New England Classical Journal

CLASSICAL COMPUTING

SCRIBA: A review

Software: Author John Gruber-Miller, Cornell College, 600 First St. West, Mt. Vernon, IA 52314, Fax: 319-895-4492. Internet: grubermiller@cornell-iowa.edu. 1995.

There is no need to be subtle: if you use the Oxford Latin Course, this software is a must. Because SCRIBA is available free (via anonymous ftp at cornell-iowa.edu in the SCRIBA subdirectory or on diskette for $5 from Prof. Gruber-Miller), you will also want to give it to any students who have DOS- based machines at home (SCRIBA runs on IBM-compatible computers with PC/MS-DOS 2.0 or higher; PC-DOS 3.0 is recommended.

Although a confessed technophile, I have high standards for computer- aided-instruction. There is little reason to use software to do anything which can be done more easily or more effectively without it. For that reason, I am regularly disappointed with programs which do little more than ask students to fill in declension charts or do anything merely rote-surely that is why the good Lord made lined paper. Good computer exercises should first of all be good exercises: interesting, varied, and active. SCRIBA scores high in each of these categories. A number of exercises are adapted from the textbook, but many more were created fresh by Prof. Gruber-Miller including a large mixture of English-to-Latin translation, Latin-to-English translation, cloze (fill in the blanks), put sentences in order, context-dependent questions, and reading comprehension.

I was familiar with the beta version of SCRIBA, which we have used optionally in our classes for two years, but for this review a student and I test drove the new Version 1.0. Very quickly I was hearing "I like that", as the student saw that the program highlighted the incorrect part of a response (paret for parat) or gave friendly feedback. In general, one of SCRIBA's strengths is its ability to anticipate student errors and provide hints that will lead to the correct answer (e.g. to the response ad magnos naves, the program replied "navis is feminine"). A typical hint, helpful both for suggesting vocabulary and word order, gives the first letter of each of the words in the Latin sentence to be produced. However, the feedback system is even more advanced: it will often send the student to the appropriate part of the program's brief on-line tutorial grammar. Correct responses are acknowledged with certe, recte, ita vero, etc. (quite a wide mix of positive and negative comments are used). Light-hearted comments sometimes also appear (e.g. to the correct response Scintilla laborat, the program replies quot.Who else would you expect to be working?").

Another sign of the extensive testing and development the program has undergone is its flexibility towards various correct responses. Nothing is more frustrating for a student than to have a correct response rejected. So in the fill-in-the-blank sentence Graeci nav__ ascendunt, I was pleased to see that both naves and navem were accepted. Like any matching programs it is sometimes unsatisfied by correct answers which are too long or too short, but the hint system helps greatly here and students can go also back and edit their previous answers rather than have to retype a full sentence.

The program is not just for students. Like any good pedagogue, it can also teach teachers how to teach, by demonstrating a variety of exercise types, giving guided feedback and using occasional Latin phrases in its communication. Let me give some examples of the creativity exhibited. At the beginning of the chapter on the genitive, one exercise asks students to identify the equivalent possessive phrase in a series of English sentences. Another genitive exercise requires students to show their knowledge of the story line by identifying characters (e.g. quis est Flaccus? (pater) expects the answer Flaccus est pater Quinti et Horatiae). In some drills, a student can choose the way to answer (e.g. to identify the infinitive cluster, to identify and translate into Latin, or just to translate into Latin). One type of exercise (very popular in the last century) gives students the words and asks them to supply the appropriate endings (e.g. Ubi/Iulia/mater/video,/laetus/est >> Ubi Iulia matrem videt, laeta est)-this models vocabulary and word order for students while focusing on morphology. Word order itself is given attention in a drill like 8.4 which asks the user to unscramble a Latin sentence (this actually proved a bit hard for my test user, perhaps because he had not studied the program's tutorial on the subject first). Since the program is available at marginal cost, I would recommend it to Latin teachers who do not use the OLC just as a stimulus for possible exercise types. It is not surprising that Prof. Gruber-Miller has recently edited a book on teaching methods for Latin and Greek.

The reading comprehensions are equally diverse. In addition to questions in English or Latin (with answers expected in the same language), exercises variously ask students to fill in appropriate pronouns, correct forms of adjectives, or even particles (e.g. the student is asked to choose among enim, igitur, and tamen the connective to be inserted in various sentences in the paragraph). Exercise 9.5 asks student to rewrite Aeneas' story from the Greek viewpoint by changing highlighted words (e.g. Graeci Troiam oppugnant should become nos Troiam oppugnamus)-this gives a workout on pronouns and verbs while also reinforcing the story line. In chapter 10, students are given 12 sentences and asked to rearrange them into a coherent story of Aeneas' visit to Sicily-this offers a good workout but might be easier mechanically if it were limited to 6 or 8 sentences. Although most comprehension exercises operate directly with Latin forms, some call for explicit grammatical identification, e.g. "what words in the paragraph reinforce the use of the imperfect?" or "what sentence describes an emotional state?".

Vocabulary flashcards are a popular program for classes and they are conveniently incorporated into SCRIBA. You can choose to have words selected from individual chapters or groups of chapters, and you can choose the depth of sampling (choice of 10, 20, or 30 words from these lists). The program can go from Latin to English or vice versa. Although exercises are only included for Part I (the first book) of the OLC, the vocabulary for Part II is also available.

SCRIBA is a program which takes its textbook seriously. Students are expected to know the book's characters and stories and are accordingly given some challenging reading comprehension questions. Some activities are even phrased in the context of the Oxford narrative, as for example when we are asked to correct the mistakes made by Quintus' dull-witted classmate Decimus.

Easy to use, with imaginative exercises and sophisticated feedback, SCRIBA has no major problems that I have noticed. Almost every mistake we made had been anticipated and an appropriate reply was provided. Students and teachers alike will appreciate the summary of correct and incorrect responses calculated at the end of each drill. A special feature is an on-line index to the subject matter of exercises, so that a student who needs more third-declension practice can easily see where to get it. This also allows a teacher or student using another book to choose appropriate exercises for extra drill. As a Macintosh user, I have a certain discomfort with SCRIBA from being forced into a cursor-only world, but a number of helpful function keys are available (and explained in the opening tutorial). A Windows version is expected to be available this winter.