How do students translate? A study of the translation process from student perspectives at Key Stage 3

Abstract

Achieving proficiency in reading Latin is the stated aim of nearly every Latin course the world over. However, very little research has been devoted to how beginner students attempt to process Latin when it is placed in front of them for the first time. This paper aims to fill this gap, based on a study of students still relatively close to the start of their Latin journeys. I found that they tend to read Latin sentences in their original order, breaking them down into individual lexical items, and trying to discern their meaning by looking for similarities with words they already know. They will usually skip over words they do not recognise, returning to them later. This suggests that, as they become more familiar with Latin vocabulary and grammar, and so long as they are not taught to read in a different order, they will continue to read Latin in the order it is written. There is, however, a perception among many of the students that grammar is difficult, and so they tend to overly rely on context and common sense instead. Going forward, I would try to ensure my students become more confident with their grammar, as context can sometimes lead them astray. However, it is clear that, rather than just giving them tables and lists to learn, they need as much exposure to the grammatical forms ‘in the wild’ as possible, to promote ease of recognition.

Introduction

My research took place in a non-selective, mixed, state secondary school with approximately 2,100 students, located in Essex, England. An academy, taking students from Years 7 through to 13, it was rated outstanding in its last Ofsted inspection. The study itself took place in my Year 9 Latin class. This was a generally high-attainment group who, at the time of the study, had been learning Latin for about a year and were on Stage 14 of the Cambridge Latin Course. There were 31 students in the class, three of whom had some kind of SEN.

Literature review

This literature review aims first to address the distinction between reading and translation, which will then inform the approach of the rest of the paper. This will be followed by an exploration of the existing literature that could help answer my three research questions. First, for exploring how students translate Latin, I will explore the different models of English reading and how they might be applied to Latin. Then I shall turn to the question of the role of grammar in reading Latin. Finally, I shall look at the existing research on how students process sentences when reading, in order to shed light on the order in which they read a Latin sentence. It will become apparent that, as of yet, no English language research exists that directly explores the way in which students try to read and translate Latin, hence the need for this study.

When asking how students attempt to translate Latin, one is faced with the issue that most of the available literature is actually focused on the flaws in traditional translation-based teaching, and the fact that reading and translating are not the same skill. When reading a word, one interprets meaning directly from it, whereas translating involves associating the word with another word in your own native language, then deriving meaning from that. The latter process, with its extra step, is, of course, longer. Most Latin courses claim that they aim to help students ‘read’ original Latin, and yet some, with their focus on learning accidence and syntax, followed by translation (see for example De Romanis (Radice et al., 2020) and Latin to GCSE (Cullen and Taylor, 2016)) do not provide the means to do so fully. Even the reading courses only do so partially (see for example The Cambridge Latin Course (CSCP, 1988) and Ecce Romani (SCG, 1982)). Likewise, the primary skill that is tested in all public Latin examinations in the United Kingdom is not reading but translating. The logic seems to be that producing a translation provides evidence of the ability to read, or that perhaps translation is a necessary step to reading. Strasheim argues that ‘the teacher's objective should be a deliberate attempt to teach the ability to translate as a step in the development of the ability to read Latin as Latin’ (Strasheim, 1970, 2), but gives no justification for this beyond the time-constraints of the average Latin course. This would suggest that translation is a necessary step in the process of reading. On the other hand, Hoyos (1993) argues that translation is not a good route to understanding. He does this on the basis that many of the traditional guidelines for translating, where you find the verb, subject, object, and then put it in all the other information, do not teach reading but ‘decoding’ or ‘disentangling’. He argues that we should teach students to sight-read Latin but recognises that their ability to do this is predicated on their understanding of grammar and syntax, and the quickness of their ability to look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Now, from my own experience of learning languages, I would argue that one tends to translate the language in your head in the early stages, but the aim is always to move to actual fluency, where the language holds meaning of its own. Thus, Strasheim (1970) makes too much of translation as, whilst translation perhaps naturally precedes fluent reading as one develops in reading proficiency, in time it is rendered unnecessary. However, one clearly cannot separate translation and reading entirely, at least not in the early stages of a pupil's development (such as the stage of those I studied). Therefore, this study will move forward on the basis that learning about how students read can increase our understanding of how they translate, and vice versa. With this in mind, I shall now survey some of the literature on how students read.

