Take lessons with a Latin tutor in Birmingham

<span style="font-weight: 400;">From Cicero to Titus Livius, from Horace to Virgil and Ovid there is no better British city than Birmingham to discover its writings, particularly because of its many libraries and booksellers holding ancient books, those of Quintilian, Titus Livius or Petrarch. In the heart of Birmingham, for example, you will discover Metchley Fort, a Roman fort that lies on the course of a Roman road, Icknield Street, which is now the site of the present Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the University of Birmingham in Edgbaston. The fort was constructed soon after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43BCE.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This city is ideal for learning the extinct language of Latin, due to its Latin influence, and its proximity to the many major Roman settlements, including the Fosse Way, one of the main road used by Roman legions during the Empire’s occupation of the island. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">When you start learning Latin it is important to clearly define what you want to learn by to take Latin courses: improving skills, private lessons at home, homework help, development of a working method to work on Latin texts, it is up to you.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Why choose Birmingham to learn Latin? Birmingham is the second-most populous city in the whole of Uk and as such as been blessed with great schools and universities. The fact that the city was first founded by Romans and that some of the ruins can still be seen today is just a bonus for your apprenticeship of Latin. Even though the English language is not part of the Romance family, Latin words have been borrowed by English speakers for hundreds of years, so much that at least 50% of the English lexicon is from Latin.</span>

<h3><b>Learning A New Language In Birmingham</b></h3>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The city of Birmingham has one great advantage when it comes to learning a new language,  The Brasshouse Languages at the Library of Birmingham.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">They are the largest adult education centre in the United Kingdom specialising in language courses and services.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">They currently run courses in over 30 different modern foreign languages starting at those suitable for complete beginners and progressing through to post-graduate level.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Their staff and learners come together from all over the world and bring with them a wealth of knowledge and experience. They pride themselves in the truly international atmosphere of our centre and the welcome we give to our students from all around the world.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Whatever your language needs are, they have the expertise to meet them.</span>

<h3><b>Latin Is Coming Back Into The Classrooms</b></h3>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">As of 2014, foreign language lessons have been mandatory in primary schools from age seven and Latin is on the menu of languages that schools can teach.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">It is currently taught in about 700 state secondary schools and 450 independent senior schools – twice as much as 2000, according to the University of Cambridge Schools Classics Project. More than 50,000 pupils start to learn it each year, although less than a quarter of them take it at all the way to the GCSEs exams.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">At Colfe’s, in south-east London, where headteacher Richard Russell is a classics scholar, all 12- and 13-year-old students study Latin and about 20% sit the O-level.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">At A-levels, the language is offered as classical civilisation. And although the hours spent conjugating Latin verbs and declensions might not be among the most cheerful school memories for many parents, they have leapt at the chance to revisit the language and think that it would benefit their children, not only when it comes to learning a new language but also in other areas such as Maths and science.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">American studies have shown that children from disadvantaged backgrounds do better not just in languages but also maths and English once they have studied a year of Latin. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">So if you have decided that you should start to learn Latin, rest assured you made the right choice!</span>

<h3><b>Learning Latin In Birmingham</b></h3>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Even though has had a come back in recent years, not many schools offer their students the possibility to learn this extinct language. Latin has suffered from having a reputation for being a hard and boring language to learn.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Learning is a personal process: your Latin teacher must be a guide, but also a pedagogue because not everyone is given naturally inclined to understand how desinence works immediately. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology at Birmingham is one of the few university departments in the UK that draws together Archaeology and the study of Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East. Times Higher Education ranked the department in the Top 5 in the country for its performance in the latest Research Excellence Framework exercise.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If you choose to go through their program, you will have to learn Latin to be able to study ancients Roman texts, poems or dramas.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">When starting to learn Latin, explain your objectives, your ambition, from the beginning. As the second most populous city in the UK, Birmingham has hundreds of tutors but only a handful of them are able to teach Latin.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Why so few Latin teachers in Birmingham? Because it is a rare language, which requires mastery and expertise that can only be learned through an years of studies.  Most of them are also teachers of ancient languages at the University of Birmingham</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">However, you should know that this every private lesson you take should be tailored around you. It is up to you to choose the rhythm with your teacher.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">On Superprof, 8 Latin tutors are registered in the Birmingham area. Most of them are qualified teachers, trained in the Classics and perfectly able to teach pupils for their Latin GCSEs or students for their A-levels.</span>

<h3><b>Access Latin Culture In Birmingham</b></h3>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Birmingham is home to dozens of amazing museums some if them offering a great overview of the Latin worlds through the eyes of artists from the Antiquity to the modern era.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) first opened in 1885. It is housed in a Grade II* listed city centre landmark building. There are over 40 galleries to explore that display art, applied art, social history, archaeology and ethnography.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The art gallery is famous for its Pre-Raphaelite paintings, which are part of the largest public Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Discover the fascinating story of the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, in its own dedicated gallery.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The Birmingham History collections feature prominently in the 'Birmingham: its people, its history' gallery, which covers the majority of the 3rd floor.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You can also see art and objects spanning seven centuries of European and World history and culture. This includes Greeks &amp; Romans and Ancient Egypt.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You could also visit Roman ruins within reach of Birmingham city starting with Wroxeter Roman City. Wroxeter is a small village in Shropshire, England, besides the River Severn, 5 miles south-east of Shrewsbury.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Viroconium Cornoviorum as it was know at the time, the fourth largest city in Roman Britain, was sited here and is gradually being excavated.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Archaeology has shown that the site of the later city first was established about 55BCE  as a frontier post for a Thracian legionary cohort located at a fort near the Severn river crossing. A few years later a legionary fort (castrum) was built within the site of the later city for the Legio XIV Gemina during their invasion of Wales.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The local British tribe of the Cornovii had their original capital (also thought to have been named *Uiroconion) at the hillfort on the Wrekin. When the Cornovii were eventually subdued their capital was moved to Wroxeter and given its Roman name.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The Roman city was rediscovered in 1859 when workmen began excavating the baths complex. A replica Roman villa was constructed in 2010 for a Channel 4 television programme called Rome Wasn't Built in a Day and was opened to the public on 19 February 2011.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">With such a rich Roman and Latin history within reach of Birmingham, you can immerse yourself into the past of Britain, when legionaries were still keeping order around the country.</span>