Jensen's Vocabulary

Jensen's Vocabulary is really three books in one, replacing Latin I, Latin II, and Greek I. These are now three units of the combined book that teaches vocabulary based on Latin and Greek roots. The book is designed to work in either homeschool or regular school settings and targets students in junior and senior high school levels. It is entirely self-contained, including instructions, a sample test, and answer keys. The book is consumable, but it is possible—and not that difficult—for students to write their answers in a notebook, preserving the book for a later student.

The three units in the book are each broken up into 18 lessons with four parts, one part to be assigned per day. All four of these parts work with the same group of words—but in different ways—so students absorb the meanings of the roots. The book is designed so students can do most of their work independently, but the lessons are challenging, requiring students to work from a chart of roots, while searching for shades and relations of meaning. The four page chart is included in the front of the book, and lists the roots, suffixes, and prefixes covered within the three units, along with their meanings. You'll probably want to reproduce this chart for easy access, to avoid flipping back and forth.

Teacher involvement is required for weekly testing and might be required if students find lessons too difficult to complete on their own. After completing each lesson, the teacher gives a quiz on the week's words as well as a few review words. A sample test (covering Latin lessons 1-9) is included at the back of the book, but the rest of the tests are left to you. Before you begin the course, you'll want to make sure you first read through "Hints and Tips" and "Notes to the Teacher." Then you should work through the first lesson (all four parts) with your student to make sure he understands how to do them.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and systematic approach to learning roots, affixes, and words. It's a challenging course for the average student, and not exciting to look at, but it offers far more vocabulary building for a lower price than anything else we offer.