Last week I examined style questions in the set text examination, including the 8-mark question. Such questions are without doubt the most challenging element of the literature exam. The 10-marker, by contrast is remarkably easy, yet students – if not given specific guidance and a good deal of practice – tend not to score as highly as they could.
It took me a while to realise that students needed a good deal more preparation for this element of the exam than I had been giving them. At first I assumed that because the question seemed so straightforward, I only had to tell students what to do and they’d smash it out of the park. The reality, of course, is that students actually need a great deal of modelling as well as practice before they can achieve top marks in any extended answer. The process is definitely worth it, not least because this question is worth a whopping 20% of the student’s performance in that paper.
A key thing to remember about the 10-mark question is that the examiner is using it to test the student’s knowledge of the whole prescription, going beyond the small handful of passages that can be included on the paper. This means that – in order to score highly – students must reference the whole prescription. Students should quote the text in English translation (not in Latin – this will only waste their time and risk errors). Students do not (of course) have to quote the translation word for word – how would this be possible when the examiner will not be privy to the particular translation that they or their teacher has produced? Rather, a clear reference to the text is enough: the rule of thumb is that if the examiner can recognise the line or lines of the text being referred to then it counts as a reference. For example, from Sagae Thessalae I might mention the moment when the weasel appears and stares Thelyphron straight in the eye; this is not a quotation from the text but it will be very clear to the examiner which section of the text I am referring to.
Students need to make as many such references to the text as they can for their answer to qualify as “wide-ranging” enough for a high mark. They should make sure to quote from the beginning, the middle and the end of the text for the same reason – answers that focus on just one part of the text will be capped. Other than that, so long as they write in paragraphs and address the question, the process is very simple.
Below is a video from my YouTube channel in which I explore the 10-mark question in detail:
It is crucial to get students to practise this style of question from early on and the process of doing so can be a really useful way of reminding them that they should be revisiting sections of the text that they have already learned. My methodology in recent years has been to include a question of this style at the end of every test I give them; in the early stages, when they have only learned one or two sections, I might make it worth fewer marks, but I still train them in the process of how to approach this kind of question. As they progress further through the text the questions can become full 10-markers. This method has worked really well and has enabled students to practise until they find the process as straightforward as it should be – there really is nothing difficult about this kind of question, but it’s amazing how many good students miss out on the marks because they’re not sure what’s required of them.
Like with the style questions, it will be necessary to remind students not to use the same approach as they have been prepared for in their English literature examinations; they are not expected to explore individual quotations in detail (arguably, what would be the point of doing this in translation anyway?) and they should remember that the examiner’s goal is to check their knowledge and understanding of the text as a whole. In addition, it is also crucial to keep reminding them that the examiner is looking for volume – he cannot reward an answer that gives only three or four textual references that are explored in detail, no matter how well-argued the answer is: he needs evidence that the student knows the whole of the text and knows it really well.
More than one examiner has expressed frustration that they are sometimes presented with highly intelligent and extremely well-argued answers that they cannot reward with a top-band mark because the student’s answer does not fit the mark scheme. This is, of course, the eternal problem with examinations at this level, and the only way to give our students the best fighting chance of success is to inform ourselves by reading the examiners’ reports and attending the training sessions put on by OCR or by Keynote, whose courses are run by examiners – sometimes the Chief Examiner – and which I have found invaluable in the past. I would also highly recommend to any teacher that they apply at least once to be a professional marker, as the best way to have a mark scheme properly demystified for you is to attend the training laid on for the examiners themselves.
The questions that students struggle with the most in the OCR literature examinations are the style questions. In each literature examination, students will face a variety of short-answer questions that focus on style. Most challengingly, they will need to answer an 8-mark question on one selected passage, which will direct them to “refer to the Latin and discuss a range of stylistic features such as choice, sound and position of words.” By “refer to the Latin” the examiner means that they must quote it in their answer – it might seem strange to labour that point but students don’t always understand that this is actually what it means. In addition, it is important for the examiner to have evidence that the student understands the meaning of the word or words that they have quoted, so including a translation in brackets afterwards is a useful habit for them to develop.
