for third singular and then five numbered Latin forms; the choice is made by pressing the number corresponding to the correct form. Alternatively the Latin present active infinitive is given in the blank along with a minimal form-label, and the student is supposed to type in the correct fofm. In this case, if an error is made, the error message indicates which letters of the form are incorrect. Again, the first set of pronouns (WORKSHOP A) covers the active voice of the first three conjugations, while the second set (WORKSHOP B) covers the third -io and fourth conjugations, and all the passive voice.

Purists will have some problems with this suite of programs because of some of the infelicities that creep into the Latin: quantitative adjectives following their nouns, initial vocatives, synesis, indirect objects regularly following direct objects, transitive verbs used absolutely in prose, and lapses of concord (e.g. populus, mandate fortunas vestras patriae; est malus mandare aurum viris inimicis; cras amicus meus non vocabit). Moreover, although the record-keeping facility is good, there is no provision for security (personal passwords or date checking algorithms), so that the program cannot be readily assigned for unsupervised use.

Given those reservations, this is a strong suite of drill programs. It will provide an effective instructional aid and a strong support in the arena of practice, especially if tailored to your specific program by using the programs on the teacher disks to build your own teaching files to be used in conjunction with your regular inclass curriculum. Indeed, in my opinion, this is strongest feature of this program, that it provides the classroom teacher the capability of customizing the Computer Assisted Instruction to mesh with the actual curriculum. The programs are supplied on disk and are easy to learn and to use.