Beard's SPQR. A History of Ancient Rome as Background Reading in Classical Latin Courses. A Teaching Proposal

Contextual or background knowledge performs an important function in second language learning and reading comprehension, as a number of theoretical and empirical studies have shown (see, for instance, P. L. Carrell, 1983, 1982). To the extent that Ancient Greek and Latin are verbal codes too, they constitute no exception to the aforementioned principle. Indeed, contextual knowledge is particularly relevant to reading comprehension in Classical Languages, given the time, material, and cultural gap between their original context of use during antiquity, on the one hand, and the context of the contemporary learners of these languages, on the other. Addressing and integrating this type of knowledge into Classical Latin courses is, therefore, expected to aid student comprehension of both original and adapted classical texts.