Reading Latin

This course (3 volumes if you are learning on your own: Reading Latin, Vocabulary and Exercises, Self Study Guide) is excellent. It is prepared somewhat like a programmed course, giving little bits of information at each step with detailed explanations and full translations of the reading texts(in the self-study guide) and then having you test your mastery with exercises. Very effective. I have used a similar method to learn basic musical harmony and I can say that this step-wise approach which takes nothing for granted, explaining every piece of new information and then immediately testing it, is very effective. You can sense from the way the explanations are written that the authors really care about you learning Latin. I have used the Oxford Latin Course volume 1 and can say that that course is not for adult learners without a teacher. This is the one to get if you are an adult student learning on your own. Great course, highly recommended. The only problems I see with this method is first it's very dense, so your progress is slow. The authors recommend to do a bit each day , even if it's just half a page or so. I find that this works. Also, since if you are studying on your own you have to use 3 separate volumes, plus probably your notebook for vocabulary and notes to do the translations and the exercises, so it's cumbersome to say the least but the method is very good.

The entire three volume set of Reading Latin is excellent. Peter Jones and his fellow authors provide a highly structured, easy to follow, and excellent method for learning Latin. For those that can't take a formal course or courses, it doesn't get any better than this. Even for those like me who minored in Latin, it's the best review of Latin that you can get on the market.John F. Gilligan, Ph.D.

Excellent quality :) This book provides a thorough approach to learning Latin grammar and vocab for beginners, with supplementary exercises. Simple and effective :D Really recommended it to fellow students.

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 in the UK. 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%.

It came quickly (thankfully because I needed It for class). It was clearly brand new and in good condition.

The three books in this series by Peter Jones are well worth studying. Will improve skill.

The ultimate question with Latin textbooks is whether to teach grammar and vocab first with a late introduction of real reading material (Wheelock), or whether to start the reading and comprehension from the beginning using only minimal changes to grammar complexity and vocab slowly overtime (such as Cambridge Latin Course or, even moreso, Lingua Latina).The trouble with the former approach (such as with Wheelock), is that the transition from the textbook to attempting real Latin (which would occur at the start of an intermediate college Latin course) is almost unbearable and produces sloppy classicists who then find themselves in need of "post-bacc" courses before they are ready for true graduated level study.The trouble with the latter variety (such as with Lingua Latina) is that they notoriously lack the more complicated grammar and syntax that is needed for intermediate college level students or beyond. This must be supplemented or the students end up being fluent with, albeit stuck at, kindergarten-level Latin.Jones and Sidwell have tried to get around this by subdividing their books into a grammar textbook (this one) and a separate, "Text" for reading comprehension and practice. There is also a must-have "Study Guide" which translates everything in the "Text" book which helps students know for sure that they are learning accurately.If the grammar is learned slowly and the reading text is rigorously supplemented, then you basically have a great one-two combo that should, theoretically, escape all the pitfalls of Wheelock and Lingua Latina. Some students who are learning via Jones and Sidwell on their second time through may find that it does just this (perhaps those who learned first with Wheelock and now feel stuck, for example).The trouble is, as many have pointed out in the reviews here, that Jones and Sidwell do many annoying things with their book(s), which impede first time students from learning as efficiently as possible.* Verbs are often introduced without all principal parts, including those which have a somewhat irregular pattern.* Nouns paradigms use an irregular order Nom, Acc, Gen, Dat, Abl ..., versus the more common Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Abl (seen in most dictionaries and most other textbooks).* The Latin v/u is always written Capital `V' or lowercase `u', which is true to original classical texts, but is never seen in dictionaries or web resources, so it's a nuisance for students trying to learn pronunciation and morphology of vocab for first time.* The grammar explanations are minimalist and less helpful than those in Wheelock or some other textbooks I've worked with in the past.* The reading `Text' book has a list of vocab words to help translation, but these are contained in the `Grammar' book. This is not only VERY inconvenient, but results in destroyed bindings for both books, due to all the flipping back and forth.* The practice sentences and `Text' are boring as can be.Ultimately, these issues do not make Jones and Sidwell completely un-useful, but they do make the set fall short of what it could have been. All-in-all, I think Jones and Sidwell is great for students running through a second time, perhaps after a first year working with Wheelock. I also think some of the exercises and supplementary material could be used nicely as HW or in the classroom by teachers who are primarily using other textbooks with the students.Unfortunately, I think the English-speaking world is still left with the unsatisfactory resources to teach Latin in a way that promotes both complete grammar mastery AND complete reading/writing/thinking fluency. The best bet may still be to combine books using these separate methods (such as Wheelock with Lingua Latina), and this Jones and Sidwell set does not help fully relieve us of this predicament.

This book can be recommended if you wish to teach yourself Latin.