The Cranky Professor has an excellent review of Latin resources posted. I took Latin in high school (4 years) and college (3 semesters) and have tutored on and off and hope some day to teach Bella Latin (and Dom is wanting to learn it too). This past summer my sister tried to tutor several of her friends.
This resource list is great because the prof begins by asking”why do you want to learn Latin?” and recommending different resources to people with various goals. Smart. And quite useful.
First of all – decide on your target!
This is essential. Every professional language text author has made a selection of vocabulary to teach and has repeated the most important words frequently in example sentences to drill your memory. What’s the goal? To read Caesar in 2nd year Latin? To let you read the Aeneid in 4th year Latin? To participate in the Mass? To pray the Breviary in Latin? Those are very different vocabulary lists! If you bought an old edition of Jenney and then tried to follow the Mass you’d be lost. If you memorize Scanlon & Scanlon perfectly you’ll find Caesar very, very hard going – let alone Virgil.
I’m keeping this post marked for future reference.
