Note: I am not sure if he is affiliated with Roman Roads Press, or Picta Dicta, but that was how I was directed here. In either case, both points I make I will hold to, and not edit this post: 1. This man's lecture is ill-informed and subversive. 2. Picta Dicta is a poor language program. I appreciate the effort and nice rhetoric, and I value his stated goal. Unfortunately, after listening to this well-meaning and interesting lecture, I find it seriously hard to view Griffith as a serious expert on the subject of languages. His promotion of Sapir-Whorfian linguistic determinism is troubling, no less so because he pushes an extreme form of it. These ideas are not Classical, they are humanist, the basis of which is antithetical to a classical education. Though I am sure Griffith is conservative, his stated scholarly beliefs here are ultra-liberal, in the vein of a Blank Slate worldview, or other deterministic beliefs, that are pushed in ultra-woke colleges. After perusing the Picta Dicta and other works in the primer, I would not recommend the program, as it follows the same aforementioned misapprehension of linguistic theory, and just puts (pretty?) more colorful and updated drawings to the same modernist humanist language teaching methodology as virtually every other Latin (or modern language) program that currently saturates a market with products that waste time and money. I am sure his heart is in the right place, but his work is neither classical, nor revolutionary, it is the same methodology that has been failing since the time that the classical methods were abandoned, and the same methodology that one can find in most public schools - for ones that are smart enough to recognize that Wheelock's is terrible, but not smart enough to recognize that this kind of program is as well. For an excellent revolutionary Latin program - try ørberg's Lingua Latina. For a truly classical program, unfortunately, I am not aware of any in the English language (as most were Greek/Latin, Latin/Greek written during the classical period). Assimil's Latin is good for French speakers, but I have never used the English version. The Hamilton Interlinear Method was very popular in the time of the American Revolution, and very much worth looking into. I hope this man is led away from modernist thinking as he did a great disservice to his audience by way of his charm and ignorance. He might even look to the logical inconsistency in his lecture where he talks about language being how thoughts are formed, but Picta Dicta works from the presupposition that ideas like "on" or "below" or "sunny" are best represented pictorially - wasting more than a page on each illustration? Latin is a massive and complicated language, so why use teaching methods developed for the deaf and dumb that failed even in their original purpose?
The speaker exudes great confidence and a seemingly informed understanding of classical learning, but his criticisms of learning approaches are vague and misinformed. He would have us believe that students mechanically translate things they don't understand in the Grammar Translation method; they just output meaningless code that has undergone certain transformations using rules. This is to wrongly confound the approach of many college professors, a holdover from the pre-GT "grammar first" days, which is to have students memorize the grammar, before throwing them into authentic texts that are far beyond their level of comprehension, armed only with a giant dictionary. This is not GT per se, and GT was developed to remedy this. The essence of GT is to teach grammar points in simplified blocks and to practice these concepts over and over. This was all clearly stated in the 1924 report of the Classical Investigation, where the principals of GT, and the reasons for them, were enunciated. It is a popular misconception that GT involves endless memorization and abstract decoding. What he describes as GT is simply bad pedagogy, usually from college professors, not GT, which grew out of the methodology of Ollendorff and others, and which culminated with Jenney's Latin. The Natural Method and Comprehensible Input are similarly misunderstood and, in this instance, he makes the common mistake of confounding them, as though they were one and the same method. Actually, he seems to conflate the Natural Method with immersive spoken methods also, and he makes the natural method an invention of the 70s (a bad thing per se, apparently). Actually William Most came out with his book in the early 1960s. It's peculiar though, because he later names the great Oerberg (perhaps the most prominent natural method teacher) as an example of the "correct" way of teaching. He is also apparently unaware of the criticisms of immersive learning by proponents of comprehensible input. And, for that matter, CI criticisms of Oerberg. The well proven way is through grammatical instruction and copious examples. Wait! This is the GT method. Don't believe me, get First Greek Course of Rouse, one of those whom he says teaches the languages correctly. It has copious grammar with lots of examples. It is as much GT as D'Ooge, or Wilding, or Minnie Smith, or Breslove's GT books. Interestingly, Rouse provides the Greek vocabulary with English definitions, so this would be "decoding" according to Griffith's definition of GT. Presumably he thinks we are to learn our definitions solely from pictures, as Distler does (another name he associates with "correct" teaching). Ironically, then, I come more or less to the conclusion, though I wouldn't mischaracterize everyone else along the way.
The speaker has no issue with teaching explicit grammar. His program Picta Dicta has about 5-10 minutes of grammar instruction associated with each Familia Romana chapter. So about 4 hours of grammar instruction is associated with the whole textbook. The method by which he teaches vocabulary has English definitions on the back of online flashcards.
I would be very interesting in talking to you about this. I had couple of exchanges with Stephen Krashen when I was in college. A very nice and accommodating man, but I think he was the worst think to ever happen to language pedagogy in America.
@@lexicognistophilejones5379 I've only ever used his online Picta Dicta online vocabulary builder. It's a flashcard style design with a sentence which contains the target vocab word in an interesting context with a picture associated with it. I think it's an excellent resource, and I am curious as to hear your issues with it.
Wow! Excellent exposition of Ancient and ageless Languages!👌🏼
I enjoyed Long Live Latin but found this to be a much more helpful apologia. What a great teacher!
