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Rice University Center for Teaching Excellence

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How Much Should We Assign? Estimating Out of Class Workload

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"How much should I assign?" is one of the most basic questions teachers ask when designing and revising their courses. Yet it is also one of the most difficult to answer. To help instructors better calibrate their expectations, we've created a course workload estimator that incorporates th

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Why Time Scheduling?

Students who schedule their time have decided to "de-sensitize" themselves to the many distractions that are commonly occurring.

What does this "desensitizing" involve? It means removing oneself from constant day-to-day, hour-to-hour decisions. A workable time schedule can make decisions for you, thus desensitizing you to momentary distractions. And, an hour of study in one course is not disturbed by wondering when you will study for another course, or when you'll be able to get out and have some fun. An adequate schedule includes those for you.

Time Scheduling

Usually a minimum time schedule is best. In other words, plan what you know is necessary, and add to it later only if necessary. But plan a schedule you know you can keep, and one that it is important to you to keep.

First: What courses are you taking? (List them on a sheet of paper)

Second: How many hours do you estimate you should study for each course each week to do a minimum job?

Third: What is the total minimum hours per week for all courses?

Fourth: List your present time schedule for the week, including all fixed times, such as classes, labs, club meetings, outside work, travel, eating, and times you go out for recreation (usually leave at least Friday and Saturday evenings open for recreation).

Record class and lab times in appropriate day/hour blocks on a schedule sheet.

Record meal times. Scheduling time to eat is important for one's health!

Record all regularly scheduled personal activities such as meetings, employment, and athletics and any other special activities you need to do or want to do on a regular basis

Fifth: Now fill in the remaining hours each week with the number of hours you need to assign to study according to your decision in step two, either by 1) Setting up certain hours in which to study subjects, or 2) Setting aside certain hours that you will study, but not deciding in advance which courses will be studied in which hours.

Sixth: Keep your schedule where you can see it. It should be conspicuous, so put it on top of your desk, or pinned on the wall.

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Students who schedule their time have decided to "de-sensitize" themselves to the many distractions that are commonly occurring. What does this "desensitizing" involve? It means removing oneself from constant day-to-day, hour-to-hour decisions. A workable time schedule can make decisions for you, thus desensitizing you to momentary distractions.

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Your ability to read at higher speeds with good comprehension can dramatically affect your ability to succeed in school and in your career. Efficient reading leads to efficient learning. In today's information world there is no skill that is more important.

AceReader includes progress tracking and reading improvement activities to help you reach your reading goals. It also includes over 900 themed and leveled reading comprehension tests with longer stories, more questions and more choices. Learn more about AceReader at www.acereader.com.

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Free Speed Reading Test by the makers of AceReader (award winning speed reading software).

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Sometimes, it can be a pleasure to read slowly, taking the time to pause on an extraordinary sentence or revisiting a passage on a previous page. But this type of reading is a luxury. As we all know, we can often benefit from reading certain documents more quickly.

An average reading speed can range from 200 to 350 words per minute, but that rate can vary depending on the material and your reading experience.

It's also important to understand what you are reading-even when you improve your speed. Here are a few tips to help you improve your reading speed.

Reading Speed Tips

1. Preview the material you're going to read. Look at main headings, chapter divisions, and other relevant material-to develop clues about the structure of the work.

2. Adjust your reading speed as you read the material. Slow down when you need to be sure that you comprehend a section of material. Speed up if you are already familiar with (or don't need to know) other sections.

3. Readers can dramatically improve their reading speeds by taking in several words in the line of text at one time (instead of sounding out each word or focusing on each letter of the word. Computer programs like Ace Reader or Rapid Reader are designed to help readers improve reading speeds with flashing letters and words. You may also want to learn more about other techniques.

1. Another way to improve your reading speed is to focus on the key words in the sentences. A significant amount of reading time is wasted on conjunctions, prepositions, or articles (i.e. a, an, the, but, and, or, nor, but, etc.).