One of the reasons that students struggle with style questions is – in my opinion – an excessive reluctance to develop their own response to the text and an over-zealous reliance on style notes provided by the teacher. For this reason, I radically changed my approach. In recent years, I have resisted all pleas to provide printed, written style notes to students. There are many reasons for this and none of them relate to workload; style notes are actually pretty easy to churn out and many teachers (including myself in the past) have always used them as a simple solution to ensuring that students have everything they need to prepare for the examination. Printed style notes can form a kind of security blanket both for us and for them – we feel we’ve given them every possible detail, they feel like they’ve got the information at their fingertips. But have they really got what they need?
In my experience, printed style notes are used poorly and students can often have a very limited understanding of the contents within them. Furthermore, they are nigh-on impossible to learn off by heart. This statement may surprise followers who are aware of my recommendation that GCSE students do learn the translation of the set text off by heart and it is true to say that I am a huge fan of learning by rote in the right context. Learning things off by heart – so long as you use the right techniques – is something any student can do, and it can provide them with a huge sense of advantage in the examination. However, whilst this process is easily done for the translation of a text using the first-letter technique and electronic flashcards (for advice on this see a previous blog post), it is a Sisyphean task to learn all the style notes. Whilst it’s what students say they want to do, in reality I’ve never had a student manage it successfully; there is simply too much material of too abstract a nature, so I do not believe that rote-learning is the best approach in this instance.
So what do I do instead? Well, I model the process of looking at a passage of Latin (one which they have already learned) and finding something to say off the top of my head. I then make students do this themselves on a regular basis, to mimic the kind of situation in which they will find themselves in the examination. Not only does this put the onus on them to be taking notes as they prepare and practise, it makes them much better prepared for the same process at A level.
It is worth remembering that students at GCSE level do not need to know a single piece of stylistic terminology in order to get top marks in the literature examination. Personally, I quite like technical terms, but a lot of students are put off by words like metonymy and polyptoton. I do teach them the terms as I go but I reassure them again and again that recalling the definitions of those terms and regurgitating them in the examination is not necessary – for this reason, again, I have stopped printing off a lexicon of stylistic terms, which some students find nothing but intimidating. Instead of this, I teach them some basic principles of things to look out for, using a ludicrously straightforward acronym: MRS VP:
Meaning Repetition Sound Vivid (historic) present Position
Below is a video from my YouTube channel detailing what I mean by these different terms and how they can be applied to the 8-mark question in the OCR examination:
The advice in the video is based on more than one training course I have been to, at which examiners explained how the 8-mark questions are judged. Equally challenging are the shorter-answer style questions, which often demand the same kind of quality points; however, these do specify clearly how many points are required and much of a student’s answer can be based on the meaning of the Latin in front of them, so long as they say something insightful about it.
Teaching students the MRS VP acronym is the first step. You then need to model the process for them by putting a passage of the text up onto the board using a projector or a visualiser and showing them how to use those basic principles to find things to say. I usually make it clear to students that I have not “prepared” the passage beforehand, i.e. that I am relying on my skills to think of things to say on the spot – this is, after all, what they will have to do in the examination. Likewise, I teach them other simple tricks such as running their finger down the first word in every line of a piece of verse and considering whether they could say something about it – an immediate guaranteed style point because it will focus on the position of words.
I have found these kinds of methods much more effective in the long-term and I cling to the fact that this part of the examination requires students to have developed some skills rather than acquired lots of knowledge: let’s face it, there is quite enough content in the literature examination that relies on rote-learning and we really don’t need to add to it.
A final point that few teachers realise is that it is extremely important to acknowledge to students that the way they must write about literature in their Latin examination will differ from how they are being trained to write about it in their English lessons. I am at a slight advantage here having taught English up to GCSE level for several years during my career. In my experience, it is important to teach them explicitly not to mention punctuation, which they will be in the habit of remarking upon in their English literature, especially in the process of studying modern poetry. However, this is not the only area of caution. In English literature, students are taught to “say a lot about a little” – in other words, to unpack and explore each individual quotation in enormous detail before moving on to the next one. In the Latin examination, by contrast, the examiner is looking for volume, so students really don’t need to explore the quotation in anything like as much depth: quote the Latin, tell the examiner what it means, say something reasonably intelligent about it (e.g. the verb is promoted to the beginning of the line and in the historic present, making its meaning vivid) then move on. Latin examiners may believe that they are asking students to write “in depth” but the reality is that they are not required to develop their ideas in the same level of detail as they need to in order to gain top marks in an English literature examination; this seems only right and fair given that they are being tested on similar skills but applying them to a text in an ancient language rather than their own.