So excellent. Thank you!
yes
wowsa! I want to learn latin....
Note: I am not sure if he is affiliated with Roman Roads Press, or Picta Dicta, but that was how I was directed here. In either case, both points I make I will hold to, and not edit this post:
1. This man's lecture is ill-informed and subversive.
2. Picta Dicta is a poor language program.
I appreciate the effort and nice rhetoric, and I value his stated goal. Unfortunately, after listening to this well-meaning and interesting lecture, I find it seriously hard to view Griffith as a serious expert on the subject of languages. His promotion of Sapir-Whorfian linguistic determinism is troubling, no less so because he pushes an extreme form of it. These ideas are not Classical, they are humanist, the basis of which is antithetical to a classical education. Though I am sure Griffith is conservative, his stated scholarly beliefs here are ultra-liberal, in the vein of a Blank Slate worldview, or other deterministic beliefs, that are pushed in ultra-woke colleges.
After perusing the Picta Dicta and other works in the primer, I would not recommend the program, as it follows the same aforementioned misapprehension of linguistic theory, and just puts (pretty?) more colorful and updated drawings to the same modernist humanist language teaching methodology as virtually every other Latin (or modern language) program that currently saturates a market with products that waste time and money.
I am sure his heart is in the right place, but his work is neither classical, nor revolutionary, it is the same methodology that has been failing since the time that the classical methods were abandoned, and the same methodology that one can find in most public schools - for ones that are smart enough to recognize that Wheelock's is terrible, but not smart enough to recognize that this kind of program is as well.
For an excellent revolutionary Latin program - try ørberg's Lingua Latina. For a truly classical program, unfortunately, I am not aware of any in the English language (as most were Greek/Latin, Latin/Greek written during the classical period). Assimil's Latin is good for French speakers, but I have never used the English version. The Hamilton Interlinear Method was very popular in the time of the American Revolution, and very much worth looking into.
I hope this man is led away from modernist thinking as he did a great disservice to his audience by way of his charm and ignorance. He might even look to the logical inconsistency in his lecture where he talks about language being how thoughts are formed, but Picta Dicta works from the presupposition that ideas like "on" or "below" or "sunny" are best represented pictorially - wasting more than a page on each illustration? Latin is a massive and complicated language, so why use teaching methods developed for the deaf and dumb that failed even in their original purpose?
The speaker exudes great confidence and a seemingly informed understanding of classical learning, but his criticisms of learning approaches are vague and misinformed. He would have us believe that students mechanically translate things they don't understand in the Grammar Translation method; they just output meaningless code that has undergone certain transformations using rules. This is to wrongly confound the approach of many college professors, a holdover from the pre-GT "grammar first" days, which is to have students memorize the grammar, before throwing them into authentic texts that are far beyond their level of comprehension, armed only with a giant dictionary. This is not GT per se, and GT was developed to remedy this. The essence of GT is to teach grammar points in simplified blocks and to practice these concepts over and over. This was all clearly stated in the 1924 report of the Classical Investigation, where the principals of GT, and the reasons for them, were enunciated. It is a popular misconception that GT involves endless memorization and abstract decoding. What he describes as GT is simply bad pedagogy, usually from college professors, not GT, which grew out of the methodology of Ollendorff and others, and which culminated with Jenney's Latin.
The Natural Method and Comprehensible Input are similarly misunderstood and, in this instance, he makes the common mistake of confounding them, as though they were one and the same method. Actually, he seems to conflate the Natural Method with immersive spoken methods also, and he makes the natural method an invention of the 70s (a bad thing per se, apparently). Actually William Most came out with his book in the early 1960s. It's peculiar though, because he later names the great Oerberg (perhaps the most prominent natural method teacher) as an example of the "correct" way of teaching. He is also apparently unaware of the criticisms of immersive learning by proponents of comprehensible input. And, for that matter, CI criticisms of Oerberg.
The well proven way is through grammatical instruction and copious examples. Wait! This is the GT method. Don't believe me, get First Greek Course of Rouse, one of those whom he says teaches the languages correctly. It has copious grammar with lots of examples. It is as much GT as D'Ooge, or Wilding, or Minnie Smith, or Breslove's GT books. Interestingly, Rouse provides the Greek vocabulary with English definitions, so this would be "decoding" according to Griffith's definition of GT. Presumably he thinks we are to learn our definitions solely from pictures, as Distler does (another name he associates with "correct" teaching).
Ironically, then, I come more or less to the conclusion, though I wouldn't mischaracterize everyone else along the way.
The speaker has no issue with teaching explicit grammar. His program Picta Dicta has about 5-10 minutes of grammar instruction associated with each Familia Romana chapter. So about 4 hours of grammar instruction is associated with the whole textbook. The method by which he teaches vocabulary has English definitions on the back of online flashcards.
@@robertevans8903 So the Picta Dicta is his work? I would be curious to see more, although I am very unimpressed with what I have seen so far.
I would be very interesting in talking to you about this. I had couple of exchanges with Stephen Krashen when I was in college. A very nice and accommodating man, but I think he was the worst think to ever happen to language pedagogy in America.
@@lexicognistophilejones5379 I've only ever used his online Picta Dicta online vocabulary builder. It's a flashcard style design with a sentence which contains the target vocab word in an interesting context with a picture associated with it. I think it's an excellent resource, and I am curious as to hear your issues with it.