Stories of Latin Instruction: The Future Passive Participle.

To teach Latin participle forms (2 of which are roughly equivalent to English, one of which is not), I set up an exercise with my students where I say a girl is swimming in a river full of crocodiles, and you hear screams and run up to the river, and you could see one of three things:

- the crocodile ate the girl.
- the crocodile is eating the girl.
- the crocodile will eat the girl.

Then, I ask them which nouns and participles they could use in each of those three situations, beginning a statement "I see.." (answer - "the eaten girl", "the eating crocodile", "the will-be-eating crocodile").

As a closer, I point out that what is in some textbooks called "the future passive participle" actually doesn't have that meaning (i.e., "the will-be-eaten girl"), but actually means necessity - e.g. "the girl who has to/must/should be eaten").

As I told my homeschooled 17 year-old student, "It's like when Edward first smells Bella, and thinks, 'I need to eat that girl'; she's the girl who you just have to eat!"

"Or," my homeschooler was like, "it's necessary to eat her, because she whines a lot."