Students of languages in general profit from the study of Latin, as it improves linguistic ability and enhances grammatical and etymological awareness. Latin 001 is a 4.0 hours credit course and there are no pre-requisites for the class. This textbook offers a method of learning Latin based on reading from the beginning. Students are encouraged to acquire vocabulary and grammatical concepts through the reading of texts, with the aim of enabling them to acquire reading ability in Latin in a short time. Through simple passages the students are introduced to cultural and literary topics, including Horace's life, the wonderings of Aeneas and the Trojan War.
Exercises comprise both translation into English and basic composition in Latin.
The book is accompanied by a cassette, which will also be used in class. The pronunciation used is restituta, following the English school. This pronunciation tries to reproduce the sounds of Classical Latin as opposed to the later church pronunciation. Latin 001 is envisioned as the first part of a series of courses, where the first semester covers the OLC 1 and part of OLC 2, while Latin 002 uses the remaining chapters from OLC 2 and OLC 3. In a possible Latin 003 course, we will use the Reader of the Oxford Latin Course, which provides readings from different Latin texts.