salve Reader!

Today I was working on some new resources, and a fun discussion I had with a student last year came to mind.

It went like this:

We were joking about looking up easy words in the vocab list due to lack of confidence, and as an example he mentioned aut ('or'). When I told him that that would indeed be quite unlucky, as the word is not in the OCR vocabulary list for GCSE, he just would not believe it and ended up, ironically, looking it up.

Surprise: OCR does not require aut (as in 'viri aut feminae' = 'men or women'). Now you may be wondering how you can learn a language without using 'or,' and the answer is easy: you really can't, especially if you are not learning any other words to help you link alternatives!

This is why vocabulary lists are good for revision, but not so good for learning. They are a reminder of what they will test you on, but they are not there to put a limit on how or what you should be learning. I was very pleased that my student could not believe this word was not in the vocabulary list: it showed me he had been reading extensively and learning beyond the test.

In my Latin GCSE Revision Course, I have had to make difficult decisions about what words to include to keep it reasonably comprehensible while focusing on the defined vocabulary lists. However, to read a large amount of text in a language, you need some basic vocabulary, so I have not been shy about adding them.

There is still time to join until Sunday if you would like your child to receive guidance during their GCSE revision and to ask questions about grammar, vocabulary, and the exam.

Ana Martin

PS: I am flying to Barcelona for a conference tomorrow, but I will be checking my email if you have any questions, so just hit reply if needed.