New Latin and Greek GCSE set texts

Thanks to David Carter for finding and sharing the OCR set texts for GCSE Latin and Greek. The use of a new OCR Anthology to be published by OUP looks like the quid pro quo for OUP paying to be the partner publisher to OCR.

OCR have just released the new GCSE Latin and Greek for 2009.

As last time, the set texts are buried away deep in the detailed specifications, so I’ve listed the Latin ones at the bottom of the homepage on my website www.classicalworkbooks.com

Briefly, for verse literature they’ve kept Virgil Book VI, now with 135 lines instead of 175.  However they’ve scrapped the Nisus and Euryalus/Amor CLA selections after only one year and replaced it with a dreary piece from Ovid’s Tristia as he packs up his bags to go off into exile.  Disappointing.

For prose they’ve kept CLA Druids and Boudicca, but scrapped Pliny Vesuvius and replaced it with selections from Cicero Pro Cluentio and Tacitus Annals XII (poisoning of Claudius).  It sounds forbidding but in fact the Pro Cluentio is rather good (mother of the bride gets the hots for the bridegroom – good News of the World stuff).

Both the Ovid Tristia and the Pro Cluentio/Annals XII are prescribed from a new book called the OCR Latin Anthology published by Oxford University Press, but I can’t find any details about it even on the OUP website.

Regards

David

Set texts for AS Latin 2009

Message from David Carter. From what I have seen of David’s books, they are well worth buying.

Set texts for AS Latin 2009

I saw you recently referred to the Bolchazzy Carducci In Catilinam I which is one of the texts set this year for AS Latin.   Perhaps you could also draw attention to my own version of In Catilinam I in the Classical Workbooks series (www.classicalworkbooks.com)?

 We’ve only been going since 2006, but already one student in every three taking AS Latin in 2009 is doing it with a Classical Workbook, and the other two aren’t using one because they don’t know that these workbooks exist*.

 Perhaps you might also mention the poetry workbook, Ovid Metamorphoses VIII.  This is much more relevant to the needs of the AS student than the the Hollis version recommended by OCR (which is aimed at scholars and undergraduates). It also costs less than half the price.