Vocabulary Cards and Grammatical Forms Summary for Wheelock's Latin

The "cards" match Wheelock, and should work great for their designed purpose. However, the individuals who approved these for production and sale at the publisher, Bolchazy-Carducci, should be horsewhipped or complained about to the FTC for calling these cards. Doubtlessly one of their slick, sharpie bean-counters got a promotion for figuring out to sell cards in cheap book form. What you get for your money is a book of bleached pulp paper that is perforated to be torn into cards. This doesn't even qualify as being card stock (which it should be if they are supposed to be cards, right?). This is merely heavy pulp paper that is only slightly thicker than that which is used to make colouring books for crayons out of. Be prepared to spend up to 8 hours tearing the "cards" apart along the perforations. (This was not a fun task as I have diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome.) Even if you decide to save time by cutting the cards with scissors or a papercutter, you still have to prefold them if you want to see where to cut along the perforations. The "boxes" are separate pages that must be cut and folded a la 2nd or 3rd grade paper assembly projects. These pages are not any thicker than the ones that constitute the "cards," so the "box" that you will have assembled by the time you are done is made of flimsy paper. Be prepared to guard this box to keep it from being easily crushed. Don't expect it to survive very long in your backpack without ending up with a total mess of loose "cards" floating around in there that will be time consuming to gather up. Come on, Bolchazy, how much more would it have cost you to have mechanical paper cutters slice these cards up on your mechanized assembly line? Probably next to nothing. How much to have mechanical box-making equipment assemble real boxes for these...probably not much more in cost. But, most critically, you didn't want to spring for the card stock, though, did you? Don't expect me to buy any more products anytime soon with your name on them. Captive market here, eh, because the students should have the cards to get good grades right? Amazon did a great job of sending me these quickly, but the publisher gets an "F" for this assignment. I doubt my local used book store will be interested in buying these "crude" cards from me for resale when the course is over. Sheesh.

Vocabulary cards for Wheelock's Latin has really helped me in the little amount of time that I have been able to it. For those that hate to write their own vocab cards, this book is a blessing.

Before buying this product I read a number of negative reviews about it. Most of which talked about the poor quality of the paper used for the cards, how the cards themselves tore easily. As for the provided box to hold the cards in I agree that it is useless, but the cards themselves have been quite a help in my studies. The cards are fine as long as you have a decent box to put them in to keep them from getting smashed or torn.

Dough one could of course have wished for better paper quality etc., it doesn't really matter. They'll easily take the kind of abuse which results from ordinary use; and, besides, you shouldn't really care how the cards look once you're through with them anyway: their purpose is simply to allow you to increase your Latin vocabulary - not to become heirlooms.

The cards themselves are good because they are based on the excellent Wheelock text. They are numbered and also show the Chapter number in which the word was first introduced. However, you must separate them from the pages yourself and I found the perforations to be insufficient. I spent many hours getting them separated and making the two little boxes from the pages provided. All in all I would recommend against these and suggest you get a standard set of pre-made Latin flash cards from Vis-Ed or Sparks Notes and just remove the cards you need based on the Wheelock vocabulary. I can't imagine paying this much, doing all the work, and on top of that laminating the cards for an additional expense. You'll have more time to study Latin!