2. Use a pacer like a pen or your finger-as a focal point to draw your eye across the line or down the page. A pacer can help you increase your speed and reduce re-reading. A pacer can also help you to keep track of what you are reading.

1. Talk about what you've read. Some readers find that by talking about their reading with friends or fellow students, they are able to effectively synthesize the material.

2. Determine a reading schedule that works for you. You may find that you can't concentrate on the material for more than an hour (or a half hour). Also, select a time of the day when you are alert and ready to read.

3. Find a reading spot, where interruptions or distractions will not disturb your reading.

4. Practice. Practice. Practice. The best way to improve your reading speed is to practice reading. Try out some of these techniques, and then perfect the strategies that work best for you.

Other Things to Consider

1. Get your eyes checked. Reading glasses may help.

2. Read everything. Don't miss out on vital information in your pursuit of speed.

3. Don't re-read right away; it will slow you down. If you absolutely don't understand part of the reading selection, go back and review the material later.

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Sometimes, it can be a pleasure to read slowly, taking the time to pause on an extraordinary sentence or revisiting a passage on a previous page. But this type of reading is a luxury. As we all know, we can often benefit from reading certain documents more quickly.

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Many students make the mistake of picking up their textbook and reading 50 pages straight through front to back and assuming they are done with their reading assignment. These students will often struggle to participate actively in class discussion and may not do well on the tests. There are better methods for getting the most out of your reading.

The basics:

1. Multiply the number of pages you have to read by 5 minutes. That is the amount of time the average college student needs to spend on their reading assignment. Keep this in mind as you schedule time to do your reading. If you calculate four hours of reading, you might not want to read 7-11 p.m. straight through. Consider getting an hour in before class in the morning or over the lunch break - spread it out a bit.

2. Divide the reading into 10-page chunks. The system described below should be done on the 10-page chunk before you move to the next set of pages and start the method over again.

3. Have a highlighter in hand, a pen or pencil and paper or notecards (depending on your preference). Writing in the book itself is highly recommended, but if you have some reason for not doing that, you might also want post-its and use those on each page in place of writing in the book. If the book is already highlighted by a previous reader (not ideal situation) please use a highlighter of a different color.

The system:
P2R

1. Preview

2. Read Actively (includes reading, highlighting, note-taking)

3. Review

Let's take a closer look. Feel free to grab a textbook to use as example as you read this portion.
Preview:
You would most likely not travel to another country without getting a lay of the land first. Often we read a tourism book or look at a map. We might try to learn a few words in the other language. If the country is similar to our own (England speaks the same language as the U.S. so feels more familiar) we might do less preparation than if it is seems very different from our own (Japan has an alphabet/language quite different from the U.S.). This advance preparation allows us to get off the plane and have a sense of what we know and don't know, what questions we will need to ask and where we want to head first.

Previewing a textbook accomplishes much the same thing. Start by looking at the beginning of your 10-page chunk. Read section titles. If no titles, read first lines of paragraphs. Read the last paragraph. Glance over charts or photos used on the pages. Read study questions or summaries that might be given at the end of the chunk of pages. Now, take a moment to think about what you have just seen. What do you think will be the main topic of that section? What do you already know about it from your childhood, past courses or other readings in this current class? What is your biggest question right now--what more do you need to know?

Now, you have a sense of where you are heading. Hopefully, you are a bit curious about what you will be reading, have some questions in your mind and will be able to fit what you read into a bigger context of where it fits into the whole chapter.
Read Actively:
Do not take notes or highlight as you read; this tends to break up your flow and diminish your understanding. It also isn't very productive, because you don't know if the first sentence is worth taking notes on until after you have read the third sentence, which might be the real point of the paragraph. So, read at least one complete paragraph or a short section before you stop to take notes and highlight.

Your first step after you read the paragraph is to highlight a phrase or two that were the important parts that you'll need to know for future reference. Don't pick just words (too little) or whole sentences (too much). Exceptions to this might be dates or definitions. The idea is that you could re-read JUST the highlighted portion in a month and get the gist of the paragraph without having to re-read the whole paragraph.

