Learn Ancient Greek and Latin Language | Oxford Latinitas (original) (raw)
Providing world-class active language teaching in ancient Greek and Latin
What we do
At Oxford Latinitas we teach and study ancient languages using the Active Method. We currently offer Ancient Greek and Latin, and are actively planning the addition of Sanskrit. Many of us learned through this method ourselves, including some who had previously been told they would never be able to ‘catch up’ in Latin and Greek; others among us were taught traditionally but have found renewed enthusiasm and joy in teaching through the Active Method.
Learning a language is hard work. We have to acquire new vocabulary, absorb new grammar, understand new ways of thinking. The active method doesn’t make parsing, translating, and carefully analysing constructions any less important or necessary, but we believe it makes all of it more enjoyable — and feedback from our students consistently confirms this to be the case.
What is the Active Method?
The Active Method means that all our classes are taught in the target language. Right from the first lesson, our students speak, hear, read and write in Latin or Ancient Greek, experiencing it as what a language truly is: a means of communication and a mode of thought.
This method develops all four skills that constitute a language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The target language is often used for conversation outside the classroom too — for example on visits to ancient sites and museums during our residential courses.
Bringing ancient languages to life means fully experiencing what ancient texts offer us, whether in the classroom or on the streets of Athens and Rome. Students are enabled to engage actively with the language they are learning, and thus to learn more quickly and effectively.
Why we use the Active Method
We use the Active Method because modern neuroscience, as well as our own experience as teachers and learners, tell us that this is the most natural way to learn a language — especially for students with no previous experience in classical or other foreign languages. In particular, speaking and listening require real-time language processing, which forces one to be much faster at thinking in the language and increases one’s fluency, not only in speech but in reading too.
Researchers agree that, to learn a language well, we need to be exposed to it as much and as often as possible. Using it as the main language in the classroom means students get much more exposure than in a traditional classroom, while reading the text and then explaining it in the original encourages a deeper understanding of the language than is typically achieved through translation exercises.
Speaking the language also encourages a strong appreciation of the importance of grammar, because grammatical mistakes inhibit understanding.
The active method is enjoyable and stimulating for the students — we can do anything from talking about our personal experiences to acting scenes from Greek dramas, transforming Latin poetry into rhetorical scenes in which characters in the story describe their experiences, organising mock trials in Latin, and so on. The variety opened up by the active use of the language helps keep our students motivated.
How we maintain our teaching standards
Our core teaching principles are excellence, academic rigour, and immersion. To maintain these we constantly pursue all three within the teaching team. All our communications with one another are carried out in Latin or Ancient Greek. We meet regularly, by video-conference or in person, to share ideas and learn from one another. We undergo teacher observation and feedback on each of our courses, and participate in regular debrief sessions at the end of each programme.
All our teachers are experienced in and able to adapt their skills and abilities to the different teaching modes we offer (online classes, in-person study programmes and tutoring).
Our courses follow the same basic curriculum, but teachers have the freedom to tailor their teaching to students’ progress and the needs of the class. This freedom is a source of continuous improvement and helps to generate innovative ideas within the teaching team.
How we assess students’ progress
Our classes follow a precise curriculum, designed to ensure the best results in a short amount of time. Teachers assess students’ progress through a variety of exercises and assignments, covering all areas of language studies.
Speaking: small class sizes give every student the chance to interact with the teacher in all possible situations, and allow the teacher to correct and guide students to greater confidence and fluency. Students may find themselves, for example, answering questions, telling stories, engaging in philological conversations and philosophical debates, describing pictures and impersonating characters from the ancient world in impromptu ethopoeiai.
Listening: we like to challenge our students by degrees. Teachers progressively increase the pace and difficulty of their spoken Latin or Greek, gradually adopting more complex constructions and challenging vocabulary. By the end of the course, students are able to understand and engage in conversation and discussions with greater fluency and often at a much quicker pace than when they started.
Writing: throughout our courses, our teachers assign writing exercises to track students’ grammatical, lexical and phraseological progress, by challenging them with different genres and styles. Students may find themselves, for example, writing rhetorical speeches, stories, letters, or dialogues in Cicero’s or Lucian’s style, or retelling or summarising passages of ancient prose or verse. For each of these tasks, our teachers provide students with careful corrections and suggestions for grammatical as well as stylistic progress.
