Thanks for the perspective! I guess it depends on the outcomes in question

If they're measured by traditional academic metrics (parsing, recalling declension tables, translating into English), then Wheelock's grammar-first approach really does optimize for that. On the other hand Ørberg optimizes more for reading fluency and intuitive comprehension, which is harder to measure on a standard Latin exam.

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vintermann 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's also the thing about "the best exercise plan is the one you actually follow". The direct method isn't "bunk", it's a very good method if you take into account that students don't have boundless enthusiasm and rote learning ability.

I learned English with the direct method (the teacher was an old Esperantist free to do his own thing) and German with the traditional grammar memorization way, and I wouldn't be able to write this post in German.

	▲	mananaysiempre 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		On the flip side, Ørberg is a textbook for children, perhaps teenagers at the latest, and like most such textbooks it is in no hurry, so you’ll need to stick with it for quite some time to get results. That by no means makes it bad or unsuitable to whoever is reading this comment, but I can imagine how it wouldn’t work well in a typical introductory college course, where the instructor’s aim is to cram into the students’ heads as much Latin as possible in the semester or two they are given. If done well, the grammar-centered approach leaves a lot of blanks, but the blanks are more or less “just add vocabulary”. So assuming you’ve retained whan you were taught (!), once you want to read any classical text, you can take a dictionary and work through it. Do that enough times over a few years and eventually you’ll be able to get rid of the dictionary. Again, you see why one would choose to do this when one needs to equip their students for any text to the greatest possible extent in a limited time; but that’s a different goal from having them read some texts as soon as possible. And it’s not always done well either, of course.

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ekjhgkejhgk 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unrelated to Latin. I speak four languages, each learned in a totally different way.

The fastest that I've learned a language was by buying a grammar and spending hours on end doing grammar exercises. It doesn't just work by "traditional academic metrics", it works and fast. That's because it's faster to learn something if you're explicitly shown the pattern and then you do repetition, than if you just do the repetition.

	▲	vintermann 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you speak four languages, in most countries you are an outlier, and you should not assume that what works for you would work for others. Of course you need to do grammar exercises, the interesting question is whether it's good to avoid your native language when exercising, as Lingua Latina per se Illustrata does but most language training materials don't.
	▲	quasigloam 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Now I’m curious; what book of grammar was it? What did the exercises look like? What other languages and strategies did you use?
	▲	watwut an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		As someone who also learned multiple languages, the most typical result if grammar focused classes is that you cant use the language at all for years. And yes it is consistent outcome for majority of the students. Like, outcome of language classes you describe are people who cant watch movies, cant listen to podcasts, cant talk with natives ... but are decent in solving grammar exercises. And to add insult to injury, the whole process so massively sux, that you are likely to conclude that learning languages is not for you.