Wegenhart (2015) provides an invaluable service for Latin teachers by outlining some of the more popular models of English reading and suggesting how they can be applied to Latin. Thus, my accounts of the following models are informed by his own research on them. He justifies using research into English to inform Latin teaching on the basis that both Latin and English have the same alphabetic orthographies, and so reading them involves similar cognitive functions. Whilst none of these models will entirely account for the Latin reading process, they should provide some insight that will allow me to better interpret my data.

The first model Wegenhart considered is that of the US National Reading Panel (2000) who published the results of a vast meta-study of existing research into reading. They identified reading as being made up of five skills, the most basic of which is phonemic awareness – aurally recognising sounds and being able to manipulate them. This is followed by phonics, which is the understanding of how letters represent sounds. I follow Wegenhart in referring to the combined use of phonemics and phonics as ‘decoding’. Fluency is then the ability to decode quickly and easily. The fourth skill is vocabulary – knowing and understanding the meanings of words. These four come together to produce the fifth skill – comprehension. As Wegenhart points out this shows how reading Latin ‘requires more than just vocabulary and syntax knowledge’ (Wegenhart, 2015, 9). Indeed, the basics of decoding are usually only covered briefly, if at all in Latin textbooks. Thus in my own research I will look for evidence of the students attempting to decode.

Wegenhart himself favours two complimentary models of how students read: the Simple View of Reading (SVR) and the Cognitive Model. The SVR breaks down reading into its two key components: decoding and comprehension. Linguistic comprehension is further broken down into understanding vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Scarborough's (2001) ‘Reading Rope’ (see Figure 1) gives a visual break down of the model.

Figure 1. The reading rope.

Source: Scarborough (2001).

The Cognitive Model, as put forward by McKenna and Stahl (2009) takes most of the same skills as the reading rope and arranges them in terms of progression, which can be useful for assessing students' abilities. (see Figure 2) These models have both their benefits and limitations. A benefit, beyond the understanding of reading they give teachers, is that they highlight the deficiencies of many of the presently available Latin textbooks. Most textbooks focus purely on linguistic comprehension rather than decoding, meaning that students are set up to fail because, as Wegenhart puts it, ‘if a student is inconsistent in his decoding of [a word such as] puellam, he will generally be unable to recall the meaning, because each mistake causes his mind to process the word as something new’ Wegenhart (2015).

Figure 2. The Cognitive Model of reading.

Source: McKenna and Stahl (2009).

The limitation of these models is that, being based on English reading, they do not account for Latin-specific skills such as case recognition. However, they remain useful as all the processes they do include are just as necessary for reading Latin as well as English. It also highlights how, if a student struggles with a certain aspect of reading in English, they may also have the same difficulties in Latin. To help with decoding, Wegenhart (2015) advocates students reading aloud. Thus, it will be interesting to see whether, given the opportunity, my students read the Latin aloud of their own volition. Strasheim (1970) also argues for the importance of reading aloud and reached similar conclusions about the nature of reading, with her research focusing specifically on how Latin is read. She identifies four levels of meaning:

• Phonetic meaning: the meaning conveyed by pronunciation and intonation.

• Lexical meaning: the meaning of the words.

• Structural meaning: the order of the words.

• Cultural meaning: what the words meant in context to the Romans.

It is this fourth level that makes her analysis especially useful, as the previously discussed models are all based in English and thus lack reference to Roman context. I predict that, as I am studying Year 9 students translating from the Cambridge Latin Course, they are unlikely to take cultural context into consideration, as it is not essential to comprehending meaning at this level, whereas it might be if they were reading Ovid or Caesar. On the other hand, the Cambridge Latin Course and other textbooks like it do provide contextual information (both cultural and in terms of narrative structure) in order to support the student's learning, so it will be interesting to see if they make reference to this. Returning to Strasheim (1970), aside from cultural meaning, she covers the same areas as the SRV and the Cognitive Model, indicating that models of English reading are relevant in their entirety to Latin reading, even if additions are needed to cover every aspect of the Latin reading process. Therefore, as the SRV, Cognitive Model, and the findings of the National Reading Panel all come to similar conclusions about the fundamental processes of reading English (decoding and linguistic comprehension), which are also relevant to Latin, these models will inform how I interpret the evidence of my study.

