Each point is carefully explained and followed by five Latin sentences to be translated into English and five English sentences to be put into Latin (except at the very end, where remote/closed conditions in indirect statement are evidently judged too difficult for the latter exercise). Finally there is a reference section including a summary of all constructions, a comprehensive grammar, and a general vocabulary of about 1200 Latin words. P. 163: “the ablative is … a bit of a ragbag”: it might be helpful to point out that it is an amalgamation of three Indo-European cases.

The passages are all well chosen for their interest, as are most of the other passages in the book; the difficulty of choosing passages (especially unseens) that combine interest with an appropriate level of linguistic difficulty should not be underestimated. At A2, the ‘tasks’ of prose unseen, verse unseen and prose comprehension have been separated out, and the prose passages drawn from a wider selection of authors than in the original edition. Big minus is the layout of the grammar sections: in both Chapters 1 and 2, and in the reference grammar section, it is difficult to find what one wants, or more generally to find one's way around. Classical Latin is more of a mosaic than a monolith, and interacting with, not discrete from, other varieties and registers.This is the old crossword-puzzle approach and can be made to work as a pencil-and-paper exercise: in addition students can be told to identify as short a vowel followed by another vowel in the same word and not forming a diphthong. P. xii: Elision is defined as the “process by which the final vowel or syllable of a word is in effect knocked off”: in fact it is only the vowel which is knocked off (together with nasalizing m) leaving any preceding consonant intact. Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies. Grammatical explanations are a sort of updated (but not updated enough) Kennedy - still a little prolix (what's with the notes-within-notes in 8pt?

The next sections provide translation and comprehension passages at AS and A-level, including verse unseens, scansion, and a list of 300 common poetic words. The prescribed list of accidence and syntax is in fact the same at both levels, though A2 “requires understanding of more complex structures”. The next section introduces the translation and scansion of verse, and includes passages for unseen translation and comprehension at A2 standard in both prose and verse. The purpose of these is presumably to provide extra reading for students in addition to the set books that they are studying.

I started a Classics degree from scratch at 18 after having never studied it in my life and this made it so simple. Useful easy practice sentences followed by unseen passages which become progressively longer and more challenging as the students progress.

This new edition is brought in line with the new OCR specifications and benefits from a completely redesigned layout, with added colour and images. As a mature learner I needed something to get me from GCSE level (or O-level in my case) to a more advanced stage. The Section B (Cicero) passages, divided into (i) lightly adapted passages (5) and (ii) shorter unadapted extracts (10), have only 5-7 lines of Latin. But the goal must be for students to start at the beginning of the line and do the scansion (in their heads, eventually) as they proceed, which is entirely possible if they (i) know the scheme of the meter, (ii) are able to distinguish open and closed syllables and are aware that the latter are long, and (iii) can trust their pronunciation (most of the time) to identify vowels in open syllables as long or short. The standardisation of the language that resulted in Classical Latin covered a period of some 300 years.

Latin Beyond GCSE' covers all the linguistic requirements for the OCR AS-level in Latin, and the grammar for A2. He is an experienced examiner of Ancient Greek and the author of many widely used Bloomsbury textbooks including Latin to GCSE (with Henry Cullen, 2016), Essential GCSE Latin (2nd edition, 2014), Greek Beyond GCSE (2nd edition, 2017) and Greek to GCSE (2nd edition, 2016). A well designed guide to Latin after GCSE with lots of exercises; Latin into English and English into Latin. The distinction between factual and imaginary concessive clauses needs to be made more clearly, and quamvis does not introduce a type of conditional clause, unlike et(iam) si and tametsi (the clue is in the ‘si’).

The only one that came anywhere near this was Latin As Literature by Anthony Verity, long out of print and too advanced in any case for present-day Advanced students. I wonder if the standard of difficulty is a little uneven too - some of the AS Cicero passages seem to contain quite a few A-Level 'problems'. It indicates purpose or fitness (the latter was perhaps its original meaning) in certain uses of gerundival attraction, e. Latin Beyond GCSE covers all the linguistic requirements for the OCR AS-level in Latin, and the grammar for A2.It is important to note that it is concerned only with language requirements; the prescription at both AS and A2 level also includes the study of prose and verse set texts. Although designed as a continuation of Latin to GCSE , it is self-contained and can be used independently. Am not sure about all the negative things said about this seller by other people,,, because my experience was completely different, totally positive. There is more generous spacing, more helpful use of colour, and the exercises are in ‘boxes’ which allow them to stand out from the text. Since this review is written principally for readers familiar with the first edition, I shall not rehearse here those of its contents that have been retained; and nothing of consequence has been removed.