From Bob Patrick:
Interesting (though not at all surprising) tidbit here today. I have a female student, Latin 2, who was “sent away” to a juvenile institution to deal with behavioral issues (at home – never a sing moment’s trouble in my class or at school for that matter).
While away, for about 5 weeks, she continued her Latin with a teacher in my district who completely abhors CI/TPRS, and this student told me, on return last week, the week before exams, that all they did was study grammar.
I wrote the teacher asking him to help me transition her back (he did not write me and ask for any of that the other way around, btw). He replied that he always “taught all the grammar first” before they did any “translation”. So, she spent 5 weeks studying grammar, by his and her account.
She just took her exam from me. You know how I teach. Any grammar that shows up on the exam is entirely contextual. On this exam, they were only about verbs. Given a verb in the context of a story, I asked for a translation from multiple choices. E.g. adiuvare a. to help; b. helping; c. helped.
She has done no reading since she left me, but for most of the semester with me, it was CI work. She aced the comprehension part of the exam – didn’t miss a single question. All questions and multiple choice answers in Latin. Didn’t miss one. Out of the grammar questions, she missed 60% of them – all in context with multiple choice responses.
All that grammar work. Really paid off.
Bob