Having established models for the processes behind reading Latin, let us now turn our attention to some of the methods that are used in these processes. McCaffrey (2006) attempts to reconstruct how a Roman might have read Latin, by reference to original Latin texts and research into reading. He then extrapolates from this to provide suggestions for teachers. Now it would require a philologist to judge his success at the first aim, but his work is useful for the present paper in so far as it suggests a number of ways in which Latin might be read, which may later be used to interpret my data. Firstly, he identifies four types of reading:

• Skimming – looking over for a general sense

• Scanning – looking over for something specific

• Reading extensively – reading a large amount of text with good comprehension and fluency

• Reading intensively – looking at the ‘inner workings of a text’ e.g. grammar, style (McCaffrey, 2006, 114)

McCaffrey points out that ‘It is important to be explicit about the mode of reading chosen as a primary educational goal, because different modes of reading require different emphases in instruction’ (McCaffrey, 2006, 115). The aim of most Latin instruction is of course for our students to be able to read extensively, but I would suggest that methods like the ‘detangling’ approach criticised by Hoyos actually encourage students to read intensively, as the focus is on learning syntax and morphology, rather than meaning. McCaffrey (2006) notes that reading intensively is the most difficult skill, so it seems odd that we should give it so much attention in beginner textbooks. It will be interesting to see in my data which of these four approaches my students attempt to take. McCaffrey (2006) also argues that as Latin and English have different grammars, they must require different strategies to be understood. He cites extensive psycholinguistic research and argues that students need to be explicitly taught these cognitive strategies. As these strategies are not meant to come naturally to the students, they fall outside the remit of this study; however, McCaffrey's (2006) point does highlight the fact that we should not expect to see exactly the same processes at play in Latin reading as we do in English reading. All the models discussed thus far must be applied with caution.

McCaffrey (2006) places contextual information above grammar in importance, arguing that if a possible grammar combination contradicts the reader's real-world knowledge, it should be discarded. This is where textbooks such as the Cambridge Latin Course are particularly useful, as they supply contextual information in order to aid pupil understanding. He recognises of course that students cannot be immersed in the language the same way the ancient Romans were, so some instruction in grammar becomes necessary, but it is clearly not as important as some coursebooks would have you believe. Wright (2017), a Latin teacher conducting a study of student conversations in a Year 7 class, suggests that students tend not to rely heavily on Latin grammar anyway. Having listened to her pupils discussing a translation she observes ‘It is possible to conclude that the use of grammatical terminology is not a necessary aspect of translation’ (Wright, 2017, 21). This echoes VanPatten's (1993) research into input-processing by English-speaking students in Modern Foreign Language lessons. He identifies a number of principles that most students follow when reading a foreign language. The first principle is that students process a word for meaning first, before they process its grammatical form. They also will also process whole words before they process redundant, though meaningful forms. (A redundant form is one which provides unnecessary information, for example, in the phrase ‘three cows’, the ‘s’ on the end of ‘cows’ is redundant as we already know that the cows are plural because of the word ‘three.’) When it comes to grammatical forms, readers will process non-redundant forms before redundant ones. VanPatten's (1993) principles are supported by McCaffrey (2006) and Wright's (2017) findings that, for many students, grammar is of secondary importance when reading Latin. However, McCaffrey (2006) does not look at what students actually do when reading Latin; he simply thinks they should be taught this way. Likewise, Wright (2017), although she does come to this conclusion from listening to her students, does not make student use of grammar her central focus; hence the need for my study.