Like most difficult questions, there is no straightforward answer to this. The variety of books now available to support and supplement the learning of Latin is quite remarkable, but very few of them are suitable for independent learners; many of the text books available are designed for use in schools, which makes them somewhat challenging for an independent learner to follow. But do not despair, there are courses out there and support is available for those studying alone or working with a Latin tutor.
The more traditional grammar and translation methodologies used by Latin teachers have been attacked for decades since the progressive movement in education decided that everything that smacked of The Old Days was A Bad Idea. However, if the main goal of learning Latin is to be able to translate the texts that the Romans wrote (and I fail to see why else one would bother!) then I’m afraid you need to learn how to do it. I’m sorry if that comes as a shock to anybody. For this reason I am not a big fan of the so-called “reading courses” which, far from being a course in anything, rather expect grammar to be learned through some kind of magical osmotic process. If you want a Latin tutor that pretends the grammar doesn’t exist in the interests of making the subject somehow more appealing in unspecified ways, then I’m not the one for you! Latin is hard, and shying away from the grammar is doing children a grave disservice in my opinion; you may fool them into thinking that it’s nothing but colourful stories for a while, but if that’s your only plan for winning them over then they’re going to be seriously upset with you when they get to the ablative absolute. Plus, I’ll let you into a little secret: children aren’t only motivated by fun: they are also motivated by challenge, so long as they are given the tools to succeed. I have taken numerous students from loathing to love, simply by demystifying the grammar for them. Give them the tools and they will fly.
Anyway, I digress. Below I take an (admittedly irreverent) look at the Latin text books most commonly used as core text books for Latin teaching in schools, including the most recent additions to the canon; but for our review to be complete, we need to start right back in the 1970s …
The oldest of the “new style” progressive Latin text books and the one that everyone’s heard of. If I had a £1 for everyone who has asked me whether Caecilius is still in horto I’d be a wealthy woman. Why is it so popular? There is something magical about the first book and even I can’t quite explain it. For some reason, the students just love Caecilius. Who knew that a middle-aged white banker could inspire such joy amongst the youth of today? But somehow he does, and there is the problem (or one of them at least); the students never really get over the loss of Caecilius at the end of Book 1 and they lose interest and heart from the second book onwards.
In the latter half of my career as a Latin teacher in schools I tackled this head-on, writing more stories about Quintus, the son who survives the eruption and carries the narrative forward; this approach meant that students were more invested in the character of Quintus and felt the loss of Caecilius less keenly. In the original version of Book 1, Quintus plays a very limited role and in one famous scene, which I decided to delete, he punches a dog! (Yes, really! Not the way to win the kids over, in my experience). So I invented a whole new storyline in which Quintus falls in love and tries to elope with the household slave-girl Melissa, but then loses her in the chaos during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. I then spun out the story of Quintus grieving her loss and ultimately finding her again as a replacement to the thoroughly tiresome stories in Book 2, all of which I ditched.
Aside from the fact that the books decline in their ability to hold students’ interest, the Cambridge Latin Course also falls down on the grammar, as pretty much everyone who isn’t invested in the publications will now admit. All Latin teachers who use this course supplement the grammatical content to a greater or lesser extent, and who hasn’t been frustrated by the fact that many of the chapters introduce a new grammatical concept and then give a load of exercises about something completely different? It truly is weird. I took my grammarisation campaign much further in later years, re-writing the stories I still used to remove all the personal pronouns (which forced students to focus on the verb ending, an essential skill in Latin translation) and replacing some of the more bizarre vocabulary choices with selections from the OCR GCSE list. By the time I’d finished with the course it was something completely different: a grammar course with the characters of the Cambridge Latin Course as a backdrop.
While the Cambridge Latin Course has started so many students off on their love-affair with Latin, it was never enough to carry them all the way to GCSE and beyond without some serious supplementation on the part of the teacher. If I were starting my career again as a classroom teacher, I’m not sure I would choose it. The much-awaited 5th edition is being launched as we speak, in which the authors have addressed the lack of strong female characters (Quintus gains a sister) and also the pervasive narrative of the “contented slave”, which without question dates the series, as does the fact that all the female characters tend to fall into the stereotypes observable in 1970s situation comedy: pretty girls and nagging wives.
