This week, I received this inquiry:
“We currently own years 1 & 2 of Visual Latin. My daughter is enrolled in Classical Conversations where we use Henle. She is struggling and I am now wondering if we should hold off the Henle and complete years 1 & 2 of Visual Latin before attempting Henle. Please let me know what you suggest and where Visual Latin might fit in. I ultimately prefer it, but since Dwayne is also teaching Henle, I wondered what that means in regards to where he stands on Visual Latin.
Thanks”
Here is my reply:
You daughter is not alone. Every week I receive emails like yours. There are so many students struggling with Henle Latin. It is a tough Latin course, and unfortunately is not all that user friendly.
Still, it is a good course. It gets the job done. Unfortunately, many students who come through Henle Latin end up hating Latin. That is unfortunate.
We designed Visual Latin to accompany any other Latin course. When students get bogged down in a tough concept, they simply watch the video explaining that particular concept. Hopefully, the visual explanation will clear things up.
Learning a language from a book alone is a tough way to learn a language.
Would it make sense to finish Visual Latin first? I think it would. This would give you a good foundation. Your daughter could then, more confidently, tackle Henle Latin. At the very least, Henle would not seem such a daunting task.
You are right, I do teach a live online Henle class. I believe Visual Latin alone is sufficient as a help for Henle students. However, as I said before, I was getting so many emails from “Henle haters” that I decided to offer more help by teaching an online class.
The online class is not to replace Visual Latin. It is simply available for those who do not want to teach Henle to their children.
There are a lot of mothers out there attempting to teach their children Latin. And, yet, they themselves have never studied Latin. That’s a tough task. Henle only makes it tougher. The online class is for them.
Let me know if this helps.