Now go to the margins (or your post-its) and start writing a question or two for the paragraph. This might be "What years were considered the Renaissance?" or "What is the meaning of metamorphosis?" When you get done with the entire ten page section, you will go back and try to answer these questions without looking at the book . If you need to cheat and look at the book, you should underline those highlighted notes to show that you need to study that more. If you could answer it, you are doing well on recalling that paragraph.

This is also a good time to make some notes for class. Take a sheet of paper or a notecard and write down questions that you want to ask in class (to understand a concept or to ask how it connects to something else you've read,etc.). Write down any observations or opinions you want to share with the class. You may want to jot down page numbers and quotes that may be useful to discuss in class.

Some people prefer to also make these notes in their margins or at the end of the chapter. That is fine.

Now read the next paragraph or short section (one column, for example) and do the same process as above.

Review:

At the end of the ten-page chunk, take a moment and think about the section you have read in its entirety. Go to a clean sheet of paper or a reading journal and jot down a summary (in your own words, not quotes from book) of what you just read. Then make some broad observations about how it connects to other things you knew or have read or any feelings you might have about what you've read.

Go back and try to answer the questions in the margins.

Now start the whole thing over with the next 10-pages.

When you have finished the entire reading assignment, finish up your reading journal and comprehensive thoughts and organize your note-cards or split sheet of paper so you are ready for class tomorrow.
Basic Things to Keep in Mind When Reading:
Faculty members do not assign reading as busy work. They feel the material is valuable. So, approach it with as much energy and creativity as you can muster. If it is not a class that particularly excites you, try to relate it to something that does. A great example might be physics and baseball. You'd be surprised at how much science can apply to things like the trajectory of a ball or the impact needed on the bat to make a ball go a certain distance,etc. If you are in doubt, ask the professor to help you relate the topic to something you do enjoy and he or she might be able to help you connect the dots. You might also consider your future career and whether you could make use of this knowledge in small talk or in background knowledge for that type of job.

If something is not making sense, try reading it out loud. That can often help you process the material in a new way.

Try to keep your notes in your own words, not the words from the book. This helps you avoid plagiarism in papers and helps you think more about the reading which will, in turn, help you retain the material for tests or when it comes time to write a paper.

If you run into vocabulary words you do not know, try to look up the important ones. If there are concepts or the book refers to an event you've never heard of, look at credo reference or Oxford reference on the library's main webpage.

If you don't understand something you read, ask the professor via email, in person at class, or get a tutor!

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Reading a Textbook for True Understanding

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Many students make the mistake of picking up their textbook and reading 50 pages straight through front to back and assuming they are done with their reading assignment. These students will often struggle to participate actively in class discussion and may not do well on the tests.

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The following table demonstrates how a weighted grade is calculated. The percentage in each category is multiplied by its respective weight. The sum of these contributions is the total grade percentage.

The question that often arises is "What must I get on the final exam to bring my grade to a certain level?" Let us represent the above table as an algebraic expression using h, q, and e to represent the categories: homework, quiz/test, and exam respectively. This is done as follows: h* the weight of h + q* the weight of q + e* the weight of e = final grade. To solve for the grade on the exam, enter in the available information with x representing the grade on the final exam and the desired grade for the class. The following is an example.

Mathematically this problem can then be solved as follows.

h*(the weight of h) + q*(the weight of q) + e*(the weight of e) = final grade

(.95)*(.30) + (.86)*(.50) + x*(.20) = .90

.285 + .43 + .2 x = .90

.715 + .2 x = .90

.2 x = .90 - .715

.2 x = .185

x = .185/.2

x = .925

92.5%

This grade calculator can help to calculate your grade or the grade you need to get on a test or final.

Last updated: 4/23/15 Submit comments here

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The following table demonstrates how a weighted grade is calculated. The percentage in each category is multiplied by its respective weight. The sum of these contributions is the total grade percentage. The question that often arises is "What must I get on the final exam to bring my grade to a certain level?"