This leads us to a final research question: in what order do students attempt to read a Latin sentence? McCaffrey echoes many others in strongly arguing that ‘under no circumstances should we allow or encourage [students] to jump out of the Latin order’ (McCaffrey, 2006, 125). Russell, a Latin teacher who experimented with teaching her Year 10 class to read in Latin word order, suggests that ‘reading in this way also necessitates learning grammar by heart’, and that there is a ‘need for a solid linguistic base from which to work’ (Russell, 2018, 26). Both scholars seem to imply that reading Latin sentences in their original order is not something that comes naturally to students, as they must be highly attuned to Latin morphology and its significance to do so effectively. VanPatten (1993) does not supply a clear answer to this question either. He states that learners tend to process lexical items at the start of a sentence, then those at the end, then those in the middle, with the first noun or pronoun being understood as the subject or agent. Word meanings and event probabilities are also usually used to process meaning before word order. The exception to the first noun subject/agent rule, is if preceding context constrains against this interpretation. This suggests that no one actually processes words in the exact order they appear on the page: trying to force students to do so may be unnecessarily artificial. However, VanPatten (1993) was not studying Latin students, and neither Wright (2017) nor McCaffrey (2006) explored what their students were already doing when reading Latin: my research will be able to shed light on what order students actually read Latin in.

Ethics and data collection

I collected data using two methods. The first was a survey sent out to students using Microsoft Forms and by taking two small reading groups of five students each, which I then recorded and transcribed. Out of the 31 students in the class, 13 responded to the survey, 9 took part in the reading groups, and out of these, 8 did both. This gave me a sample size of 14 students, just under half the class. The reading groups read the same passage as the rest of the class, in a separate room but at the same time, receiving a similar level of support. This meant that there was minimal disruption to their learning, nor were any pupils unfairly disadvantaged in any way.

Sequence of lessons

My study ran in tandem with three lessons I taught, focused on Stage 14 of the Cambridge Latin Course. The first lesson was focused on translating the story in tablino [in the study] (CSCP, 2000, 30). After reading the passage aloud to each other, the students did a comprehension on the first 15 lines. This was then gone through, and the students then translated the rest of the passage, using a mixture of silent and paired work. At the end of the lesson, the translation was reviewed, and two students gave a dramatic performance of the text in Latin. The following lesson, this time translating Quintus advenit [Quintus arrives] (CSCP, 2000, 32), followed a similar format. After a short starter using an online vocabulary game on the automatic whiteboard, and then reading the passage aloud, the students completed a gap-fill activity in pairs, filling in missing words in the Latin from the first ten lines of the passage. They then translated the rest of the passage in silence. When reviewing the translation at the end, I read out the translation, making deliberate mistakes, asking them to call out when they noticed me make an error. At the end of this lesson, I explained my research and set the survey as an optional homework, giving them a week to do it. This meant that the students had had two translation-intensive lessons, which I hoped would make it easier for them to reflect on how they translate. In the third lesson, which focused on tripodes argentei [The silver tripods] (CSCP, 2000, 33–34) after the students had taken a vocabulary test, I took the first reading group to a separate room, whilst the other teacher supervised the rest of the class. The reading groups swapped over after 20 minutes. It was from this lesson that the transcripts were produced. During the reading group I asked them to talk to each other about what they were doing, and then I kept largely quiet, but occasionally asked questions to check understanding or steer them when they were struggling.

Methodology

I chose to frame my research as a case study as Yin, in their guide to designing case studies, states that they are the best form for research when ‘the main research questions are “how” or “why”’ (Yin, 2013, 2). Likewise, Taber describes a case study as an ‘in-depth exploration of a particular case’ (Taber, 2007, 73). The chief limitation of a case study is its small scale, and I certainly will not be able to conclusively prove how students approach a Latin translation. However, the insights the study does give me should be sufficient to make my teaching more informed and tailored to my pupils' needs and will assist me and other teachers in better understanding our pupils.

