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Excerpt from The Foundations of Latin: Book for Beginners
Twenty years ago the beginner's Latin books published in this country followed the plan of an orderly development, first of the forms, and then of the syntax, of the language. Since that time a different practice has been inaugurated, and most books for beginners now present no connected and systematic development either of forms or of syntax. The conjugation of the verb, for example, is not given connectedly and continuously, but is variously dismembered and scattered throughout the book. So in the syntax the different constructions of a case or a mood are not presented in connection with each other, but are mutually detached and introduced one by one, here and there.
This plan has long seemed to me pedagogically unsound, and in practice I fear that it has not enabled us to realize the best results in our elementary Latin instruction. To me no principle of teaching seems more vital and fundamental than that of presenting together to the pupil those things that naturally belong together. This conviction is not merely founded in theory, but has been steadily forced upon me by actual experience. Hence it has appeared to me psychologically more natural in elementary Latin teaching to present in conjunction with each other the different declensions of nouns, the several conjugations of the verb, the various constructions of the accusative, the genitive, the ablative, etc. That these different categories which I have just enumerated do naturally belong together and have an organic connection seems to be recognized by the universal custom of so presenting them in our Latin grammars.
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