What’s the best way to learn my set texts?

There are many different options for learning your set-texts. You need to learn them inside out and at the same time you want to do this as quickly as possible so it is vital to have the right approach. Here are just a few ways that proved useful to me.FlashcardsSplit your set-texts up into bite-size chunks and create flashcards of each section. On one side write out the Greek or Latin and on the other write your English translation. Try to translate by looking just at the original and turn over to see if you’re right.Quizlet/MemriseThe websites Quizlet and Memrise also proved useful to me as ways of learning the harder vocab in your set-texts. These websites are free to use and very effective at getting you to learn something properly and quickly. It is so important that you know your vocab inside out as that’s half the challenge of translating a text.Work out how your translation corresponds to the originalThis is the fundamental way of learning a set-text. Go through it, with the original text and your translation of it side-by-side and work out how your translation fits the original Greek or Latin. This will help you get inside a text; I’ve always found that doing this just a few times really gets the translation into my head.Don’t just learn the translation!Not will learning your English translation by heart be very difficult and time-consuming it’s completely self-defeating. What you’ll need to do in your 15-marker essays is pick out various small quotes, which a rigid, learned translation will not help. Instead you need a degree of flexibility in your translation of the original to enable small, embedded quotations in your essays. So it may be tempting but it’s definitely not worth it learning a fixed English translation!