NCLG

Why Study Latin?

Parents, teachers, school administrators, and students can find below a resource for statements about the growth and value of the study of Latin and classical civilization for use in building and maintaining programs. Also refer to our page of Letters of Support and  CAMWS's Committee for the Promotion of Latin.

For Teachers: TAKE A LOOK!

FOR NLE:
This year a new certificate of commendation will be available to teachers to further recognize their students who win honors in the NLE. The National Committee for Latin and Greek has created this letter to further commend students and to encourage and motivate them to continue their studies.

FOR JCL: New for JCL sponsors! Five new Certificates of Commendation for participation at JCL events are offered by the National Committee for Latin and Greek! Teachers, download and print these awards to honor your students who participate in local and state events.

• JCL Scroll

• JCL Temple

• JCL Wreath

• NJCL Ionic

• NJCL Swirl

Need something quick? Here are three nice brochures which are PDF files ready for you to copy and distribute:

• TCA's Survey of College Admissions Counselors
  This is exceptional and elegant set of flyers, developed by the Texas Classical Association, covers the following topics:  Why Study Latin? Should I Take Latin III & IV? College & University Admissions Personnel Respond to Latin

• Why Study Latin? (2003 version) Designed by Ginny Lindzey, this brochure contains the latest SAT stats plus information based on Conrad Barrett's article, "Keys to Language and Cultural Awareness" (below).

• Harry Potter Knows Latin! Designed by Ginny Lindzey, this flyer will serve as a quick promotional tool for students.

On this page:

• Richard LaFleur's The Practical Benefits of Studying Latin

• Some Reasons Why the Study Latin is Useful for All American Students

• Consider Studying Latin

• The Classical Languages & College Admissions

• Latin & SATS

• Latin and the GRE

On other pages at this site:

• Latin: A Key to Languages and Cultures A Message to the Parents of Spanish-Speaking Latin Students (SPANISH version included!)

• "Why Latin" by Scott Barker

• Latin & Classics in a Global Curriculum

• How Students Benefit from Classical Civilization Courses

• Why Latin in Middle School?

• Why Latin in Elementary School?

• The Value of Latin for Colleges & Careers

• The Recent Growth & Value of Latin

• Keys to Language & Cultural Awareness

And more from other websites:

• The Role of Latin In American Education
  A Position Paper from the National Council of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL)

• Reflections from a Casual Classicist

• About the study of Latin and its Value

• The greatest single defect of my own Latin education... Dorothy Sayers on Latin

• The Latin Advantage

• Bolchazy-Carducci's Why Latin

• Why Your Kids Should Learn Latin

• Why A Classics Degree

• Latin . . . Why Study It at All?

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The Practical Benefits of Studying Latin

by Richard A. LaFleur

One of the most PRACTICAL benefits of studying Latin for high-schoolers is boosting verbal skills and scores on tests like the SAT; students with two or more years of Latin typically score 140-160 points higher on the SAT than their Latin-less peers. Numerous studies have demonstrated a significant positive correlation between studying Latin and improved scores on a variety of tests and even with college GPA and performance in college English classes. Of course, even more important is the broadened cultural perspective that comes with studying Greco-Roman civilization, a major component of the high-school Latin curriculum. The Roman world exerted enormous influences on our own culture, so that to be ignorant of Roman civilization is to be ignorant of our own roots. An important consideration too for our own multicultural society is the fact that the Greco-Roman world was what I like to call the "archetypal multiculture." The Roman empire at its greatest extent included all the peoples living around the Mediterranean Sea and the widely disparate cultures of not only Europe but also Asia, the Near East, and North Africa. Rome was thus a cultural melting pot and the lessons we can learn from the world of Rome are invaluable to all of us in America today.

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Some Reasons Why the Study of Latin is Useful for All American Students

• The study of Latin offers a unique opportunity to look at the nature of language itself. A conscious study of Latin grammatical principles and accompanying traditional terminology (at appropriate maturity levels) will benefit students in their speaking and writing of English and in any further language study that they may undertake.
• The study of Latin can result in the broadening and deepening of students' English vocabulary and can impart an understanding of word formation, a most useful tool in approaching unfamiliar words.
• Latin is an excellent basis for the study of many modern languages, especially Romance languages.
• On an elementary level, Latin can be very helpful in improving the English reading skills of students. Because it is a phonetic language, its study, especially practice in reading aloud, often brings to students the basic understanding of the phonetic principles that they may never have mastered when first learning to read English.
• When students study Latin, they enter the world of an alien (and for the most part ethnically neutral) culture, in some ways quite different from ours. Studying the language, customs, and world view of society from a different time and place is a mind-expanding experience. Conversely, focusing on the similarities between our culture and that of the Romans offers the opportunity to consider the Graeco-Roman contribution to American life in the areas of government, architecture, ideals and ideas.
• The classics of Latin literature have had a significant influence on European, English and American literature and are eminently worth reading for themselves.

Sally Davis, Wakefield H.S., Arlington, Virginia. Teaching Latin in American Schools, Scholars Press, 1991, p.61.

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Consider Studying Latin

Who studies Latin nowadays?

1. Students who are intelligent.
2. Students who plan to continue their schooling after being graduated from high school.
3. Students who like words.
4. Students who want to increase their ability to communicate with other people.
5. Students who like to read.
6. Students who like to know, and to know that they know.
7. Students who can analyze parts and put them into a whole that makes sense.
8. Students who like mythology.
9. Students who are interested in comparing old times with modern times.
10. Students interested in learning Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and/or other Romance languages. 
11. Students considering possible careers in law, medicine, science, writing, teaching, business, banking, politics, international relations, and a host of others--even astrology!