It seems that vanishingly few schools use this series now, although it appears to have some popularity as a homeschooling text in the US. Ecce Romani was another reading course designed in the 1970s but just like the Cambridge Latin Course it has been updated in terms of appearance (less so in terms of content). I have tutored only one boy whose school is still working with this series and he hated it (although I suspect he would have hated it whatever the teacher had chosen!) One thing to be said for Ecce Romani is that – unlike its rival – it did a much better job of portraying female characters with prominence from the beginning, something that the Cambrigde Latin Course is only just addressing now in its 5th edition: this is pretty poor given that the 4th edition came out in 1998: not exactly the #metoo era, but not exactly the dark ages either.
The Oxford Latin Course was published, I am told, as a direct answer to the problems with the Cambridge Latin Course, yet I fail to see how it addressed any of them. Do any Latin teachers use this course any more? Genuine question, as I have not heard of a Classics department that does so for some time. I did my second training placement at Brentwood School in Essex and that was my sole exposure to the text book, which they used with their KS3 and KS4 students. The Oxford Latin Course was at the time (and we’re talking more than 20 years ago now) the less commonly-used but well-respected alternative to theCambridge seriesas a Latin reading course. Generally it was considered to be a little more challenging and robust on the grammar and certainly it introduced concepts such as 3rd person verbs without a subject much sooner than the Cambridge Latin Course; it also included some mythological stories, which the students enjoyed. Yet as an “answer” to the problems in the CLC? No. There is still too much expected on the part of the student, no clarity of exposition and very, very little repetition: this is the main problem with all the so-called “modern” reading courses – they consistently fail to grasp that the only route to full understanding is repetitive practice.
Still, it might seem a little puzzling why the Oxford Latin Course never really took off to the same extent; my suspicion is that it simply wasn’t as obviously engaging as the first book of the Cambridge Latin Course, and – for better or for worse – engaging is what teachers were looking for in the 1980s. As the CLC surged in dominance throughout the 1980s and 1990s, schools that had invested in the OLC must have felt like they’d been the ones to buy a Betamax instead of a VHS.
Suburani was heralded as the Cambridge Latin Course for the 21st century and it certainly continues in the fine tradition of the CLC in making the grammar thoroughly obscure. My heart sank when I first opened the book and found it repeated exactly the same mistakes, not least the immediate introduction of a plethora of declensions and conjugations right from the outest, sending all students into guaranteed cognitive overload when it comes to morphology. Likewise the introduction of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person but with no grammatical terminology used (why not?) plus the consistent use of the pronouns ego, tu, nos and vos in translation passages, meaning that students will fail to focus on the verb ending and will never develop the habit of examining the verb first. Talk about setting them up to fail. Add to this the constant use of prepositional phrases, with the ablative case completely unexplained and ignored, and this is simply the CLC with all its mistakes on auto-repeat. So why have some schools bought into it with alacrity? Well …
Suburani was a brave attempt at producing a Latin text book that would satisfy teachers who crave a richer and more diverse reflection of Roman society, with women working (not just sitting in the atrium), the realities of urban life (dangerous yet expensive rooms in insulae, beggars in the street, chatting in the latrina) and society as a whole being a little bit less middle-aged white banker territory. I applaud the sentiment and there is much that I think is genuinely laudable, for example the focus on the slaves who worked in the heat and the dark below ground to run the public baths; the slave labour that produced and maintained the apparent “wonders” of Roman invention is something I have always endeavoured to remind students of.
Yet one quick search for reviews of Suburani throws up plenty of people keen to tell them that they’ve got it all shockingly and offensively wrong again; such is the issue with marketing yourself as the go-to choice for people who crave diversity and universal representation in all things – they’re pretty hard to please. (This blog is my personal favourite of all the reviews that address how apparently “problematic” Suburani remains).
My reaction to Suburani is I like it as an attempt to reflect Roman society more honestly. I have no personal experience of using it as a classroom text book but have worked with several tutees who are using it in their schools: they’re all at sea with the grammar, which is why they need my help. Quod erat demonstrandum.
