Annual Exam Study: Introduction

Students early in Latin who can read short sentences and a very short story.

Year 4A reviews the grammar met in Years 2 and 3, then moves on. A fit for a first year of Latin in middle school, and the review year after the elementary foundation.

A full Introduction exam has 40 multiple-choice questions in about 45 minutes: roughly 12 on culture, history, and mythology, 18 on the Latin language, and 10 on a short reading.

Question groups: Culture, history, and mythology, Language, Reading comprehension.

Practice the Introduction level · Timed practice set

Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns

• First, second, and third declension nouns: subject, possession, indirect object, direct object, and phrases with by, with, or from.
• Common adjectives, including numbers from one to ten and Roman numerals I–X.
• ego, tu, nos, vos and the question words quis and quid.

Verbs

• Present and imperfect active verbs, including sum.
• Present active commands and the present infinitive (to ___).
• A few common irregular verbs may appear in a story, with help for unusual words.

Little words

• Prepositions such as ad, in, cum, ex, and sine.
• et, aut, quod, sed, and question words such as ubi and cur.
• The endings -ne (asks a yes-or-no question) and -que (and).
• Exclamations such as ecce, eheu, and euge.

Words, derivatives, and sayings

• Household words and animals such as mater, soror, filius, equus, canis, and feles.
• English words built from Latin roots, such as lunar, portable, and agriculture.
• Familiar sayings and abbreviations such as carpe diem, tempus fugit, e pluribus unum, N.B., and a.m.
• Greetings and classroom answers: salve, vale, quid agis, ita, and minime.

Roman world

• Home, clothing, and meals: villa, atrium, cubiculum, toga, tunica, stola, cena.
• Olympian gods and goddesses, with Greek and Roman names, plus the founding stories of Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, and the she-wolf.
• A simple map of the Roman world: Rome, Italy, Egypt, and Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean.