As finals week approaches students are getting their study guides for all of their classes meaning the rushed flashcard reviews and late nights with notes are beginning. Latin students have to review every vocabulary word that has been taught to them up to this year as all of them will be included in short story translation. Eighth-grade Latin 2 student Olivia H. has been reviewing her vocabulary on sites such as Quizlet, using a flashcard set with all the words that her class has covered.

“[The Quizlet] has all the words that we were directly taught through the chapters but the main thing that makes it so helpful is that it also covers all the words we learned through translating sentences,” she said. 

The students will need to translate a short story and answer a mix of comprehension and grammar questions and multiple choice grammar questions unrelated to the story after that. Latin 2 freshman student Caelan McIlwraith is studying mostly for the story translations because of the extensive vocabulary knowledge required.

“The most difficult part of the Latin final is probably going to be translating the short story because you have to know all of the vocabulary words from the past two years and their meanings and all the endings,” McIlwraith said. 

Ivy M. a fellow eighth-grade Latin 2 student, finds the difficulty of the exam to lie in the grammar concepts and endings for nouns.

“The carts for the fourth declension nouns and both the present passive system and the perfect passive system definitely scare me the most,” Ivy said. “Everything with the passive system is different, the endings and the format. It was all very jarring to learn.”

The stress ramps up around this time of year for Latin students just as it does for any other students, there is still some hope of the simpler concepts from last year being on the test for Ivy.

“I hope the basics from last year will be on the test a lot,” she said. “I know it will probably just get sprinkled in the short story but that’s really the only thing I’m confident in.”

By Cassidy Corey

Editor’s note: Brevard Public Schools policy prohibits the inclusion of middle-schoolers’ last names on district-sponsored websites.