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How exactly do you take a document that's as complicated as your transcript and shrink it all down to a single number? If you're wondering how to use the final grades you've gotten in high school to determine your GPA, then you've come to the right place. This article will show you how to make this calculation, step by step. But first, what exactly is a GPA?

What Is a GPA?

Most likely, in your high school classes, your final grades are awarded either as letters (A-, B+, etc.) or percents (92%, 85%, etc. out of 100%).

A GPA, or grade point average, converts those letters or percents into numbers and then averages these numbers together. Because it's made up of all your grades, your GPA is one of the most important factors for college admission. It's a good indicator of your intelligence, work ethic, perseverance, and willingness to push yourself.

GPAs are useful for colleges to easily compare you with other students who graduated from your school and with all the other applicants. But why?

Imagine you're an admissions officer who has to look at thousands of college applications. Would you rather go through each transcript individually, add up all the As and all the Bs, and then compare that to the next person, and so on? Or, would you rather have an easy summary number that could be used for a quick comparison across the board?
Your GPA is that quick summary number. Turn the hard to eat ingredients of your transcript into the gooey s'more deliciousness of a GPA. Probably not with an open flame, though.
The Difference Between Weighted and Unweighted GPA

There are two main types of GPAs: weighted and unweighted.

An unweighted GPA is when a school uses a scale that goes from 0.0 to 4.0 and does not take into account the difficulty level of classes.

By contrast, a weighted GPA is when a school uses a scale that goes from 0.0 all the way up to 5.0 (or sometimes 6.0) and does take into account class difficulty. In this model, the school gives higher numerical values to grades earned in honors, AP, and/or IB classes.

Here's an example to help clarify the differences here. Say Jeremy gets an A in a standard-level US History class, whereas Lakshmi gets an A in AP US History. In the unweighted GPA model, both As are treated the same way, with each translating to a 4.0.

But in the weighted GPA model, Jeremy's A would convert to a 4.0 and Lakshmi's A would convert to a 5.0 to show that her class took a lot more effort to ace.

See the difference?
Sure, you can pick them up, but doesn't it help to know how much each weighs?
Before we continue, it's important to understand that this article focuses mainly on explaining and calculating unweighted GPAs. (For more information on weighted GPAs, check out our other guide.)
Here is the standard unweighted scale for doing this:
How Do You Calculate Your Unweighted GPA?

The first thing to do in order to calculate a grade point average is to convert each of the final class grades you've gotten so far in high school into the correct decimal.

Letter Grade Percentile GPA

Next, perform the following calculation:

Add all the converted decimal grades together-this is your sum

Count the number of classes you've taken

Divide the sum by the number of classes, and you have your unweighted GPA

In the following section, we'll go through an example calculation of an unweighted GPA.

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Step-by-Step Example of an Unweighted GPA Calculation

Let me show you an example of how to calculate an unweighted GPA so you can see how this will look in practice. (To see how to calculate a weighted GPA, check out our other article.) We'll use a sample transcript for incognito CIA operative John Doe.

Be aware that for this example, we are assuming that all classes are worth the same number of credits (in other words, you can ignore the credit column in the transcript below).

Step 1: Convert Grades Into Decimals

In order to learn how to calculate a GPA, let's first convert John's letter grades into numbers:

Let's also count how many classes he took each of those school years:

Step 2: Calculate Individual Year GPAs

To get each individual year's GPA, all we need to do is divide the sum by the number of classes. If this division ends up with a long decimal, simply round to the nearest hundredth:

Step 3: Calculate Cumulative High School GPA

To get a cumulative GPA for John's entire high school career, we simply add up the sums for all the years and divide by the number of classes he took over all those years:

35 + 35.7 + 27.7 + 19.7 = 118.1 (sum of all final grades)

10 + 10 + 8 + 6 = 34 (total number of classes taken)

118.1 / 34 = 3.47 (GPA)

So, his GPA for all of high school is 3.47.

Pro tip: The cumulative GPA is not an average of each year because the number of classes taken each year is different.

