The Classics Department at Foremarke Hall offers Latin as part of the curriculum. Classical Greek may also be offered to pupils who express a keen desire to learn it. Latin is taught to all pupils in Years 5 to 8. Although exceptions may be made for those whose native language is not English, generally overseas pupils taking Latin do very well.
In Year 5, the curriculum allows for three twenty-five minute periods a week for the top set and two twenty-five minute periods for the lower sets. In the Years 6 to 8, pupils in the top sets have four periods per week and those in the lowers sets have two periods.
The course we follow at Foremarke Hall is So You Really Want To Learn Latin, by Nicholas Oulton. This course has been written with the particular needs of the Common Academic Scholarship and the Common Entrance examinations in mind. It is used in many preparatory schools in the country, and is one which provides a thoroughly systematic approach to Latin grammar, and includes translation from English into Latin. The Cambridge Latin Course serves as an introduction to Latin in Year 5 and contains excellent background material.
To those who ask - and there are an odd few - ‘Why learn a ‘dead’ language?’ much can be said in reply. Latin is the mother of modern languages such as French, Spanish, and Italian. Latin did not ‘die’ it ‘developed’, and it certainly has not been buried! It has been said that the study of Latin reaches parts of the brain that other subjects on their own do not reach: it is a combination of Maths, English, Romance Languages, and the logic which accompanies these other disciplines. Nicholas Oulton, in his introduction to our course book So You Really Want To Learn Latin,says of the study of Latin:
It provides an excellent basis for learning language, both our own language and other modern languages which are formed from Latin. It provides an excellent form of mental gymnastics, exercising our brains and training them to memorise, analyse, and deduce.
Pupils begin their Classical studies in Year 5 by exploring life in the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.They study not only family life, but slavery in the Roman world, gladiators and other forms of entertainment, even dipping into volcanology with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Not all pupils will have been at Foremarke since Year 5, and so provision is made for the Latin beginners who join us in Years 6 and 7. Pupils new to Latin in the scholarship set in Year 7 will follow an accelerated course which will bring them to the same level as their peers who may have been studying Latin from Year 5 by the end of the Michaelmas Term.