Grammar: our teachers assign various exercises on all grammatical topics covered in class, taking them from textbooks such as Familia Romana or preparing them ad hoc (some of our teachers often surprise us with their drawing skills! What’s better than studying participles with some drawings of the Parthenon or ancient Greek kings?).
We never cease to be amazed at how quickly our students improve in a few days. Take a look at what students themselves have to say about their progress!
At the end of each course we provide class certificates to students who require them.
Our History
The Oxford Latinitas Project was founded by Charis Jo (Guenevera) and some friends in 2017, as a student society at the University of Oxford, running increasingly sought-after term-time classes, seminars and musical evenings, and, during the vacations, study trips to the Accademia Vivarium Novum (AVN) in Rome. In the summer of 2020 we ceased all contact with the AVN. In that year we took our classes and seminars online, and ran our first Summer Schools; and in 2021 we incorporated as an independent company, Oxford Latinitas Ltd, and launched our tutoring service and a wider range of study trips to locations with classical connections. Although the company was set up by people who met through Classics at Oxford University, it is entirely independent of the University.
- All
- Board
- Leadership Team
- Teachers
Melinda Letts
Executive Chair | Director of Latin Teaching
Dr Melinda Letts is Fellow in Classics at Harris Manchester College, Oxford and Tutor in Greek and Latin Languages at Jesus College, where she has led the introduction of Active Method teaching of both languages. After graduating with a first class degree in Literae Humaniores from St Anne’s College, Oxford, she worked as Research Assistant to Professor Keith Hopkins, collaborating on a chapter of his book Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983). She then decided to try life outside academia, working first in overseas development and subsequently in a series of leadership roles in UK health charities and public bodies, for which she was appointed OBE in 2003. She returned to academic life in 2009, and wrote her doctoral thesis at Christ Church Oxford. Melinda is passionate about enabling people from all backgrounds to access ancient languages with ease and fluency, so that they can engage for themselves with the thinking and experience of previous generations and bring their own diverse interpretations to texts that have been read and discussed for millennia.
Dylan Jones
Independent Director
Dylan Jones, Our Senior Independent Director, is a graduate of University College Oxford, where he read Modern History.
During his 35 year executive career he led businesses for Coats, Bunzl, Staples, Northgate and KKR, including 18 years living and working in Peru, Japan, Hongkong, Australia and Italy, learning Spanish, Japanese and Italian “in situ”.
More recently Dylan has taken on the role of Chair at several dynamic young companies, including “Devoted” – marketing premium pet foods – and “Stitch & Story”, offering materials and instruction for textile crafts. He is also Vice Chair at HMT, a medical charity with two hospitals, several dementia-specialised care homes, and over 500 employees.
Dylan loves cricket, conversation, and cultural exploration.
Charis Jo
Founder | Latin teacher
Charis Jo (Guenevera) was the founder and first president (2017-18) of the Oxford Latinitas Project, and the director of its first two Septimanae Latinae. She is currently a DPhil candidate in Classics (Language and Literature) at Oriel College writing her doctoral thesis on dialectic in Latin Philosophy, specifically the Augustinian fragment ‘de dialectica.’ She has also taught Latin at Jesus College and is an intern at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, currently working on the word revirescere. Besides academics, she loves classical music, good arguments, running, and reading with friends.
Francisco Anania
Director of Marketing | Latin and Greek Teacher
Francisco Ananía began his academic journey in biomedical engineering in Buenos Aires before switching to Philosophy, where he discovered his passion for Greek and Latin. He trained for three years in a full immersion context at AVN, where he began his teaching practice using the active method, before voluntarily breaking off contacts. He holds a BA in Classics with a thesis entirely written in Latin on the oracular function of enigmas in Heraclitus. He also has an MA in Ancient Philosophy, focusing on Vegetarianism in antiquity and particularly on the arguments for the rationality of animals in Porphyry’s Περὶ ἀποχῆς, from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Sapienza Università di Roma. His main area of study is Animal Studies in Late Antiquity. At Oxford Latinitas, he teaches Latin and Ancient Greek and serves as Director of Marketing.
Pierre Gorsky-Mièze
Director of Innovation | Latin and Greek Teacher
Pierre Gorsky-Mièze has long been enamoured of Latin, which he has studied for over 14 years. After 3 years taking classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles, he spent 2 years in Italy learning and teaching using the direct method. He is passionate about spreading the knowledge of Classics, having been a member of the Human-Hist society for over 8 years and a co-founder of Schola Sorbonae, a society based in Paris and aiming to promote the studies of Latin and its culture. Pierre is currently studying for a master’s degree in Political Philosophy and Ethics at Lettres Sorbonne, where he is writing a thesis on the extent to which ethics should be taught at schools.
