My home-schooled high schooler has some long-term bad translation habits stemming from an online course and a (lazy, I think) previous tutor, and she often begins to translate without pausing and thinking through the grammatical structure of a sentence.
The closer a sentence's grammar is to English and French word order (she's studied French forever), the better she does, but I'm not yet able to assign her translation homework for her to do at home, since she doesn't have the process down quite yet.
Because she was thinking that all that translation stuff wouldn't help when she retakes the SAT II, which is multiple choice, I ended up sitting down with her and her mom, and her mom helped me talk through her worries with me and why my lesson plans seemed like they would help in the longterm...
One big thing that I said was that attention to detail with a language and how to figure out unfamiliar forms would probably be the biggest takeaway from the class, even beyond knowing Latin.
The mom liked that.
She also liked how I reminded her daughter that stress from other areas in life (she's studying for a lot of standardized college admissions tests right now) can adhere to other things, and that some of her frustration might be with the challenge of Latin, but Latin might also be a magnet for other stress.
On my end, I made up a worksheet called a "Learning Log" that me and the homeschooler can work on together, containing tips on word identification / complicated grammar / translation tips for workable English, so she can gather a list of what seems to be a thousand small points that are tripping her up and move more quickly past them and see the progress that she's making... I put down a few points from the past couple lessons in each category, and I'll be asking her to update it with me at the end of every lesson.
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