Step 4: Calculate GPA Submitted to Colleges (Optional)

Finally, if we wanted to figure out the GPA that John would send out on his college applications, we would do the same process, but leave off senior year. Since applications go out in the beginning of 12th grade, those final grades won't make it into the application GPA:

35 + 35.7 + 27.7 = 98.4 (sum of final grades from 9th to 11th grade)

10 + 10 + 8 = 28 (number of classes taken from 9th to 11th grade)
Is nicely done, John!
98.4 / 28 = 3.51 (college application GPA)

As you can see, John's college application GPA would be 3.51.

What If My Classes Are Worth Different Amounts of Credits?

In the example above, we calculated John's GPA with the assumption that every took was worth the same amount of credits. If this isn't the case for you, you'll need to add in an extra step.

To calculate your GPA when your classes are worth different amounts of credits, you'll need to multiply your grade for each class by the number of credits it was worth and sum those together (instead of just summing all your grades together) and divide that sum by the total number of credits you took (rather than just the total number of classes you took).

As a quick example, let's take another look at John's junior year grades, this time with the number of credits each class was worth.

GPA Credits Quality Points

Here we can see that the last two classes John took were each only worth half a credit. In the table, the third column, "Quality Points," shows the product of John's GPA in each class with the number of credits that class was worth.

To find John's GPA (based solely on these eight classes), all you need to do now is sum the number of quality points and divide them by the number of credits John took:

GPA = (4.0+2.7+3.7+3.0+3.3+4.0+2.0+1.5) / (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 0.5 + 0.5)

GPA = 24.2/7 = 3.46.

What's Next?

Interested in diving even deeper into the differences between weighted and unweighted GPA? Then check out our guide to the benefits and drawbacks of both.

Want to see step-by-step weighted GPA calculation? Let us show you how it's done.

Curious how your GPA compares? Learn what a good or bad GPA is and then see how you stack up against the average high school student.

Does your school report your GPA as weighted or unweighted? What would your GPA be, considered on a 4.0, 5.0, or 6.0 scale? Use our tool to calculate your unweighted and weighted GPA to figure out how you stack up against other college applicants. You'll also get our proprietary college core GPA calculation and advice on where to improve to be a better college applicant.

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How Do You Calculate Your GPA? Step-by-Step Instructions

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How exactly do you take a document that's as complicated as your transcript and shrink it all down to a single number? If you're wondering how to use the final grades you've gotten in high school to determine your GPA, then you've come to the right place.

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Our easy-to-use high school GPA calculator will help you calculate your GPA in just minutes. Whether your goal is to earn a scholarship, get into a prestigious college, or ensure you will graduate, when it comes to figuring out your high school GPA, we've got you covered.

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Add Semester

Pro Tip: Try our to calculate your course assessment grades and the final test grades.

High School GPA Calculator - Instructions

Step 1 - Select your grade format

Step 2 - Enter your current GPA (optional)

Step 3 - Enter your semester name (Optional)

Step 4 - Add all courses to calculate your high school GPA

Step 5 - Add another semester if you would like to calculate multi-semester GPAÂ

Step 1 : Select your grade format

You can select your current grade format - letter grade or percentage grade to figure out your GPA. Request your teacher to provide your grade before the final report card. You can estimate the grades in case your teacher can't confirm the grades. Letter grades can range from A+ to an F on the 4.0 Scale. Percent grades range from 100% to 60%. Anything under 59% or lower is considered as F (fail).

Step 3: Customize your semester name (Optional)

You can customize the semester name to make it easy to remember.Â

Step 4 : Add all courses to calculate your high school GPA

You can add your courses in this format:

Course Name

Grade (Letter or Percent grade)

Credits (Leave it as 1 if not known)

Course Type (Regular, AP, Honors etc.)

Regular classes will be given points according to the standard scale (A = 4, B = 3, C = 2). For Honors, grades will be increased by half a point. Grades for College / Advanced Placements / IB courses will be increased by a whole point. GPA will be updated and adjusted as you enter class and subject weight, and shown under 'Your GPA' section as both weighted GPA and unweighted GPA.