Cath Gulick
Chief Operating Officer | Latin Teacher
After leaving Oxford many years ago with a 2:1 in Classics and no prizes whatsoever, Cath stumbled on Oxford Latinitas in 2023 and thought, ‘Look at all these brilliant classicists I always wished I could be friends with at university.’ Upon learning that brilliant classicists are actually very friendly and kind, Cath began at OL as a student and couldn’t stop helping out until she was eventually named COO in 2024.
Cath brings 13 years’ experience running her own Latin and Greek teaching company in New York City, having taught hundreds of students one-to-one, in private classes, and in school classrooms. She is thrilled to be able to support talented students and teachers in bringing new life to ancient languages, and to finally call such brilliant people her colleagues.
Alongside her work in Classics, Cath also writes for comedian Zarna Garg and works as a film writer and director. Her second feature film is currently in development.
Oroel Marcuello Gil
Director of Greek Teaching | Latin and Greek Teacher
Oroel Marcuello Gil was born in Zaragoza, Spain. Spending a year in the Academia Vivarium novum (2017-18), he fell in love with classical languages and authors, especially Sophocles and Ovid. Wishing to preserve the humanistic spirit that he enjoyed there, he founded with a colleague a spoken-Latin group in Zaragoza University, with which he also organised two trips to the academy. He has also taught for OLP, especially Greek, he was a tutor in scholae aestivae 2020, and has collaborated with Cultura Clásica.
He loves education, linguistics, rock-climbing, music, and psychology. He plays cello and writes novels and poetry.
Iván Parga Ornelas
Director of Feedback Monitoring | Latin and Greek Teacher
Dr Iván Parga Ornelas is the Jagger Lecturer in Ancient Greek at Jesus College, Oxford. He holds a PhD in Renaissance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he wrote a thesis on the fifteenth-century Neo-Latin author Maffeo Vegio. Iván also completed an MA in Medieval Studies from the Complutense University of Madrid and a BA in Classics from the Università Salesiana in Rome. He started his studies in Latin and Greek at the Academia Vivarium Novum in 2009. Iván has been involved with Oxford Latinitas since its foundation. He teaches Latin and Greek at all levels and previously held the position of Deputy CEO.
Iván is interested in the enduring history of Latin language and literature beyond antiquity and his research deals mainly with Neo-Latin texts. He has recently been awarded the Society for Neo-Latin Studies Ann Moss Early Career Essay prize for his research in this field. Alongside his professional interest in Latin and Greek literature, Iván enjoys modern literature, mainly in Spanish, English and Italian. His favourite authors are Virgil, T.S Eliot and Jorge Luis Borges, not always in that order. He is also an avid movie watcher and cinemagoer.
Jan Preiss
Non-Executive Director | Chief Financial Officer
Jan Preiss grew up in Bohemia and is currently reading for his BA in Classics at New College, Oxford. He learnt Latin using the active method and, having experienced its effects first-hand, he is passionate about making it accessible to everyone. Jan is notorious in the Oxford Latinitas team for preferring Homer over Virgil and for being way too keen on all things technological. He has a long-standing interest in China and Chinese culture. He also likes philosophy, opera, and tennis.
Althea R. L. Sovani
Director of Scholarship
Althea R. L. Sovani is currently reading for an MPhil in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at Somerville College, University of Oxford. In the summer of 2022 she graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA in Classics with Sanskrit. For her final exams in 2022, she was awarded the Craven Prize, the Comparative Philology Prize, the Boden Prize and the Gaisford Undergraduate Essay Prize for her thesis on approaches to suppletion in the ancient Greek and Sanskrit grammatical traditions. In 2020 she also won the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin Prose, and in 2022 the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse. She comes from Italy, where she first learned Ancient Greek and Latin at the state school G. Berchet in Milan. While at school, she won national translation competitions from Ancient Greek. She is passionate about Indo European philology, grammaticalisation and periphrastic constructions. Nothing delights her more than enquiring into the origin of words and decoding grammatical structures. She loves Pseudo-Longinus, Marcus Aurelius and the Sanskrit philosopher-grammarian Bhartṛhari. Her role models are Pāṇini, Anna Morpurgo Davies and Benedetto Croce. Althea cannot bear the use of the term thing — except in philosophical discourse — and defends all words from maiming abbreviations, adjectives from superlatives, clauses from stylistic impoverishment and synonyms from oblivion.
