Paedagogus: The ABC Technique for Reinforcing Declensional Endings

Because English marks grammatical relationships primarily through word order, declensions can be confounding to some students. Below I outline a technique I have developed for f irst-semester Latin. It is easily incorporated into most curricula, takes little time, and can be adapted to various teaching styles. Most importantly, it helps f ind those students who need additional assistance (even if they’ve not yet realized it). By stripping vocabulary from the sentences, students are forced to focus on form rather than word meaning. When used to supplement other pedagogical approaches, this technique can reveal that declensions have a purpose which transcends torment. Declensional languages directly conflict with the way that grammatical relationships tend to be marked in English. Because English is the primary language of the majority of our students, I have found that some of them can be quite resistant to my repeated injunctions to “look at the ending.” Many students come to the college level with only a hazy understanding of what an indirect object is or what the word “transitive” means. In my experience, getting them to understand and respect the importance of noun terminations—rather than relying on the meaning of the words—is one of the most challenging steps in the first semester of Latin. How well students grasp the concept of declensions is a strong indicator of how well and how quickly they will subsequently progress in their studies. Because the notion of declensions is so alien, I frequently find that my students cling to the definition of a noun and its location in a sentence. They will consider that they have “done their homework” if they have looked up the meaning of all the words, even if they cannot identify the forms readily. Many of the early sentences encountered in a Latin textbook are relatively simple, and so students can be especially good at guessing a proper translation if they have some experience with Spanish or French and can use sense or instinct to suggest what noun is subject or object, and they will simply shuffle the words if challenged in class. You can ask your students if they understand and receive every assurance, force them to identify forms, quiz them on declensional endings, and still—alas—have some sneak through whose lack of comprehension is only revealed weeks later after the homework has become bafflingly complex to them. One technique I have developed to correct this problem early on is something I call the ABC method. I remove the crutch of vocabulary, and instead I give them alphabetical noun stems. Thus the noun A declines in the first declension singular Aa, Aae, Aae, Aam, Aa and in the plural Aae, Aarum, Ais, Aas, Ais. This forces the student to refer only to the form, not the definition, in deriving the proper meaning of the sentence. When this technique is used after teaching the first declension, and then again after the second declension, all students but the most dilatory or absentee will understand the importance of looking at the termination of words rather than guessing what a given noun “must” mean by placing it higglety-piggelty in relationship to the other nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Here are some examples of the technique in action: Aarum Bam videbimus. We will see the B of As OR We will see As’ B. 499