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Alexander Nowell, Catechismus parvus pueris primum qui ediscatur, proponendus in scholis, Latine et Graece. 1574

My project ‘Pedagogy and Innovation in the Shadow of Tradition in England, 1540–1640’ looks at the experience of schoolmasters, considering their role in the reception of humanism and the development of educational practice during the period. I focus on the books that they published for the schoolroom, analysing their reasons for writing, the pedagogical changes that these works entailed, and putting the books in the context of their work as schoolmasters. I am supervised by Dr. Paul Botley (Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies) and Dr. Richard Smith (Department of Applied Linguistics).

My background is as a classicist, having studied as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge and specialised in ancient literature. My current research interests include classical language-teaching pedagogy (Renaissance and modern), Neo-Latin, New Ancient Greek, and translation for the stage, with five of my translations of classical plays performed at ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ.

I have extensive experience of teaching Latin and Greek in schools and universities and have published textbooks for school use. I have been at the forefront in exploring the use of spoken Latin in the UK as an effective pedagogical approach with my project ‘Living Latin’ for the Department of Classics and Ancient History at ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ, and have published on my practical experience of teaching students using spoken Latin. I am also an experienced professional singer, having sung in leading cathedral choirs (Christ Church and New College, Oxford; St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Westminster Cathedral, London; Worcester Cathedral and Gloucester Cathedral). I have used my experience to write music for choruses in Greek tragedy and for Homer, respecting accentuation and the modal systems used by the ancient Greeks.

Publications:

• ‘Teaching Greek: From School to University via Fifteenth-Century Florence’, Journal of Classics Teaching, 25(50), (2024), pp. 150–54
• OCR Anthology for Classical Greek (2024 –2026) (Bloomsbury, 2023)
• ‘Communicative Latin for all in a UK University’ in Communicative Approaches for Ancient Languages (Bloomsbury, 2022), pp. 81–89
• OCR Anthology for Classical Greek (2018–2023) (Bloomsbury, 2016)
• Aristophanes: Frogs (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Email: Clive.Letchford@warwick.ac.uk