Latin SACs?

[eeps]

I thought I'd give this board some life... has anyone done any SACs for Latin yet? I've got my first Latin SAC this Wednesday; it's a 40-minute unseen translation. I'm curious to see what other schools do for Latin...

[werdna]

Our first Latin SAC will be a grammar test.. Latin's a huge killer this year! I can now see why it's so darn competitive.

[binders]

how is it a killer?

[werdna]

I just feel that the level of difficulty has been raised by a huge notch - much harder translations, heaps of grammar to learn and all that. Really time consuming stuff too, it's the only subject I'm behind in at the moment.

[binders]

The only really tricky grammar you'll have to handle will be the sequence of tenses, and subordinate clauses - syntax in other words. and i think they won't be until unit 4.
the rest (morphology) will succumb to drills.  harder translations is actually a good thing, as even if you don't get them right, you will get exposed to the structures you need.  I'd encourage you to look for help, ask questions, compare translations. even if you're a 45+ student, you can still learn something.

you must have it harder than i did though, i didn't notice much difference between year 11 & year 12 in terms of difficulty. selections from livy, caesar and the odd bit of ovid.

[eeps]

For me personally, I'm finding Latin reasonable at the moment. We have around 40 students doing Latin at my school... most of them are pretty damn smart. I'm averaging 70% on unseen translations which is nothing compared to some guys in my class who nearly always get 100%.

I just feel that the level of difficulty has been raised by a huge notch - much harder translations, heaps of grammar to learn and all that. Really time consuming stuff too, it's the only subject I'm behind in at the moment.

As I was told, the grammar at Year 12 level doesn't get that much harder than Year 11. I agree on the translations; we were told the constructions in unseen translations will become progressively more complex and difficult. We do weekly unseen translations.

[werdna]

Forty students...?! That's like 30% of the entire cohort of Latin students in the whole of Australia.. my school only has 9 Latin students.

[eeps]

Forty students...?! That's like 30% of the entire cohort of Latin students in the whole of Australia.. my school only has 9 Latin students.

Yeh, we have two Latin classes with about 20-ish students in each. Since the.watchman rarely posts these days, I can safely say he is currently near the top of our cohort. He's acing most unseen translations... and he only picked up Latin in Year 9.

[binders]

er, isn't the vce cohort usually about 150?

[werdna]

Yes, 40 out of 150 is roughly 30%.

[binders]

oh ok. i thought you said 30% out of the whole of australia.

Insert Quote
Forty students...?! That's like 30% of the entire cohort of Latin students in the whole of Australia.. my school only has 9 Latin students.

[Pixon]

We've only had one half of a SAC which was a seen translation set from 150 lines of Cicero. The other half is the unseen which will be done next week. Seen translations are such a joke...vcaa says to set 15 lines, which means that if you've learnt all your lines properly, the SAC only takes 5 minutes and almost everyone gets an A+.

The grammar issue depends on your school; MGS finishes all the grammar before the end of year 10 (not to be elitist, but I think that is uncommon?), so the grammar is firmly rooted during year 11, so come year 12, there's not much you can really do about it.

My unseen marks have dropped this year...lol I'm getting low 80s/high 70s which is pretty lame especially because our year level has so many freaks at Latin (Aurelian and Romperait to name two). I think MGS and Xavier make up the majority of the cohort, MGS having close to 50 students.

Oh well...we'll see how it all goes. Latin in general is a pretty manageable subject...it tends not to pile up as much as other subjects
Good luck with Latin!