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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

(I first read about "structured input" in Common Ground by Henshaw and Hawkins, a great book for SLA informed language pedagogy)

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Now that's not to say that stories always have to be written to teach a target grammar point. Just that it can be helpful to use structured input alongside stories to provide more opportunities for target features to actually be processed by learners. 10/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

(I am hamming it up a bit, but a lot of early textbook stories featuring the accusative are as stilted as that because they're trying to not overwhelm the beginner while providing examples of the target feature.) 9/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Contrast this with the salience of the accusative in paragraphs of SOV sentences: e.g. Scintilla cēnam parat. Quīntus olīvās portat. Scintilla Horātiam vocat. Horātia casam intrat. puella cēnam cōnsūmit. puella olīvās cōnsūmit. 8/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

If I wanted to provide the answers in more complete sentences, I'd structure it so that the first word features the target grammar: quid cōnsūmit? a. carōtam cōnsūmit. b. carōtās cōnsūmit. 7/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Once I've established the students understand the difference between am/um and ās/ōs, I can then ask students to pick a word to answer to what he's eating in each picture. Obviously I'd mix up the order & add more examples. This could also be reversed - choose the right pic. 6/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

(cōnsūmit is the word that the OLC uses for eating; it may not be the best word choice but it's what I've got to work with at this stage while keeping consistent with the textbook vocab) 5/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

In this example, I wanted the distinction between the accusative singular and accusative plural to be the MOST OBVIOUS feature of the text. I have a set of pictures of a pacman eating objects. "quid cōnsūmit?" is answered in a diagram: carōtam vs carōtas, pullum vs pullōs. 4/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

"Structured input" is a way to add greater saliency to a target grammar feature. This technique is about presenting meaningful input in such a way that it is easier for learners to actually notice and process a grammatical feature. 3/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

It's often not a very salient feature. Sandwiched in the middle of an SOV sentence, it does not stick out. Unfortunately if the SOV structure is used too repetitively and consistently, students lean on SOV word order rather than endings to attempt to understand the sentence. 2/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

The accusative case is tricky to teach. It is usually one of the first pieces of grammar a student encounters that is radically different from English. The students at this stage are often very young and not great at processing wordy technical explanations. 1/10

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Enjoy reading stories with your little child, and wherever possible add your own little touches. You don't have to just read the words on the page, you can use whatever level of Latin you have to describe the pictures. Have fun with the language and let that be the goal. 7/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

I see so many well meaning parents try to pre-teach their very young kids using heavy material more suitable to older ages and an academic setting, rather than leaning into their little one's interests and capacity at that tender age. 6/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

If you're hoping for your child to take formal Latin classes when they're old enough to study it in school, it's a good idea to slowly build enthusiasm when they are young rather than try to force them to learn too much content too soon and get burned out early. 5/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Now, you may not see a whole lot of language output from your child from just listening to a story, but things are happening. As long as you both enjoy the process, you are building interest and familiarity in the Latin language in a stress free, low-stakes way. 4/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

We need to slow down and meet young children where they are, where their interests are and what suits their temperament. If you want your little child to learn Latin because you are passionate about Latin, this would be the best way to start: simple, beautiful story books. 3/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

I'm a YouTuber, so why do I recommend picture story books? Young children need to hear their parents' loving voices. It is so much better for them than listening to a recorded voice coming from a screen. They also love to hear you reading their favourites many many times. 2/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

I am often asked what resources I recommend to parents of young children wanting to teach Latin to their little ones. I am glad to say these picture story books are now available from the University of Dallas website k12classical.udallas.edu/shop/?fbclid... (Photo by author Jessica McCormack) 1/7

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

We may be the "experts in pedagogy" in the classroom, but the students are the only ones who can see inside and ask themselves what they really want. Let students think about their learning (& not just react), and say whether they want to hear more or less correction. 8/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Again, this may not reflect the make-up of the learning community in your specific high school or other situations you may be teaching in. But every community is made up of real individuals, with real preferences. Ask your students to reflect on what motivates them. 7/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

That is to say, a Comprehensible Input informed language learning community still overwhelmingly indicated they would rather be corrected than not. (98% of those who made a preference did so to encourage corrective feedback) 6/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

This is separate from the pedagogical choice of Active or Input-based or Grammar-Translation approaches. The Discord server in question is mainly used by learners who work through Ørberg's Lingua Latina, an input based approach, and who communicate in the target language. 5/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

There is a generalisation thrown around that "learners don't want corrective feedback". That might be true for some groups. But there do exist groups of learners who explicitly ask for correction. Given this, we cannot simply assume all learners are demotivated by feedback. 4/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

My takeaway from this is that decisions around corrective feedback should take on board actual student preferences. There are learning communities where learners are explicitly asking to be corrected. That may or may not be the situation with your language class. 3/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Overwhelmingly more users indicate that they want to be corrected (3877) than not (77). This can be seen from the number next to the reactions (I've hidden the other reactions for privacy). That is, 98% who indicated a preference, did so to ask for corrective feedback. 2/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

In language teaching there is hot debate over whether correcting a student's use of the target language is helpful or discouraging. Here's one interesting piece of data: users of the Latin & Greek Discord can self-assign a tag to indicate if they want to be corrected or not. 1/8