The survey was used as it allowed me to hear the students' own views on how they translate. Hearing their views on the matter is the closest I can get to ‘getting inside their heads’ to listen to what they are doing. The survey also gave them a chance to reflect on their learning, which will hopefully help to improve their translation abilities. There are of course some limitations, as students may not be honest, or they may not have an accurate idea of what they themselves actually do. In order to mitigate for this, I recorded the reading groups so that I could see and hear how they translated the text, in order to try to discern what processes were actually at play. Markus and Ross (2004), in their study of reading proficiency, suggest that teachers should ask students to vocalise their reading process out loud so that the teacher can become aware of any uncertainties. This power of vocalisation, to reveal a pupil's thinking to the teacher, makes it an invaluable resource for my research. The chief limitation of using the reading groups was that they were slightly artificial, in that the students were aware that I wanted to hear how they were thinking, and thus were making an effort to do so aloud.

Findings

The data from both the survey and the reading groups will be compared and analysed together, in order to explore my three main research questions (RQs):

RQ1: How do students approach Latin translation?

RQ2: In what order do they attempt to read a Latin sentence?

RQ3: To what extent do they rely on grammatical knowledge when doing so?

RQ1: how do students approach Latin translation?

The primary approach that my students took to Latin translation was trying to work out the meaning of one word at a time. This emphasis on individual items of vocabulary was highlighted in the survey, when variations on ‘vocabulary’ appeared multiple times as an answer to both the question ‘What do you find easiest about translating Latin?’ and ‘What do you find most challenging about translating Latin?’. The students employ a number of methods to help them work out the meanings of words. I asked my students to rate how likely they were to use certain strategies on a scale of 1 to 6, with 1 being very unlikely and 6 very likely. The average scores for each option were as follows:

• Skip it: 3.15

• Work it out from context: 3.92

• See if it looks like an English or other modern language word: 3.92

• Ask the teacher: 3.38

• Look it up in the back of the textbook: 5.46.

Whilst ‘skip it’ scores fairly low here, the data from the reading groups suggests that they are far more likely to skip over unknown words than they would like to admit to, and this will be discussed further in the section on reading order. Context scores comparatively highly and, as shall be discussed in the section on grammar, it is also a key technique that they use to work out who is doing what in a sentence. My students do make regular use of the dictionary in the back of the textbook in all of their lessons, so it is unsurprising that this option should score so highly. The high score for comparison to English or other modern languages also matches up with the data from other questions in the survey and the reading groups. When asked in the survey ‘What do you find easier about translating Latin?’, four answered as follows:

• G6: ‘The words can look like English words.’

• G10: ‘When words are similar to English or when there are ending that I have learnt so I know the form of the word.’

• G11: ‘That there are links to other languages.’

• B2: ‘It is easier for me to find connections between the languages.’

Likewise, when asked ‘What do you find most challenging about translating Latin?’ two replied:

• B2: ‘Some of the words have no deviations [sic] or similar-sounding words in other languages.’

• G11: ‘When a word isn't like the English.’

This shows that the students are self-consciously trying to use their pre-existing knowledge of English to find meaning in the Latin. When they are unable to do this, they find the sentence significantly more challenging. Likewise, there were several instances in the reading groups of the students trying to discern meaning through similarities to the English words. For example, visitamus [we are visiting] was correctly translated as ‘visiting’ through its similarity to the English word, although it was mistakenly translated as ‘I am visiting’. Also, when discussing the word intellegit [s/he understands] one student said ‘It's intelligent? Maybe it doesn't mean intelligent’. Here, attempts have been made to comprehend meaning using links to English, but in both instances the student has still failed to fully comprehend the word, owing to a poor grasp of Latin morphology. This suggests that, at least early in their studies of Latin, it is the student's own native language which provides them with their primary means of word recognition when reading Latin, rather than drawing on knowledge of Latin itself. This clearly only gets them so far, and it is not sufficient for the students to produce a fully accurate translation. However, it appears that as students advance in Latin, they are able to recognise Latin words through repeated exposure to them, rather than through trying to link them to English ones. Take for example this conversation from Group 1:

G1: ita vero isn't that like yes? So yes.

G3: I agree or something.

G2: It was in one of the other stories.

G3: Yeah I remember seeing it. (Looks it up) Yeah it's yes.