Weighted GPA - factors in course credits and course type weightings

Unweighted GPA - ignores course credits and course type weightings

Refer weighted GPA and how to calculate GPA sections for more details.

Click "Add course" button to add more courses.

Click on "Add semester" and follow step 2, 3 and 4 to enter your course grades. Each semester GPA will show up on the right side under 'Your GPA' section.Â

High School GPA - Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What about classes that are considered Pass/Fail or Pass/No Pass? Are these courses included when calculating a student's GPA?
A: No. Pass/Fail (P/F) or Pass/No Pass (P/NP) courses are not factored in the student's GPA.

Q: Do Incompletes (I) and Withdrawals (W) affect a student's GPA? A: No. Incompletes (I) and Withdrawals (W) do not affect a student's GPA because these courses do not receive any grade points or credit hours.

Q: How can I calculate my grades within a specific course?
A: Use our grade calculator to calculate your course grades based on your assignments within a specific course.

Step 1: Convert every letter grade to its respective points (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0.)

Step 2: Add up all the grade points

Step 3: Divide the added grade points (step 2) by the number of class credits taken.

Note: For Honors and AP classes, you should give yourself one additional point for every semester of an Honors or AP class that you have completed (A=5, B=4, C=3.)

Making decisions on course choices and selections of levels of courses requires experience. Therefore, students should confer with their parents, teachers, and counselors. While consistency is important, the types of classes you take and the grades you earn are extremely important. We encourage students to seek out new academic experiences and exposure to new ideas. Meeting with a counselor to plan course selections and discuss college options would be beneficial in helping you decide what level courses you should pursue for a particular subject.

Colleges would like to see students challenge themselves to as great a degree as possible in high school. Colleges also recognize that students have individual strengths and weaknesses. They understand that not all students should take a full course load of Honors/AP classes. Your high school program should reflect some attempt at Honors/AP work if that interests you and motivates you. The selective colleges are interested in your Weighted GPA-the GPA that reflects the Honors and advanced-level courses you take. An A or B in an Honors or advanced-level course suitable for the student's abilities is generally seen more favorably than all As in less-challenging courses. Students consistently earning Cs in Honors/AP classes should review their program with their counselor.

There is no national data on the number of students taking just AP courses (as opposed to AP and IB courses), but the number of AP exam-takers increased from 1,221,016 in 2004-05 to 2,483,452 in 2014-15. According to the College Board (the company that runs the AP testing process), 2.7 million students took nearly 5 million tests in 2017.

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Our easy-to-use high school GPA calculator will help you calculate your GPA in just minutes. Whether your goal is to earn a scholarship, get into a prestigious college, or ensure you will graduate, when it comes to figuring out your high school GPA, we've got you covered.

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Latin Words and Phrases Every Man Should Know

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Latin Words and Phrases Every Man Should Know

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What do great men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt all have in common?

They all were proficient in Latin.

From the Middle Ages until about the middle of the 20th century, Latin was a central part of a man's schooling in the West. Along with logic and rhetoric, grammar (as Latin was then known) was included as part of the Trivium - the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. From Latin, all scholarship flowed and it was truly the gateway to the life of the mind, as the bulk of scientific, religious, legal, and philosophical literature was written in the language until about the 16 th century. To immerse oneself in classical and humanistic studies, Latin was a must.

Grammar schools in Europe and especially England during this time were Latin schools, and the first secondary school established in America by the Puritans was a Latin school as well. But beginning in the 14 th century, writers started to use the vernacular in their works, which slowly chipped away at Latin's central importance in education. This trend for English-language learning accelerated in the 19 th century; schools shifted from turning out future clergymen to graduating businessmen who would take their place in an industrializing economy. An emphasis on the liberal arts slowly gave way to what was considered a more practical education in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

While Latin had been dying a slow death for hundreds of years, it still had a strong presence in schools until the middle of the 20 th century. Beginning in the 1960s, college students demanded that the curriculum be more open, inclusive, and less Euro-centric. Among their suggested changes was eliminating Latin as a required course for all students. To quell student protests, universities began to slowly phase out the Latin requirement, and because colleges stopped requiring Latin, many high schools in America stopped offering Latin classes, too. Around the same time, the Catholic Church revised its liturgy and permitted priests to lead Mass in vernacular languages instead of Latin, thus eliminating one of the public's last ties to the ancient language.

