Intensive Latin
Stage I · High School · Opens Winter Term
Intensive Latin is Oxford Latin's own hybrid method, at twice the pace. Both courses balance grammar-translation and the nature method in equal measure, drawn from the same Oxford Latin Course tradition. Where Oxford Latin unfolds over six terms, Intensive Latin covers the same complete grammatical system in three, using the course's College Edition, a genuinely more demanding text originally built for university students. The underlying course is an established one; the pace, the structure, and the rigor around it are mine.
How the Course Is Built
Intensive Latin runs three terms, Winter, Spring, and Trinity, moving through all thirty-one chapters of the Oxford Latin Course, College Edition. By the end, a student has covered the complete grammatical and syntactic system of classical Latin: every declension, every tense and mood, every major subordinate construction, the same destination Oxford Latin reaches in twice the time. In the course's final sessions, once the grammar itself is complete, several classes turn to authentic Latin poetry, read, translated, and analyzed directly, not the simplified narrative the earlier chapters use.
How a Session Runs
Each class opens with an oral round in the tradition of academic certamen, then a structured review of the chapter's grammar, then prepared construing: students translate the assigned narrative aloud, with questions on the forms and constructions as the story unfolds. Between sessions, expect three to five hours of preparation, considerably more than Oxford Latin asks for at its own pace. If something in that preparation is not landing, a student does not simply wait until the next class to ask about it. I record a short video made for that specific question, walking through the point directly, and students have told me for years that this changes what independent study actually feels like.
On Pace
We meet three times a week, for two hours each session, across three consecutive terms. This is Oxford Latin's own material, at twice its usual speed. Oxford Latin is already college-level coursework; Intensive Latin asks a student to move through that same college-level material in half the time. This is the fastest course Emerson Latin offers, and it is intense in more than name.
Where This Leads
A student who completes all three terms is ready for Foundational Latin Prose and Poetry, offered during the Summer Intensive, and from there, AP Latin Prose and Poetry that same fall: Saturdays for prose, Sundays for poetry, meeting once weekly through the May examination. Separate contest-prep courses run in the weeks before each competition, building directly on what is learned here.
On Credit and Standing
Emerson Latin operates on the Carnegie Unit standard used across American secondary education, and is a registered chapter sponsor of the National Latin Honor Society through the American Classical League. I am also pursuing accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). To date, every student who has needed to transfer high school credit for a course taken here has received it, based on our syllabus and transcript, at international schools across the Pacific.
One Honest Note
This is the fastest route through Stage I that Emerson Latin offers, and it asks a great deal up front: several hours of independent work on most days, and a student who is already motivated, conscientious, and reasonably practiced at managing his own study time before he starts. I do not recommend it as a default choice. I recommend it for the specific student who is ready for it.