Here they recognise the Latin word from another story and are thus able to tentatively start translating it, although they lack confidence in doing so, and so they resort to that most popular method – looking it up in the back of the book. There are also signs that students are trying to link Latin words that look similar to each other, in the same way that they do between Latin and English: nonne vinum est donum optimum. The wine is not good. Here nonne [It is, isn't it?] has clearly been mistaken for non [not]. This indicates that linking unknown words with known words, irrespective of the language of the latter, is a key way in which students try to find meaning when reading Latin. It is perhaps unsurprising that, at this stage, the known words are mostly from English rather than Latin, as they will of course have access to a much larger range of vocabulary in their own native language. As an aside, it is also worth noting that this example is but one of a number of occasions where the students read the Latin aloud. This may be evidence of them trying to decode the words, indicating that they might be aware (consciously or subconsciously), that reading aloud aids in decoding and comprehension. Therefore, my students seem to treat vocabulary as isolated units of meaning, and attempt to discern that meaning by looking for similarities between that unknown word and words with which they are already familiar. In order to help themselves with this process, they often read the Latin aloud.

RQ2: in what order do students read a Latin sentence?

Having considered how students find meaning in Latin words, let us turn our attention to the order in which they attempt to read them. When asked what they found most challenging about translating Latin, one student responded, ‘The word order and nouns as they do not have capitals at the start like in lots of other languages’. One might expect this, as Latin word order is quite different to English; however, this student was the only one to raise this is as an issue. In fact, the rest of my students all seem, to some extent, to naturally follow the Latin word order when translating. For example, during the recorded class one student translated as follows ‘tripodes argentei means tripods made of silver’. ‘Quintus in cubiculo sedet means Quintus in the bedroom sits’. The student has clearly followed the Latin word order exactly, reading left to right, and arriving at something that, whilst not especially idiomatic, still makes sense in English. There are many other instances of this, and it is clear from the reading groups that the students read left to right, discerning meaning word by word, as discussed earlier. There is also some evidence that students use word order to help themselves work out meaning, as when I asked a student how they knew it was necessary for the master rather than someone else, in the sentence necesse est domino meo ad aulam ire [it is necessary for my master to go to the palace] (extract from CSCP, 2000, 33) they said ‘because [the master] is after necessary’. However, students do not always preserve Latin word order when they translate into English. For example, the student went on to translate the above sentence as ‘It is necessary that my master…’ not ‘It necessary that master my…’ This seems to be because the latter is nonsensical in English. They may also be processing necesse est [it is necessary] as a single lexical unit, indicating a step towards reading fluency. So, students seem to only translate strictly in Latin word order where they find it meaningful to do so; they are less likely to do it if produces nonsense.

It appears, however, that the main reason the students do not always read in Latin word order is that they will skip over words they do not know. For example, when reading the sentence nam Claudius erat imperator qui Cogidubnum regem fecit [for Claudius was the emperor who made Cogidubnus king] (Extract from CSCP, 2000, 33), one student said ‘Claudius was emperor…What's nam again?’ They had skipped the unknown word nam [for] and only came back to it when they had translated as far as they were able. The theory that students read the words they recognise first and skip unknown ones is confirmed by the student's own assessments of their reading techniques. When asked what they do first when reading a Latin sentence, the overwhelming response was that they look for words that they know the meaning of (Figure 3).

Figure 3. What do students do first when they read a Latin sentence?

One student expanded on this by writing ‘I translate all of the words in order and rearrange them to make sense’. It is interesting that the oft-taught technique of searching for the verb first seems to be completely absent. The only instances I noted of students jumping to the verb were when the verb was the next word in the sentence they were able to understand. For example, when translating Anti-Loquax celeriter intrat [Anti-Loquax quickly enters] (CSCP, 2000, 33) they said ‘Anti-Loquax enters, that's quickly I think’. The fact that they read the noun and the verb first also supports VanPatten's (1993) principle that learners process content words (nouns and verbs) first. When asked what they find easiest about translating Latin, one student replied, ‘translating with words I know and working out the rest from context’. This further supports the theory that, as VanPatten (1993) says, students process the words and forms they find meaningful before anything else.