While it's no longer a requirement for a man to know Latin to get ahead in life, it's still a great subject to study. I had to take classes in Latin as part of my "Letters" major at the University of Oklahoma, and I really enjoyed it. Even if you're well out of school yourself, there are a myriad of reasons why you should still consider obtaining at least a rudimentary knowledge of the language:

Knowing Latin can improve your English vocabulary. While English is a Germanic language, Latin has strongly influenced it. Most of our prefixes and some of the roots of common English words derive from Latin. By some estimates, 30% of English words derive from the ancient language. By knowing the meaning of these Latin words, if you chance to come across a word you've never seen before, you can make an educated guess at what it means. In fact, studies have found that high school students who studied Latin scored a mean of 647 on the SAT verbal exam, compared with the national average of 505.

Knowing Latin can improve your foreign language vocabulary. Much of the commonly spoken Romanic languages like Spanish, French, and Italian derived from Vulgar Latin. You'll be surprised by the number of Romanic words that are pretty much the same as their Latin counterparts.

Many legal terms are in Latin. Nolo contendere. Mens rea. Caveat emptor. Do you know what those mean? They're actually common legal terms. While strides have been made to translate legal writing into plain English, you'll still see old Latin phrases thrown into legal contracts every now and then. To be an educated citizen and consumer, you need to know what these terms mean. If you plan on going to law school, I highly recommend boning up on Latin. You'll run into it all the time, particularly when reading older case law.

Knowing Latin can give you more insight to history and literature.Latin was the lingua franca of the West for over a thousand years. Consequently, much of our history, science, and great literature was first recorded in Latin. Reading these classics in the original language can give you insights you otherwise may have missed by consuming it in English.

Moreover, modern writers (and by modern I mean beginning in the 17th century) often pepper their work with Latin words and phrases without offering a translation because they (reasonably) expect the reader to be familiar with it. This is true of great books from even just a few decades ago (seems much less common these days - which isn't a hopeful commentary on the direction of the public's literacy I would think). Not having a rudimentary knowledge of Latin will cause you to miss out on fully understanding what the writer meant to convey.

Below we've put together a list of Latin words and phrases to help pique your interest in learning this classical language. This list isn't exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination. We've included some of the most common Latin words and phrases that you still see today, which are helpful to know in boosting your all-around cultural literacy. We've also included some particularly virile sayings, aphorisms, and mottos that can inspire greatness or remind us of important truths. Perhaps you'll find a Latin phrase that you can adopt as your personal motto. Semper Virilis!

Latin Words and Phrases Every Man Should Know

a posteriori

from the latter -- knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence

a priori

from what comes before -- knowledge or justification is independent of experience

faber est suae quisque fortunae

every man is the artisan of his own fortune --
quote by Appius Claudius Caecus

flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo

if I cannot move heaven I will raise hell -- Virgil's Aeneid

in umbra, igitur, pugnabimus

then we will fight in the shade -- made famous by Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae and by the movie 300

memento mori

remember that [you will] die -- was whispered by a servant into the ear of a victorious Roman general to check his pride as he paraded through cheering crowds after a victory; a genre of art meant to remind the viewer of the reality of his death

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

who will guard the guards themselves? -- commonly associated with Plato

requiescat in pace

let him rest in peace -- abbreviated R.I.P.

semper virilis

always virile

vice versa

to change or turn around

What are your favorite Latin phrases? Any other important Latin words and phrases that you think a modern man should know? Share with us in the comments!

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Latin Words and Phrases Every Man Should Know | The Art of Manliness

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What do great men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt all have in common? They all were proficient in Latin. From the Middle Ages until about the middle of the 20th century, Latin was a central part of a man's schooling in the West.