Insular Latin Grammarians

The adaptation of Late Latin grammars from the schools of the Roman Empire for use in a foreign Christian society culminated in the British Isles in the 7th and 8th centuries in the development of two distinct types of grammar designed respectively for elementary and for more advanced students. These works, whether they take the form of elaborate commentaries on the classical grammarians, or of simple collections of paradigms, reflect the reading and intellectual preoccupations of their authors, the first teachers in the West to face the problem of large-scale formal foreign-language teaching. The influence of the Insular grammarians extended far beyond their own time: their works, taken to the Continent by Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries, shaped both the latinity and the pedagogical technique of their pupils the Carolingians, and their influencein foreign-language teaching has persisted until our own time.