Brian Lapsa is a D.Phil. student in Classics researching the late pagan and early Christian use of exempla for ethical formation. After a BA in History and German at the University of Virginia, he worked in marketing and translation, ultimately returning to academic life to read Philosophy (M.A., M.Phil.) at Leuven and Classics (B.A.) at Oxford. He has taught at the University of Leiden and is currently Assistant Researcher in Roman History at the University of Latvia. In 2018-19 Brian served as President of the Oxford Latinitas Society.
Krasimir Ivanov
Latin Teacher
Krasimir Ivanov comes from Bulgaria, where he studied at the National Classical Lyceum and later graduated in classical philology from Sofia University. For two years he attended the Accademia Vivarium Novum in Rome, where he became fluent in Latin. For the last three years, he has been participating in OL as a tutor, and he is currently teaching Active Latin classes at Jesus College, Oxford. His main interests are related to the Roman Republic, where he is looking for the reasons that ex pulcherruma atque optuma pessuma ac flagitiosissuma facta sit. He also loves agriculture, astronomy, and good tales, and enjoys studying ancient thought – from Homer and Cato to the monks of Mount Athos.
Cynthia Liu is a third year DPhil candidate at Jesus College writing her doctoral thesis on the role of mystery language and imagery in Greek and Roman poetry. Though she grew up with Ancient Greek and Latin, she only began speaking them when she joined the Oxford Latinitas Project in 2018 during her MSt at Brasenose College. Before coming to Oxford, Cynthia received her B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Baylor University in Classics and Linguistics. Along with reading and teaching Latin and Greek, she is passionate about music, dance, and food.
Matthias Erbacher
Latin and Greek Teacher
Born and educated in Germany, where he first became acquainted with Latin and Greek, Matthias fell in love with the Studia Humanitatis when he attended the Accademia Vivarium Novum in Frascati, Italy. He subsequently returned to Germany to study Latin, Greek, Italian, History, Philosophy and Education at the University of Munich, but discovered he had itchy feet, and so, like a latter-day Grand Tourist, he ‘left his country’s bounds and sweet felds’ to study at the University of Palermo, the University of Exeter and the Sorbonne Université in Paris and continues to seize every opportunity to study and work abroad. In 2023, Matthias graduated in Munich with a dissertation on Dante’s Divina Commedia, his favourite work ever written in the vernacular. Despite his affection for Dante, he is currently reading for his MSt in Latin and Greek languages and literature at the University of Oxford.
Though he loves the elegant Latin style of the Golden Age, and enjoys spamming people with endless emails and messages written in Ciceronian Latin, his greatest pleasure is reading humanist authors – especially Erasmus – to see how they adapted ancient morals to the issues of their time and transmitted the jewels of ancient literature to their pupils. Matthias started teaching Latin at the Summer Courses of the Accademia Vivarium Novum in 2019, taught twice at the Scholae Aestivae Bulgaricae and has been teaching Latin and Greek for Oxford Latinitas since 2022.
Alwaleed Alsaggaf
Latin Teacher
Alwaleed Alsaggaf was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and lived there until the age of 16 when he moved to London to pursue his studies. Having received his IB diploma in 2015, he went to Birkbeck, University of London to read philosophy, and graduated from there in 2019. After finishing his first year at Birkbeck, he went to study Latin and Greek at the Accademia Vivarium Novum in 2016-2017. Alwaleed is now an MA researcher in Ancient Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, where he also currently teaches a course entitled “Latin for Philosophers”. He previously worked as a teacher of Latin language and literature at Eton College for two years.
His main research interests are ancient philosophy and its reception in the Arabic and Latin world, as well as contemporary analytic philosophy. Alwaleed is also passionate about Latin composition and teaching philosophy in Latin.
Ayelet Wenger
Latin Teacher
Ayelet Wenger teaches the OLP introduction to spoken Latin and was the coordinator of Septimana Latina 2020. She spent two years studying classical rabbinic literature in Israel, received her B.A. in Classics, summa cum laude, from Princeton University, and is now pursuing a postgraduate career in Judaism and Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World. Her thesis analyzes Septuagintalisms in the Gospel of Luke. Ayelet loves backpacking and other forms of wandering, Derek Walcott, and frequentatives.