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

The video also features English subtitles so learners of all levels can turn on subtitles to understand what the Latin is saying in every part of the story - or disable subtitles as you wish! 2/2

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Remember the part of the bible with a giant horde of skeleton zombies? I read an illustrated and tiered story of the vision of Ezekiel and the Valley of Dry Bones here! 💀 This includes a simplified Latin version plus the original text from the Vulgate! youtu.be/jQ4J31R2j1c 1/2

youtu.be

Ezekiel and the Biblical Zombies 💀 | Tiered Story

YouTube video by Found in Antiquity: Latin

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

I ran the poll on Twitter/X and got a decisive lead for collective wisdom over new discovery. This is why humanities teachers matter so much. It's not just the researchers making groundbreaking work that keep humanity thinking, it's also your high school history teacher and her novelist friend.

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

There will always be next Christmas! Don't run yourself too far down if it's looking dicey 👍

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

And like this post for choosing "Collective wisdom". 3/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Bluesky doesn't have a polls feature so as a clunky substitute - like this post for choosing "New knowledge"... 2/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Would you rather a single humanities scholar discovered & published new knowledge that gets read by only a few, or that a large section of the general population all collectively read, understood & appreciated one more thing that is currently only appreciated by scholars? 1/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

My Latin YouTube channel just passed 10,000 subscribers! Gratias vobis ago! Thank you so much everyone for your support of my learner-friendly Latin content. May we continue to make Latin more comprehensible and fun to learn for everyone!

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

I should add as a bonus - this is where the expression 'at the eleventh hour' comes from. If business needs to be wrapped up before sunset, something that comes up 'at the eleventh hour' of a 12 hour day is very close to the end of useful daylight.

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Roman time scaled with the length of solar day and night. Thus, hours in winter were shorter than hours in summer, and the reverse is true of watches. With this scaling, people could use the angles of shadows in their house as a guide to what time of day it was. 4/4

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

There are military applications for the watch system: guard duties could be divided evenly between soldiers throughout the night. Each watch feels different - for instance, there's a distinct time in the middle of the fourth watch where birds are at their noisiest. 3/4

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

This division of night makes a lot of sense to me. I go to bed with my baby at the second watch, then wake to feed and change him at the start of the third and fourth watches. We then get up at the first hour, when the sun peeks through the curtains. 2/4

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

A diagram from a dictionary of how time of the day and night is conceptualised in classical Roman times. The day is divided into 12 equal hours, starting with the first hour, while the night is in four watches. (Image credit to Taiara Peter, Learning Latin Facebook group.) 1/4

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The colour scheme strongly reminds me of the art for the Suburani textbook series. Looking lovely!

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

'Pāpa' can also be Dad/father, from the onomatopoeia of baby talk, hence the use of the word for bishops in ecclesiastical writings and the origin of the word 'Pope' (Pāpa) for the bishop of Rome. 3/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

"While they call food and drink bua and pāpa, they call their mother mamma and their father tata." Looking further into the dictionary it seems drink is 'bua', food is 'pāpa' or 'pappa'. I guess Varro used a chiasmus? 2/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

A lovely piece of evidence of baby talk from Ancient Rome, Varro (ap. Non. 81, 4), babies had their own words for not just Mummy (mamma) and Daddy (tata), but also food and drink. "cum cibum ac potionem buas ac papas vocent, matrem mammam, patrem tatam" 1/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

It was great to be on this podcast! We talked about tiered readers, appropriate challenge, sheltering vs unsheltering, overcoming non-linguistic challenges to reading ancient texts and more!

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Who needs to hear this fable - or who is its target? According to Phaedrus, quī fictīs causīs innocentēs opprimunt - those who overpower the innocent with false charges. You can download your free printable PDF of the three tiered poem at this link: 3/3 foundinantiquity.com/thebeastsofr...

foundinantiquity.com

The Beasts of Rome – Sample Content

The Beasts of Rome – Sample Content Ooh, a sneak preview! Reading tiers of plainly expressed prose narrative before the original poetry helps you not only understand and enjoy what you are re…

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Lupus et Agnus, 'The Wolf and the Lamb,' is the first fable in book 1 of Phaedrus. A tale of false accusations and a murderous wolf, this is the fable depicted on the project's front cover art. 2/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Have a free tiered Latin fable, Lupus et Agnus ('The Wolf and the Lamb')! It's a sample poem from my Phaedrus project, The Beasts of Rome: A Tiered Reader of Phaedrus Fables I. foundinantiquity.com/thebeastsofr... More info below! 1/3

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Carla Hurt @foundinantiquity.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Those are good examples of literal comprehension questions versus questions requiring interpretation of the text. I especially like the 'cite evidence for these statements' task.

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Reposted by Carla Hurt

Gregory Stringer @gregorystringer.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Speaking of sets, do you know about Claudius, Boy of Rome?!? Encyclopedia Britannica used the FORE sets to make a short (16 min) docu-drama about a boy in Ancient Rome, complete with Latin dialogue!! An underated masterpiece I show students every year! youtu.be/0Abhgr9LFCo?...

youtu.be

Claudius: Boy Of Ancient Rome (1964)

YouTube video by What Could Go Wrong?

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