These findings have some interesting implications for Latin teachers. Strasheim (1970) argues that we must teach students that ‘the smallest meaningful unit of Latin is the sentence’; however, it is clear that my students do not see it this way, but rather view each word as discrete units of meaning. This does, nevertheless, lead them to read in something resembling natural Latin word order. McCaffrey (2006) and Russell (2018) both argue for the importance of teaching pupils to read in Latin word order, and my research suggests that they try naturally to do this already. Difficulties arise when they do not know a word, as that is when they skip it, thus jumping out of Latin word order.

RQ3: how much do students rely on grammatical knowledge when translating?

In response to the question about what they find easiest when translating Latin, three students responded as follows:

• G1: Person endings.

• G4: Finding out who is doing what.

• G8: I find that once I have all the word meanings and have looked and identified the endings, putting together the sentence is quite an easy task. (Once I have found all the parts, putting them together is fun and easy).

This suggests that some students find Latin grammar relatively easy and make use of it in their translations. Indeed, there was evidence of this in the first group reading session, as when I praised a student on correctly translating ire [to go] saying ‘Good, to go, necessary to go’, one of the boys quickly pointed out that it was an infinitive. This demonstrates that he could recognise grammatical form and correctly apply technical vocabulary. This was not the only instance of correctly applied grammatical knowledge. The following conversation demonstrates that, whilst some students were able to use their grammatical knowledge when translating, this ability was not universal:

G6: The steward shows Salvio the wine jar. Wine jar?

G5: Yeah, amphora.

G4: It's to Salvius because it's dative.

G7: If you say so.

G4 is able to read the sentence correctly and justify her reading with reference to grammar. However, G7's sarcastic remark indicates that she does not fully understand the grammatical explanation. This disparity in ability is also highlighted by the results of the survey, as seven students commented that they found various grammatical phenomena challenging:

What do you find most challenging about translating Latin?

• G3: Tense.

• G4: Working whether the tense [sic].

• G8: Sometimes the word endings are confusing and it is hard to remember them all.

• G7: Dative case.

• G9: Working out the declension, gender and case.

• G10: When I can't tell what the order is or when there is a word that is completely different from the English and I can't work [it] out from context.

• B3: Learning endings and vocabulary.

The fifth response in this list is particularly interesting as the student makes no mention at all of using grammar to work a sentence out, suggesting that they do not even consider it an option. This analysis is borne out by the following interaction from the first reading group:

G3: What does regem meaning? Doesn't say.

Teacher: Think about your nouns we looked at earlier: mercator, mercatorem. You've met this noun earlier in the passage.

G3: Ah, rex is king.

G2: Is it a question?

G3: So, am I visiting the king today?

Teacher: visitamus? [emphasis on termination -mus]

G2: Am I visiting?

Teacher: I?

G3: Are you?

G2: We.

Teacher: We, mus, good.

When reading regem [king] the student does not recognise that regem is a form of rex, which suggests they have either forgotten their 3rd declension noun morphology, or that they simply do not recognise it ‘in the wild’. The latter seems more likely as they are quickly able to work it out once prompted. The confusion over the visitamus [we are visiting] suggests that they also do not recognise the significance of the verb ending, despite the teacher emphasising it. They seem to have guessed ‘I’ based on context, as it is Quintus speaking, so the first-person singular would be logical. When they realise this is wrong by the teacher's prompting, they resort to guessing, until they arrive at the correct answer by a process of elimination. This would suggest that most of my students do not look at the word endings when translating Latin and that many view grammar as difficult and thus seek to avoid using it. However, it appears to be more complicated than that.

When asked how they figure out who is doing what in a Latin sentence, only two students said that they used their grammatical knowledge (word endings) alone. (See Figure 4). Five students said they guessed from context and six said that they did something else or a mixture, with their written responses showing that the majority used a mixture of word endings and context.

Figure 4. What do students do when they figure out who is doing what in a Latin sentence.