Finlay O’Duffin
Latin Teacher
Finlay O’Duffin is an independent Latin tutor and scholar serving as a non-executive committee member of the society. In Trinity Term of the OLP’s first year (2018) he developed and taught a weekly Schola Rhetorica in Latin on the basis of ancient progymnasmata. In 2016 and 2017 he taught at Vivarium’s summer schools, for which he also developed a Palaestra dicendi curriculum for practical oratory. His studies were in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (B.A., Jesus College, Cambridge); the Western Literary Tradition (M.A., Leuven, 2013); Latin and Greek (Vivarium Novum, 2013-14); and Law (LLB, London College of Law, 2018).
Diana Pont Puig
Greek Teacher
Diana Pont Puig (Valencia, Spain) received a BS in Classics from Universitat de València and a MA in High School education with a focus on Greek and Latin teaching from the same University. Then, she devoted herself to learning and teaching Ancient Greek as a living language. Since 2019, she has combined working in public high schools in Spain with teaching for Polis, Cultura Clásica, and other institutions that provide active language teaching in Greek.
In her free time, she loves to read Greek quietly or perform traditional activities of her land, such as playing Pilota Valenciana or doing human pyramids, called Muixeranga.
Jason Webber
Greek Teacher
Jason Webber is a researcher in ancient languages and literature, who became interested in spoken Latin (and subsequently ancient Greek) while studying Greek and Latin literature at Oxford. Jason now has extensive experience in teaching spoken Attic Greek at all levels from beginners to advanced, and is currently developing a new coursebook based on the Active Method.
Jason recently completed a doctoral degree in ancient Greek literature, on the topic of local traditions in early Greek epos, at Magdalen College, Oxford, England, and they are this year working on a new grammar of the Hesiodic poems (Theogony and Works and Days) at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
Beth Parker
Latin and Greek Teacher
Beth Parker is a student at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. Having studied Latin traditionally for seven years before discovering the Active Method at Oxford, she was quick to recognise the benefits and above all the huge amount of joy to be found in immersing oneself completely in ancient languages, which allows her to engage with ancient texts in a much more profound and enlightening way. Beth is passionate about linguistics, metre and ancient music; she leads music sessions at Oxford Latinitas with her lyre, and enjoys imitating the Ancient Greek method of musical composition. She is most likely to be found marvelling at the unparalleled beauty of Vergil’s Latin hexameters or lost in composing Latin poetry of her own – often simultaneously. In 2024 she received the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin verse composition. Beth is eager to share her love for the ancient world with anyone
and everyone.
Mark Tomov
Latin and Greek Teacher
Mark is currently a student at Pembroke College, Oxford, reading for a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Whilst studying Latin and Greek in the National Classical Lyceum in Bulgaria, Mark’s recently kindled passion for ancient languages led him to the Accademia Vivarium Novum, where he learned to experience Latin and Greek at an entirely different level by speaking them, which enabled him to comprehend ancient texts much more profoundly. His current interests involve the development of epic poetry, comparative Semitic linguistics, the reception of the Greco-Roman and the ancient Near Eastern worlds in the Arabo-Islamic cultural milieu and, in the realm of hobbies, playing the guitar. He believes that ancient texts should be studied so that their wisdom be reflected on and applied to solving current problems. Through them, he thinks, we can understand how people of different cultures and philosophical traditions have more in common than might be initially perceived.
Nicholas Romanos
Latin and Greek Teacher
Nicholas Romanos is a student of Classics and Sanskrit at Worcester College, University of Oxford. In 2023 he was awarded the highest mark in his year for Classics Mods, and also received the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin prose composition. Besides the literature of the ancients, among whom he naturally reveres Homer most of all, he has a particular interest in philosophy (especially Nietzsche and Wittgenstein) and comparative philology. The active method has led him to a deeper and more intuitive understanding of Latin and Greek texts, and he is delighted to have the opportunity to share this with others.
Everything was perfect. The teachers were very passionate and knowledgeable and they sing like angels! The location was amazing, the excursion was very interesting and the group was great!
Laura Liever
Latin Immersion Trip to Rome, December 2022
Beautiful, meaningful, magnifique.
Lucas Haddad Viera
Greek Immersion Trip, August 2022
Jason was a patient and very helpful teacher. The course was perfect for me. I found every day's class challenging yet not overwhelming. The reading material provided was interesting and very useful.