There was much to recommend this Latin text book when it came out and I seriously considered switching to it as a classroom teacher. Latin grammar is tackled in methodical detail and the text book is supplemented with a far more comprehensive range of grammatical exercises, reducing teacher workload for sure and certainly going some way to address the lack of repetition, which is a consistent fault in all of the courses above. Translation is promoted from the outset and students are explicitly taught dictionary skills. When it comes to engagement, there is considerable focus on gods and goddesses, a subject hugely popular with youngsters and strangely not exploited in full by other modern courses. The layout is also much less cluttered than that of Suburani, which has come under fire for its chaotic appearance.
However (I bet you knew there was a however coming) there are a couple of reasons why this much-heralded new text book with a more robust approach to grammar didn’t quite win me over. I felt that the decision to introduce the perfect tense before anything else was a mistake in a book that claimed to have grammar at its heart and I really couldn’t get past that. In addition, I don’t know if every single Year 9 class in every school other than mine has children that are infinitely more mature than the ones I have taught over the last 21 years, but for me the “willy count” was simply way too high for my Year 9 students to cope with: yes, yes I know that most classical representations of the male form were full-frontal, but really: I simply couldn’t bear the thought of the inevitable sniggering, I’m afraid.
Latin to GCSE (by Henry Cullen and John Taylor) (first published 2016)
Now this is a serious tome and my goodness me the tutees I have worked with that are using this course at KS3 are challenged. In terms of its focus on grammar and detailed unpicking of morphology and syntax, this course is by far the most robust that I have found that is aimed at the secondary sector. It is also the first of its kind in that this text book is co-written by the Chief Examiner for GCSE (John Taylor) and ratified by OCR. It focuses on the vocabulary contained on the OCR vocabulary list and forms a guide to the grammar that students need to know at GCSE level. It is followed up by the equally excellent Latin Beyond GCSE by John Taylor, designed to take students onto AS and then level.
The Taylor and Cullen books are suitable for independent Latin learners as the authors provide extensive explanations as well as vast amounts of practice. Furthermore, you can create a login to the Bloomsbury website and obtain access to the authors’ own translations and answers, which makes it entirely suitable for independent learners and homeschooled students. I have found numerous errors in the ones posted for the Latin Beyond GCSE – unfortunately, I had got too far through before I realised that there were enough that I should have been writing them down to let the author know, and then I simply couldn’t face going back to find them all again – maybe I’ll find the energy in the summer.
The Taylor and Cullen books are used by schools with the curriculum time to take students through the morphology of Latin in rigorous detail (and boy do I envy them that!) They also have the advantage of being tailored specifically to the examinations (whereas other courses encourage students to waste a considerable amount of time learning vocabulary that will not be relevant at GCSE or A level). The very fact that this is so unusual indicates the disadvantage that our subject has been placed in compared to others – can you imagine teaching a mainstream subject without access to text books that are ratified by the examination board? Advantages aside, the only markers against these text books is that they are pretty weighty and unforgiving monsters and I can understand why students used to big glossy pictures in their text books might find them a little daunting.
I have recommended this series of books by NNR Oulton to students in the past who want a user-friendly way to revise the basics. Okay, the jokes are a little cheesy but the author voice coming through is quite nice when you’re working alone, as you feel he is cheering you on. The author also drops in little snippets of useful “did you knows” that can demystify some of the Latin phrases that most people are vaguely aware of. The author’s style may not appeal to all as he is robustly open about his desire to tackle “properly difficult grammar”, so the books may not be reassuring to a student who is already anxious or struggling; for an adult, or for a confident child who wants to develop their understanding, the tone is ideal.
Although ostensibly aimed at prep-school students and hence dominated by the vocabulary used at Levels 1-3 and Scholarship, the course makes some strange decisions about what grammar to prioritise in the early stages, for example introducing students to the historic present quite early on; that said, the historic present is pretty common in Latin, so well done to him for not letting a syllabus totally dominate his methodology, I guess. Again, access to the answers is made available, another advantage for independent learners and making it entirely more suitable for those purposes than the course books commonly used in secondary schools. The series is also supported by the author’s own YouTube channel.
Other prep school courses
My shift into private tutoring has been an education in terms of text book usage as well as a revelation in discovering what prep schools were demanding of the youngest of students. Having worked in the state sector all my life, I was used to teaching students who were ab initio at the age of 11. My teaching of the grammar has also been hampered at the state comprehensive I worked in by limited time and a two-week timetable; there were times when, due to poor timetabling and a Bank Holiday Monday, I might not see my Year 7 students for almost a month. Working with prep school students who were already being asked to tackle grammar concepts I was not teaching to my students until year 10 made me question everything I was doing and encouraged me to rip up the rule book. It also exposed me to the variety of course books used in prep schools – far from being stagnant, this is another area where things are changing fast.
