Teaching Languages with Inscriptions

At a teaching and learning training day for new lecturers run by the Higher Education Academy’s Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology (26th February 2008, Birkbeck College, London; see PDF poster), is listed a break-out session on ‘Teaching Languages with Inscriptions’.

I have always thought this was a valuable tool, for several reasons: (1) inscriptions tend to use simple grammar and repetitive vocabulary that are easy for beginning students to handle; (2) it’s real ancient text, not invented and unrealistic lingo like so many textbooks offer; (3) exercises involving uppercase letters (in Greek), no word-breaks, can be useful in consolidating students’ knowledge of the basics, *and* (4) working from photographs and real texts will give them a sense of real accomplishment and be a lot of fun.

Anyone have any insight or experiences to share on this?

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One Response to Teaching Languages with Inscriptions

  1. Charlotte Tupman says:

    I agree – particularly with Latin inscriptions, even relative beginners can enjoy trying to reconstruct missing parts of some of the more formulaic texts, which can be very encouraging for students who are not used to working with real texts.

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