Reddit mentions of A College Companion: Based on Hans Oerberg's Latine Disco, with Vocabulary and Grammar (Lingua Latina)

Hi! It's great that you want to learn Latin yourself - I was in a similar position not long ago, and can share my experience. Firstly, it's not going to be very easy, but it will be a lot of fun - learning Latin will teach you a lot about linguistics, history, and even English.

It seems to be a consensus at /r/latin that Wheelock's, while being a good textbook, teaches to translate, not to read. It focuses on rote memorization of grammar. Lingua Latina, on the other hand, focuses on reading comprehension and is considered by /r/latin users to be a superior learning method. It's based on the natural method: it is written completely in Latin, beginning with very simple phrases which speaker of any European language can understand, and slowly progresses further. To give you an idea, its first sentence is "Rōma in Italiā est". You can understand it easily, and you've already learned 4 words!

While Lingua Latina is a great textbook, I would advise getting some supplements to augment your studying process. All of them can be bought on amazon, or acquired by other means if you wish to cut your costs. Excercitia Latina, which follow Lingua Latina chapter by chapter, will give you enough practice to get a firm grip on each chapter's material. I would recommend not just filling the gaps in, but writing whole exercises out in a separate notebook - making the mechanical memory help you memorize words and grammatical structures. Latine Disco and Neumann's companion are useful companions, which will help you understand grammar introduced in each chapter of Lingua Latina (you only need one of them).

Finally, memorizing words is necessary with any language, and Latin is no exception. Some students find Lingua Latina's method to be sufficient for spaced repetition of new words, but it wasn't enough for me. I used anki, a spaced repetition software based on flashcards, to study words. There is a Lingua Latina deck available for anki, divided into chapters: thus you can easily add words into your flashcard pool after completing every LL chapter.

I hope this helps! If you'll have any questions on the material, redditors on /r/latin are very nice and are always willing to help.
Good luck with your studies!

Valē, amīce!

Do you have the college companion to Lingua Latina?

I'm taking a Latin III this year and this is our sorta finale for the Latin program.

The other question is very tricky.

1. It's taken me three years to get the point I am now and I wouldn't even call myself super qualified. We're all getting by with a lot of help from our teacher. And the rate I've been working at has been anything but steady. So that being said, I'd say anywhere from 1-3 years of learning.
   
   
2. It's very dependent on the book you have. I personally recommend Hans Orberg's [Lingua Latina] (http://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367455675&sr=8-1&keywords=Lingua+Latina) and its [companion] (http://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-College-Companion-Vocabulary/dp/1585101915/ref=pd_sim_b_3). The first one is written entirely in Latin; it's meant to teach Latin in a totally immersive way, by bypassing your native language and getting you to connect Latin vocabulary with images and ideas. I guess you don't technically need the companion but it's helpful when grammar concepts get more complex so I'd recommend it.
   
   
3. We jumped into Ovid after chapter 26ish, but I'd recommend at least finishing the book. Also, I hear Orberg's second book is a great bridge between the teaching style of Latin he writes and the poetry of Ancient Rome.
   
   
4. One more thing, take your time. By the time you're finished with each chapter, reading it should be as easy as reading in English. I think its recommended that you read them 7 times before moving on. It'll be dull at first but the repetition only reinforces it more.
   
   Hope I helped!

There's stuff like this:

http://www.amazon.com/College-Companion-Oerbergs-Vocabulary-Grammar/dp/1585101915

http://www.amazon.com/Exercitia-Latina-Exercises-Familia-Romana/dp/1585102121

I'd only say that Wheelock isn't the best supplement to Lingua Latina because the books are structured differently: the concepts are introduced in a different order, and both have different areas of emphasis.

Don't get me wrong: it's a great grammatical reference, but you can't really go through both books at the same time and expect a cohesive curriculum.

Lingua Latina has its own supplements, btw

You mean like the one published in the student's manual or the one in the college companion?

Is this the same thing?
https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-College-Companion-Vocabulary/dp/1585101915/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8