Not the best out there
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I'm currently doing the Open University course in Classical Studies (after teaching myself Latin for a year) and this is one of the set books. Out of the package, this is THE WORST. The vocab is good, as are the exercises, but as for grammar and helping you learn it, forget it!! You trundling away nicely and then you come across a verb you don't recognise or it starts talking about the vocative which you haven't actually learnt at that point. Having taught myself Latin, I'm not finding uni level particularly difficult but if you're going to do Latin, either for uni or personal development, I suggest that you seek a better grammar book. It'll make it so much easier.
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Very good in the right context
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This book and its companion volumes, already mentioned by previous reviewers, make up a large part of the material for the two Open University Latin courses. I am doing the first of these this year. It does start right at the very beginning for people with no previous experience of Latin but the learning curve is fast and you need to be prepared to work hard.
It is a very detailed volume and the OU miss quite a lot of exercises out, which shows you that there is enough material here to keep you occupied for years and years, if you are just learning Latin for fun. I suspect most people buying this volume will be doing more than that though!
Latin takes a lot of disipline to learn as I am finding out, and this volume and its companions will give you everything you need to know and more to reach a pretty high standard. The OU offer a diploma in classical studies of which the two Latin courses, based around this book, can constitute 50%.
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Perhaps the Worst-Organised Latin Grammar Book Ever
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As someone who studied Latin for five years in my youth and picked it back up again in adulthood, trust me when I saw that this is quite possibly the most badly-organised Latin grammar text ever written. It jumps incomprehensibly through case use and is an absolute disgrace for teaching vocabulary.
This book's presentation is incredibly confusing -- even to someone who was rated fluent in Latin a few years back and just needed a refresher.
Stay away from it if you can, but be warned -- you'll be required to use this book if you study A297 through the Open University.
Get something older (from the 60s or 70s if you can) for a simpler, saner version of Latin grammar.
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Its OK if you know what you're on about
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The book is designed to allow you to reach fluency, and it does do this, but you really need to brush up on English grammar and grammatical terminology first. Each section starts with two lists of vocabulary, one to learn (smaller list), and one to act as a glossary to the corresponding text (longer list), this is good and not too daunting, but can be frustrating when you recognise words but have to look them up in later chapters. The grammatical explanations are rather uninspired and seem to contribute to the generally unfair stereotype surrounding this magnificent language. There are many excercises, of which you are only advised to do some (it says so in the book), but how do you know which to do, I am studying Latin independently, and while this book is good for consolidation of linguistic knowledge that is not fully explained in other courses, there is not sufficent material (explanations and examples in context) to use as a stand alone course (even with the book of texts.)
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It doesn't do what it says on the cover
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On the back cover of the book it says "....it offers generous help with translation at every stage...". It also refers to the accompanying book, 'Reading Latin Text' and says that the G.V.E. book "...supplies all the help needed to do this." i.e. translate the passages in the book of Texts. No it doesn't!!! For a student to make any use of this book there should be translations of all the exercises in the book and of all the texts in the accompanying book. There are absolutely none!!
There are limited translations of exercises in the Open University Book 'The Study Guide'(which they use to supplement these books in their course) but none for the texts.
Even if this book is intended for study within a classroom setting it is still a major disadvantage not to have the associated translations. All-in-all this book is a huge disappointment.
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