The answers to the question, ‘Which word in this sentence do you think is the nominative/subject (the one doing the verb)? Explain why agnam lupus oppugnavit [The wolf attacked the lamb] proved especially illuminating’:

• G1: lupus due to the context of the sentence – the wolf attacked the lamb makes more sense

• G3: lupus because I know that it means wolf.

• G4: lupus because it's the only living thing in the sentence.

• G5: lupus because the ending of agnam is accusative.

• G6: agnam because it's at the start of the sentence.

• G7: agnam because oppugnavit is the verb.

• G8: I think that it is the wolf (lupus) because the accusative often ends in a ‘m’ (agnam).

• G9: lupus because it is in its original form, whereas agna has an m on the end to show it is in the accusative case.

• G10: lupus because agnam is accusative (it ends with an m) and oppugunavit is a perfect tense verb (because of the v) so lupus must be the noun that is doing something.

• G11: agnam because of its ending.

• B1: lupus.

• B2: lupus – If the word were causative [sic] its ending would have changed.

• B3: lupus because it has a second declension nominative ending (us)

The majority of students correctly identified the subject as lupus [wolf]. The three that chose agnam [lamb] might have been acting in accordance with VanPatten's (1993) principle that learners tend to translate the first word of the sentence as the subject. However, it is difficult to say this with any degree of certainty, as only one student gave word order as the reason for their choice. The other two seem to have made their choice on the basis of a flawed understanding of Latin grammar. Whether this is genuinely what they did, or it is a post-rationalisation of something they did instinctually, is impossible to determine. Turning then to the majority who got the answer correct, there is a clear split between those who use grammar to justify their choice, and those who use context. The sentence was deliberately set up to make either a viable option, so the student's choice seems to indicate whether they think more in terms of grammar or context when translating and in this case the split seems fairly even. The tension between grammar and context is also highlighted in this conversation from the second reading group:

G6: I am able to bring this statue to the king.

Teacher: How do you know that its ‘I’ can rather ‘the king’?

G4: Because it's regi, dative.

Teacher: Good.

G4: It also just makes sense from context.

G5: Context makes more sense than endings.

Here we can see that one student is capable of working it out from the grammar alone, whilst recognising that context is also useful. Another feels that context makes more sense than grammar, suggesting that it would be her preferred tool for working out a sentence Therefore, it appears that higher-attaining students rely on a mixture of both grammar and context to translate a sentence, with lower-attaining ones leaning more heavily on the latter. Therefore, it seems likely that students at an earlier stage of their Latin studies would rely even more on context, suggesting that this is the more instinctive of the two tools. Indeed, the majority say that they try using context first. There also seems to be a perception amongst the students that grammar is difficult and so they would prefer to use context, however, as the survey shows, most are in fact able to apply grammatical knowledge correctly.

Discussion

My students seem to approach Latin sentences by reading left to right, breaking them down into individual lexical items. Aside from looking words up in the back of their textbooks, the primary way in which the students try to discern the meaning of this vocabulary is by looking for similarities with words they already know. These known words may be Latin, but more often than not they are English, as the students have a far greater vocabulary to call on in their own native language. My students tend to try and read in the Latin word order as it appears on the page; however they will skip over words they do not recognise, returning to them later. This suggests that as they become more familiar with Latin vocabulary and grammar, and so long as they are not taught to read in a different order, they will continue to read Latin in the order it is written. There is, however, a perception amongst many of the students that grammar is difficult, and they tend to rely on context and common sense, in the first instance, when working out what is happening in the sentence. However, many are able to and do use their grammatical knowledge when translating. Therefore, my students read word by word in the order they are given, until they encounter words they do not know, which they skip and return to later. They work out meaning though links to English, context, and grammatical knowledge.

Conclusion

Going forward, I would try to ensure my students become more confident with their grammar, as context can sometimes lead them astray. However, it is clear that, rather than just giving them tables and lists to learn, they need as much exposure to the grammatical forms ‘in the wild’ as possible, in order to recognise them easily, and thus this shall be central to my approach from now on. I hope that other teachers reading this will find points of interest, that may help them to understand their own pupils better and allow them to create more student-centred lessons.