Teaching Latin as a Living Language: Reviving Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Pedagogy for the Modern Classroom

Abstract

This thesis considers the history of Latin pedagogy through the lens of the Comprehensible Input Theory of second language acquisition (SLA) developed by Stephen Krashen in the 1980s. It rejects Grammar-Translation pedagogy in favor of Living Latin pedagogy, which prioritizes language acquisition over language learning. Evidence of successful Comprehensible Input pedagogy found in many examples of Latin instruction from history shows the potential to adapt for the modern classroom those historical methods which were oriented towards the acquisition of the Latin language, and these have subsequently been shown to be supported by Krashen's work.