But isn't Latin a dead language?

Although it is true that hardly anyone still speaks Classical Latin today, it is also true that virtually no one speaks Old English today. Yet both Latin and English are alive and prospering: spoken Latin became modern Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and several other languages; and Old English became modern English, with its varied dialects.

Actually, Latin is not so "foreign" a language as modern languages are, since over sixty per cent of our English vocabulary words are derived from Latin words over two thousand years old. Also, some ancient Roman laws, institutions, and customs have survived to our days: for example, we still use the calendar devised by Julius Caesar. Other ancient Roman traditions, myths, and aspects of daily life are interesting by contrast with those of today.

What do students get out of studying Latin?

1. Bigger English vocabularies.
2. Higher verbal SAT scores.
3. Higher English ACH scores.
4. Acceptance into good colleges and universities.
5. Sensitivity to language.
6. Sensitivity to people and cultures.
7. A sense of history.
8. Some students also report interest in things they had not previously considered until they studied Latin.

Muriel Garcia

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The Classical Languages and College Admissions

An American Classical League Survey
The Classical Outlook, Summer 1991
Rick LaFleur

What are the policies and attitudes of college admissions officials toward applicants who have studied the classical languages? Teachers of Greek and especially Latin (because it is so much more widely taught) have become increasingly concerned with this issue in recent years, as foreign language (FL) study in general has been rehabilitated and Latin and the Classics in particular have enjoyed a remarkable renaissance of interest and enrollment in American schools. The present article reports the results of a survey, funded by the American Classical League (ACL) and conducted between August 1990 and January 1991, which directly addresses the question of the role of classical languages in the college admissions process.

The survey suggests a continuing upward trend in FL entrance requirements for US colleges and universities, as well as a highly positive attitude toward applicants who have studied Latin or Greek in high school as equivalent to (38.4%) or stronger than (61.2%) other qualified applicants; institutions that do require FL for admission and that accept both modern and classical languages toward satisfying the requirement regard applicants with Latin or Greek as equivalent to (78.5%) or stronger than (18.8%) applicants with modern languages. Only five institutions reporting FL entrance requirements do not accept Latin and only 11 (including the five not accepting Latin) do not accept Greek; these 11 institutions are nearly all "selective" but not "competitive" colleges with 2,500 or fewer students.

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Survey Highlights

(response rate: 69.4%)

• 30.5% of the responding institutions (333 or 1,091 four-year colleges and universities) require high-school foreign language (FL) study for admission, compared with 25.8% in the MLA survey for 1987-88, and many others strongly recommend such study.
• 12.5% of those institutions not currently requiring FL for admission are considering the implementation of such requirements.
• Most (61.2%) of the institutions reporting no FL entrance requirement regard applicants with two years of high-school Greek or Latin as either "somewhat stronger" or "much stronger" than other qualified applicants.
• 16.8% of the respondents reported adding or increasing FL entrance requirements over the past 10 years; only 2.2% had dropped or lowered requirements.
• Most (68.3%) of the institutions reporting FL entrance requirements require at least two years of the same language; another 10.1% require three years of FL study for admission.
• Very few (1.1%) of the institutions requiring FL for admission report that specific languages are required.
• Nearly all (98.6%) of the institutions reporting FL entrance requirements accept Latin to meet those requirements (only five responding institutions do not, all of them colleges with fewer than 1,200 students and most of them "selective" but not "competitive," according to College Board definitions).
• Nearly all (96.8%) of the institutions reporting FL entrance requirements accept Greek to meet those requirements (only 11 do not, most of them small, non-competitive colleges).
• 18.8% of the institutions reporting FL entrance requirements that could be satisfied by either modern or classical languages regard applicants with classical languages as "somewhat stronger" or "much stronger" than applicants with modern languages; 78.5% regard the two categories as "equivalent"; and only .3% (one college) regards applicants with classical languages as "somewhat weaker."

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Latin and the SAT

Does Latin help your SAT scores? The answer once again is a definitive YES! The scores of students who took the SAT II in various languages (after 3 or more years of study) are listed below so that one might see a correlation between language studied and verbal scores.

The following is taken from the Bolchazy-Carducci website:

SAT Scores

Studies conducted by the Educational Testing Service show that Latin students consistently outperform all other students on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).

1997-2004 Taken from Tables 7-3 & 7-4 in College-Bound Seniors — A Profile of SAT Program Test Takers.

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Latin and the GRE

At the web address:

ftp://etsis1.ets.org/pub/gre/guidtbl4.pdf 

there is a long chart of GRE scores of college seniors "who tested between 1 Oct. 1996 and 30 Sept. 1999". It's called "General Test Percentage Distribution of Scores Within Intended Broad Graduate Major Field". There are 270 or so of those fields. The fact there most useful for Classics propaganda is that in Verbal, classics is # 1 out of 270 fields! Only one other field (History of Science) comes within even ten points of us.

Below I list only those fields that scored (i.e. have a mean of) 550 or more on the Verbal. (Most fields don't even score 500. The lowest is something called "Taxation" which scored 376! -- followed by "Educ Super" = 396).

FIELDS WHOSE STUDENTS SCORED HIGHEST IN MEAN "VERBAL" GRE.

(The 3 figures are for Verbal, Quantitative, Analytical. What if any difference there is between "Classics" & "Classical language" I don't know):

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