Why Us?

Because we offer . . .

• The best materials - We were not prejudiced when another curriculum had the best culture, or the best reading; we went and got those materials and incorporated them into our own curriculum; and where there weren't any "best" materials . . . we made them. (No other Latin vendor sells or even attempts replication of our Writing materials.)


• Accuracy and Precision - Exhaustive proof-reading of the writing materials, multiple times. (Imported materials are of course already well proof-read.)


• Speed. - Our method enables you to write Latin from your keyboard, moving from blank to blank with the TAB key. The faster you can type the faster you can go. No other Latin method (that we know of) has such a similarly computer-supported ability .


• Flexibility - Leeway in which materials and skills you choose to cultivate. (But some essential skills--i.e. Writing and Vocab--are required)


• Voice Inflection - We do something that no other Latin program does in the world: We actually inflect our voice. (Example here.) You will hear this in our flashcard sentences on Quizlet. This makes a sentence 100% easier to understand. There is no guarantee that this is entirely authentic, but it works.


• Independence - We will cover the Public School basics, but also the Great Ideas of Western civilation (in Philosophy / Religion) which public school is too politically correct to touch. (The trade-off is that we do much less Mythology.)


• Sheer Quantity - As of August 2018 we have:
  • 1 Awesome textbook. (essential)
  • 125 Writable Stories. (essential)
  • 28 Culture modules. (highly recommended)
  • 33 English Derivatives sheets.
  • 26 Grammar (direct teaching) videos. (essential)
  • 71 Quizlet card-sets. (essential)
  • 33 Scripta worksheets.
  • 33 Notables crosswords.
  • 32 Animated PowerPoints.(essential)

        $165 ($5/chapter) ÷ 371 total activities = $0.44 per automated activity




Latin Curricula Comparison

Curricula we use
Our curriculum Hover your mouse over this text.