Greek Summer School (online), August 2021.
At Oxford Latinitas, there is a love affair between its teaching staff and the art of teaching classical humanities.
Carlos Amarante
Greek Autumn School (online), December 2024
Ayeleta is a great teacher and created a perfect productive atmosphere for the lessons. She was very supportive, she explained and repeated stuff as many times as it was necessary. This summer school was a wonderful time for learning. I enjoyed the programme and the style of the lessons. Of course, studying Latin in Latin is not that easy but it that was a great challenge. After that, you feel way more certain in your knowledge and start to understand the structure of a language way better.
Tetiana Akchurina
Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
Taking Latin through Oxford Latinitas has hands down been my best language learning experience. The curriculum is so well structured. Each lesson builds seamlessly on the previous such that it requires minimal effort to understand the new vocabulary and grammar. It doesn't feel like a struggle at all, more like a fun discovery! My instructor, Krasimir, is so knowledgeable and engaging. I wasn't sure that learning a language online would work as well as in-person instruction, but it was lively, fun, and personal. The small class size made it possible for everyone to practice and ask questions. I am so grateful Oxford Latinitas makes this available globally online! My class included people from all over the world and it was such a joy to be brought together by our passion for learning.
Allison Scott
Latin Spring School (online), April 2024
I feel like I have learnt more Latin during this term with Oxford Latinitas, then in a year of high school lessons. I wish the method used by Oxford Latinitas will be introduced in all schools. I have studied Latin many years ago with the traditional method and I was a little sceptic at first, but I am now so impressed by the results.
Stefania Boglioli
Latin and Greek Autumn School (online), December 2024
Aurelius was a great teacher, and thanks to him and his methods, I understood that ancient Greek grammar wasn't so difficult to learn. He explained with great clarity. … He's also very patient and he varied the sources so that we keep our motivation intact. lt was another great experience. I'm always amazed by OL teachers' proficiency. They're also very patient and encouraging.
Maeva Chardon
Ancient Greek Summer School (online), August 2021
«Women-only seminar» with Dr. Melinda Letts not only increased my understanding of the ancient authors, but also gave me the opportunity to discuss a number of important subjects (love, grief, consolation, hatred, and so on) with other great women. I was thrilled to be a part of our little team, to immerse myself in Latin studies, and to make contact with such wonderful women. I want to return to Oxford Latinitas to study in the future!
Polina Krupinina
Online Advanced Reading Seminar, April 2023
I can only thank Oxford Latinitas. I joined at the basic level, and now I am at Intermediate II. I can express myself, write, and speak in Latin, as well as read, and I am progressing towards the classics. None of this would have been possible without the help of the Oxford teachers. I owe this to you, and I will carry this gratitude with me forever.
Valdo Felipe dos Santos Arauj (Philippus Araujus)
Latin and Greek Autumn School (online), December 2024
I loved the course and felt that my speaking confidence had really improved by the end of the two weeks! … Thank you once again for all your efforts teaching us!
Ross Moncrieff
Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
After every lesson with Oxford Latinitas, I not only feel much more confident about speaking Latin, but I also become more interested in the language and its history. Pierre explains the grammar very well and encourages the students to discuss what we have read in Latin, something which has helped me to improve my speaking skills a lot.
Grace Greaves
Latin Spring School (online), April 2023
It is a daunting thing to start speaking any new language, let alone Classical Greek - but the sessions quickly became one of the highlights of my week. It felt more like a catch-up with friends than anything else – and, in addition to being more enjoyable than grinding through a grammar book, improved my Greek miraculously!
Sam Troy
Ancient Greek Spring School (online), April 2023
The classes were excellent: rigorous, informative, and challenging. I very much enjoyed the classes, and learnt a great deal, but I found them very challenging. … But the difficulties were outweighed by the benefits of the lessons – I cannot believe how much Cicero I read in a fortnight!
Advanced Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
The course has really helped me increase my knowledge of Latin and be unafraid to try and communicate with it. I think it has complemented my previous attempts to improve, using this natural approach and I completely recommend it.
Tim Rowlands
Latin Spring School (online), April 2024
Now I can say I love Latin.
Dessislava Tsvetkova
Online Summer Intensive, August 2021
I really liked the way Ivan taught us. The effort he made every time someone had a question so that we could fully understand was very helpful to us. He seems to love his job. The classes were very useful for me because I studied Latin for 2 years, but I didn't have the basics of the language, because I had missed it in the beginning and now I can say that I love Latin, because of the Summer Schools.