The text books by RC Bass have formed the backbone for prep school teaching for years and the majority of students I have tutored in the prep school system come to me waving a copy of this course, in one of its many manifestations. The course has been revamped and republished several times and, like any good course in the modern era, comes with answer keys to support the independent learner. Bass switches regularly between Latin to English and English to Latin and his books contain meticulous detail and explanation. He approaches the grammar far more methodically than any of the courses aimed at secondary schools, introducing students to the morphology as well as the grammatical constructs. Some find his approach old-fashioned and bemoan the lack of pictures but frankly I was a convert from my first exposure. Yet Bass is not the only option available to teachers in the prep school system.
These workbooks were created by a teacher who says she wanted to combine the rigour of traditional prep school grammar teaching with the engagement brought by story-based reading courses such as the Cambridge Latin Course. Students follow the stories through the eyes of some fictional fellow classmates who are transported back in time (but who also need to keep up their Latin studies – of course!) The course is produced as a series of workbooks, which is something being trialled in state secondary schools all over the country. I moved towards a booklet format for my Year 10s at GCSE level and I would never go back; the format provides students with a comprehensive learning guide that they can look back on and it is also outstanding for homework and cover work, a fundamental practicality that always needs to be considered; it must have been a godsend in lockdown too. The course has much to recommend it, with a good deal of practice exercises on morphology. I particularly like the way it frequently switches between translating from English-Latin to Latin-English.
The author offers an “express” course for schools that are more pressed for time. She does not, however, offer an answer key, so the course could not be used by independent learners or home-schoolers without the regular support of a tutor. She says that this remains a project for the future, so watch this space!
Written explicitly for the recently-refreshed Common Entrance course by one of its creators and examiners, Clarke’s Latin is quite frankly a revelation. My overriding criticism that applies to every single one of the courses above is that there simply isn’t enough practice included at each stage for students to achieve mastery or indeed anything like it. The funny thing is that all the authors must know this – they’re all teachers themselves, so they all understand that mastery is only achieved by repetition; in the classrom, they’re all no doubt supplementing their own courses all the time, a process replicated ad infinitum by every single Latin teacher across the country. When you think about it, it’s madness. But Clarke’s Latin is different.
Clarke has made use of modern technology to produce a course that almost overwhelms you with exercises – never before have I been blessed with the option of saying to a student, “okay, I think you’ve completely grasped this, let’s skip the next couple of pages”. But now, when working one-to-one with a particularly gifted student, I am saying it a lot. In the classroom, it would allow a teacher to differentiate by outcome and enable students to work at their own pace – even the terrifyingly clever ones, who for once will not clean you out of material within 5 minutes.
Clarke has exploited the power of Excel to generate morphological exercises and short practice sentences at a fraction of the speed it would take a Latin teacher to produce them manually; this has enabled him to provide the classroom teacher with a bumper-pack of resources that will never, ever run out. I mean seriously. Imagine it. No more resource-writing. Just a series of course books containing everything you need. More than you need. I’m still slightly in shock! Then I find myself wondering why on earth this hasn’t been thought of before. Latin is famously a structured language and we are in the business of teaching its rules. Of course it was possible to harness technology to assist us in the process of resource-generation. What on earth have we all been doing since 1985?! Well, while we were fiddling about, Clarke has come up with the method and the result is golden.
Like Who Says Latin’s Dead, the new Clarke’s Latin is presented in booklet format, a real boon for classroom teachers and a methodology that’s working in the state sector. Clarke also provides an answer key and extensive written explanations, making the course ideal for independent learners. Personally I am using the electronic licence as I am an online tutor and it is working very well in that format. My guinea pig ab initio student, the first I have tried out the new course with, is loving the rigour: and that rigour is second to none.
Conclusion
In my 21 years as a teacher I have worked with numerous text books and indeed made use of works that are much older and less user-friendly than the modern courses explored above. My shelves are weighed down with text books from the past, all of which have their uses (especially when desperate to provide a gifted student with something he or she has never seen before and might find in some way challenging!) Never have we been so blessed with choice and the latest additions to the canon are in some cases revolutionary.