	Wheelock's	Cambridge	Ecce Romani	Latin for Americans	Latin for the New Millennium	Lingua Latina per se Illustrata	WriteLatin .org
GENERAL
Ethos	Linguist	British humor	Southern Belle	Museum guide	Historian	Existential	Techie-Analyst
Long-term potential.	Very Poor. Only for the most disciplined college-students who need a 1-year rush-job, with no frills.	Poor. Book 4 of 4 is dead, but it has a "CLA" reader for after Book 4.	Questionable. Dies after Book 2 of 3.	Very Poor. Dies in Ch. 140 (Ch. 70 in Book 2 out of 3).	Excellent	Excellent - Has multiple optional readers, and a truly phenomenal Book 2, just packed with vocab-building.	Excellent for becoming an ACTIVE Latin speaker, as well.
VOCAB covered until mastery of all grammar-concepts
Total Words learned (until mastery of all grammar-concepts)	777	1109	1781	1026	?	1857	1582
Total chapters (until mastery of all grammar-concepts)	40	40	64	134	40	34	33
Words learned per chapter (until mastery of all grammar-concepts)
Comments:	Too consistent. Advanced students are capable of retaining more vocab words than incipient students. This is a lost vocab-building opportunity, and consequently Wheelock's ends up with the fewest number of vocab words, entirely insufficient to begin reading real Latin.	Cambridge is consistent and gradually increases the number of words with time. This is good. However, Cambridge's 4th and final book (mostly off this graph) drastically reduces the number of words per chapter. This is a lost vocab-building opportunity. It makes the 4th book an easy waste of time, and teachers are apt to dispense with it and go to something else (e.g. to Caesar). Sadly, Cambridge only has 1100 words by that point which makes the transition to real Latin quite difficult.	Ecce Romani is to be commended that it leaves its students with nearly 1800 words . . . IF . . . they actually retain them. It is a bumpy, erratic ride, once flip-flopping from less than 10 words in a chapter to more than 60 in the next. There is no rhyme nor reason to what constitutes a chapter, nor to where new assigned vocab will 'pop up.' Some students will feel uneasy about this lack of consistency, unless the teacher is very good at creating a sense of consistency in some other way.	Latin for Americans is so piecemeal as to ask nothing of the student. Its incredibly short chapters have less than 10 words and are more equivalent to daily activities than full chapters. Consequently, it builds short-term memory, not long-term reinforcement. It is 'telling' (and a further indictment) that its Unit-Reviews fall back on the very easiest kind of vocab-assessment question: multiple choice. The book leaves its students with less than 1100 words. Also the 3rd book (off this graph) is a reader, but has no assigned vocab at all!	(We were unable to pay the hundreds of dollars necessary to obtain a copy of this curriculum.)	Lingua Latina per se Illustrata is, in our opinion, THE BEST book for transitioning into real Latin. It has nearly twice as many words as most standard textbooks, and its immersive method forces students to think in Latin, which is incomparably valuable for both vocab-reinforcement and grammar-familiarity. However, 4 of its final chapters have a gigantic number of words.	We adapt the LLpsI vocab list (see one column leftward ←) by excluding some arcane & unnecessary words, and including others (about 10 per chapter) which are necessary to do our writable stories. These writable stories GREATLY increase reinforcement, not just by adding extra exposure to vocab, but also by forcing the student to ACTIVELY produce words. We thus make LLpsI's vocab (1) more manageable, (2) more relevant, and (3) more reinforced.
Vocab Color-coded?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔
Quizlet flash-cards officially included?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔ (maximally jazzed-up)
Other Comments:	Excessive translation-options offered. (1 English word would be more desirable than 5.) Really, Wheelock's is a desk-Reference.	Vocab is rather 'Caesar-ish' in nature, which is good.	Difficult to access chapter-lists in one place. Highly piecemeal. Really, Ecce Romani is a workbook, not a reader.	Highly piecemeal.	From the previews online it is evident that it's big weakness is unvaried font. Absolutely everything–English & Latin–is in colorless Times New Roman. Paradigm charts are equally blah.	Vocab largely inaccessible: A forgotten word is a big annoyance. Principal parts missing from end-of-chapter lists.	Vocab highly accessible (unlike LLpsI ←), yet written on the back side to embarrass and/or inconvenience paper-flipping non-memorizers. Each chapter-list is split into 2 or 3 more manageable sub-lists.
ENRICHMENTS
Regular Culture units?	✘	✔✔ Awesome website as well.	✔	✔	✔✔	✘	✔ (We use Cambridge's culture ←)
English Derivatives or other SAT practice?	✔	✘	✘	✔	?	✘	✔
Common sayings and abbreviations?	✔✔	✘	✘	✘	?	✘	✔
STORIES
Powerful Religious / Moral message?	✘	✘✘	✘	✘	✔	✔ (Christian)	✔ (Christian, Jewish, Pagan, Stoic)
Writable?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔
Syntax-diagramming?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔
Translations: L= Literal / O= Oblique?	O	O	O	O	O	N/A	L
R= Real (or adapted) ancient writings HF= Historical Fiction	R	HF	HF	R	R	HF	R but includes LLpsI's HF, at left.
Over-arching multi-chapter plot?	✘	✔	✔	✔	✘	✔	✘
Comments:	Has best extracts from real Latin, with lots of footnote-apparatus.	Most entertaining book, but rather Britannic in its scope.	Stories are excessively dreamy and impressionistic.	Good, realistic adaptations from real Latin literature.	Best for reading widely the corpus of ancient and Medieval Latin literature.	Stories are rather boring, but realistic.	Stories are highly varied and culture-rich to 'spice up' LLpsI (see 1 column left ←)
WEBSITE
✔= Custom-designed /✘= Boring Boilerplate?	✔	✔/✘ Culture / Latin material, respectively	✘	✔ barely	N/a	✘	✔
Entire curriculum online?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔
Streamlined: Site-use FASTER than book-work?	✘	✘	✘	✔ but minimal material	N/a	✘	✔
Online exercises: ✘= Infinitely Random /✔= Cumulative & Progressive?	N/a	✘	✔ barely	✘	N/a	✘	✔
Site employs macrons everywhere, and well?	✔	✘	✘	✔ but minimal material	N/a	✘	✔
Comments:	Wheelock's website is the rare exception of what a textbook's website should be. The Teacher's Guide is massive, clear, and thorough. Audio enrichments are limited, but excellently done. The site has also marshalled the contributions of private Wheelock-aimed websites, which other curricula would do well to imitate. The site lacks cultural material, but YouTube amply supplies that.	Really the Cambridge "Elevate" website is an excuse to claim that they are digital, when in fact they aren't. The exercises are painfully simplistic, and any responsible student would find them far below his or her level. Exercises are either (1) matching or (2) selecting the sentence's missing word from context, and then translating. Cambridge's culture material however is excellent, but this requires no login.	A token number of drag-and-drop and fill-in-the-blank exercises are provided. From the look of it in the video (since we are not allowed by their Terms of Service to access it directly), their "Realize" "platform" is completely devoid of interesting aspects, supporting only wearisome teacher-student messaging-type interactions. Cultural material is out-sourced to OpenEd.com, which is no better than YouTube.	The Latin for Americans website features just a few token games. As usual, quizzes are nearly completely in English.	No website. The only online material that LNM offers for students is a fairly good, jazzed-up flashcards-app called "eyeVocab." However even this, although much better than other curricula's flashcards, is still inferior to the versatility and multimedia capabilities of mere Quizlet flashcards.	The LLpsI website is little more than a trove of photo-scans of their book, devoid of life. Exercises are ALL fill-in-the-blank without macron support. (Private LLpsI-aimed sites like lingvalatina.com,—AND OURS!—are far superior.)	The central item of our site is a scrolling syllabus that increases in length as more chapters are bought. Other parts of the website designed for peer-to-peer interaction are planned, but not yet built. However the website automatically checks the hundreds of pages of writable stories and derivatives worksheets, and offers an extensive, jazzed-up, interactive culture-questions webpage in every chapter.
MULTIMEDIA
Audio component?	✔ Vocab	✔ Stories	✔ Stories	✘	✔ Stories & Vocab (in eyeVocab)	✔ Stories	✔ Vocab (in Quizlet flashcards)
Vocab spoken in a Latin sentence?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔ See Quizlet flashcards.
Vocab Illustrated with a picture?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔ Occasionally	✔ See Quizlet flashcards.
Audio uses case-based voice-inflection?	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔








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