Dessislava Tsvetkova
Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
As a beginner I got a lot more out of the course than I had been expecting. I liked my teacher and the way he explained things in Latin. The fact that the teachers (organisers) spoke in Latin to each other was very inspiring.
Laura Livier
Latin Immersion Trip to Rome, December 2022
After learning Latin on my own for about a year I was starting to struggle but Ayelet's own enthusiasm for the subject seems to be infectious. This course boosted my motivation and turned out to be just what I needed. I felt stretched at times, as we covered a lot of material that was new to me, but getting to the end of the book now seems much more achievable! I am very pleased with the course.
Rob Coles
Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
I really enjoyed the class. Ayeleta challenged me to speak and go deeper into spoken Latin. I really appreciated her ability to gently challenge.
Grant Gombert
Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
I am a Catholic seminarian, and after studying Latin for a while using the grammatical method, I became capable of reading fluently some texts such as the Vulgate, the Summa Theologiae, etc. However, I was unable to write or speak in the language, nor could I read more complex texts without the aid of a dictionary. With a short time of exposure to the active method, through the classes at Oxford Latinitas, I have noticed incredible progress in this regard. I intend to continue my studies to the most advanced level, confident that I will achieve the expected proficiency. In Brazil, my country, I am doing what I can to share with fellow students the advantages of the active method and the excellence of teaching offered by the teachers at OL. I confidently advise everyone: if you want to learn the language with greater efficiency and speed, Oxford Latinitas is the way!
Vinícius Kauam Almeida da Silva
Latin Autumn School (online), December 2024
I recommend every classics student to try the active method of Oxford Latinitas, I can never say enough about how natural learning ancient Greek becomes for me, having no prior exposure to ancient Greek. I think not using the active method is exactly why Augustine says he never fully mastered ancient Greek, as it was probably taught to him in a dry handout, whereas Latin, spoken by him and his parents on a daily basis, comes more naturally for him.
Achos
Greek Autumn School (online), December 2024
Diana is such a wonderful teacher! She puts so much thought and effort into the classes to make sure they're interesting and fun. She is very encouraging and always makes the class a comfortable learning environment. I'd recommend her classes to everyone!
Astoria Zarazel
Latin Spring School (online), April 2024
The teaching, together with language, setting, and people, made this an experience of a lifetime.
Morgan Kelley
Greek Immersion Trip to Euboea, Greece, August 2022
Very engaging sessions, pitched at a challenging but accessible level; well-paced, very interesting selection of material; I learnt a great deal from Renatus' correction of errors and comments on the text, as well as the invaluable time spent on composition at the beginning of many of the lessons. Well organised and friendly; an excellent programme.
Advanced Latin Summer School (online), August 2021
This trip put a new face and energy into Latin, a subject I'd previously associated with stagnancy. Unforgettable experience.
Isabel De Silva
Latin Immersion Trip to Rome, December 2022
I will remember and cherish this experience for the rest of my life. Oxford Latinitas really went out of their way to teach us and make us feel comfortable the entire time.
Kaylie Chernotsky
Greek Immersion Trip, August 2022
I will be forever grateful to you for giving my daughter such an incredible experience in Italy. She has never been this happy, and the benefits will ripple long into her future... This adventure has made her fall in love with the Latin language and helped her confirm what she wants to do in life. All the teachers have taught and looked after the kids so amazingly well. Your care, organization and kindness were the best, more than I could have imagined.
Marina Rincato, Isabel's mother
Latin Immersion Trip to Rome, December 2022
I would highly recommend Oxford Latinitas to anyone interested in studying Latin or hoping to improve their Latin language skills. The active method is an amazing opportunity to connect with other learners as it brings 'dead' languages to life. Discussing literature and grammar with experts in real time has helped me so much with my Latin proficiency, and I look forward to continuing my journey with Oxford Latinitas into the future.
Esther Greaves
Greek Spring School (online), April 2024
Renatus showed extremely amiable as well as significantly demanding approach I surely enjoyed, engaging us in multiple philosophical and general conversations fully in Latin that were crucial for activating our grammar and vocabulary in speech to a higher extent. Moreover, I am eager to thank him specifically for his willingness to check, correct and improve our essays in order to clarify and amplify our writing skills.
Constantine Riabstev
Advanced Latin Summer School (online), August 2021