hopefully this is the right forum, but i was informed yesterday by one amazon (not that kind) that eleanor dickey’s an introduction to the analysis and composition of greek prose will be shipped on june 30. i am looking most forward to this book (which i ordered in 2015), and suspect that it will be of great help to me. she’s seems like one serious scholar. a great weekend to all!
I ordered my copy earlier this week and allegedly it is in the post!
This extract from the preface seems important for Textkit readers:
“To derive maximum benefit from the exercises, the relevant vocabulary and grammatical forms should be memorized before each chapter is undertaken, so that the sentences can be done without consultation of reference works. Students starting to learn prose composition are often misled into believing that no memorization is necessary, but such deception is ultimately in no-one’s interests: the rules of Greek grammar and syntax are so complex that it is impossible even to know what to look up unless one has done a fair amount of memorization, and looking up all the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax required for even a single sentence takes so long that discouragement is inevitable and very few sentences can be done. The author, as a student, wasted years over the non-memorization method and later wished bitterly that someone had told her how much more e cient it would be just to sit down and learn things by heart; it would have been the single most useful tip anyone could have given her, so she hereby passes it on.”
My underlining.
I like this caveat printed in large letters on its own page:
“IMPORTANT NOTE
Almost every rule presented in this book has exceptions, most of which are not mentioned.”
i couldn’t agree more with the section you underlined, seneca2008. i’m totally old school when it comes to classical languages: (i) rote memorization of morphology and vocabulary (which is like constructing a lovely building in your mind); (ii) review (then more and more review); (iii) slow, careful reading and analysis of real greek prose (can i accurately explain the function of each word in the sentence?) in preparation for the faster reading (with greater comprehension) that will come with time and practice; and (iv) learning greek history (social, political, economic, military, and so forth). my hope is that this work will create a firm foundation for going on to textual analysis and the deeper stuff.
I, on the other hand, am in almost total disagreement with that statement. 
While I agree that understanding the grammatical terminology is necessary to be able to use reference works (since there are no natives we can ask questions), I don’t believe it’s possible to learn a language by rote learning. I don’t say rote learning is always useless (it might be useful for seldom encountered words for example, such as Brobdingnagian, fata morgana, volitation or nystagmus, or for distinguishing “false friends” such as lie/lay/lain vs. lay/laid/laid), but in general what really works is exposure to the real thing, and lots of it – actual language produced by natives. For dead languages, I don’t see how that could be different, except that there’s no one to talk with and you have to limit yourself to texts.
That said, I’m not adverse to prose composition, but to be able to profit from that you either have to have a very good key or, preferably, a good teacher correcting you. Otherwise you’re just repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
This said, if you choose another method than my “exposure to the real thing, and lots of it”, any word in the language is going to be one that is “seldom encountered”, and in that case, rote learning will be the next best thing. 
I ordered the book earlier when Hylander made the recommendation. It still hasn’t shipped, but by chance I looked through the preview this morning. In the introduction she says that it is built on N&H, but with a more limited vocabulary (to reduce memorization work, apparently).
my methods are limited to classical languages. i would not learn a living language in the same fashion, but ag is dead and finite (barring future discoveries). i’m all for reading real ag all the time (the careful analysis of sentences must be spent on real ag only). but there’s no way to even begin to read ag (accurately) without first getting to know at least some of the names and numbers of the players (didn’t we all memorize the ag alphabet?), and then learning more. in my opinion, that’s the price one must pay for classical languages. no one gets through the door without first doing the work. toodles!
I don’t believe it’s possible to learn a language by rote learning
Neither does Dickey. That’s not what she is saying. She is talking about learning prose composition, which she has taught successfully for some years. I was going to paraphrase what she wrote but it seems clear enough to me.
Yes, I suppose it’s a bit different for Greek, since even in the elementary stage there’s no one to tell you what you’re doing wrong, unless you happen to be really lucky and have someone like Dickey teaching you.
Still, when I think about where and how I learned English, I think it had very little to with English class, grammar, syntax or memorization, and a lot with playing computer games as a kid and reading books as a teenager and as an adult. But although I don’t think class had a lot to do with me learning English, the part there that probably did some good was English composition.
That said, I thank ailuros (a native English speaker, I presume) for a new word in my vocabulary: toodles!
Paul. Again I think you are confusing two things. Learning to write Greek prose is completely different from learning a modern language. The extant exemplars for Greek are almost all in the highest possible literary register. I doubt most people aspire to write comparably in a modern language. Perhaps I overstate the difference?
let us not collapse this argument into what’s the best way of learning Greek. People are different and respond to different approaches differently. I bet that Hylander has done more than his share of memorisation and it shows.
No, I don’t think I really disagree as much as it seems. I’m just too tired to read Greek so ventilate on learning strategies instead.
The book looks nice on preview and isn’t very expensive. Does it have a proper key? Are the exercises and answers such that you notice your own mistakes and able to correct yourself without a teacher?
“As this book is intended to be helpful to those who have no access to a teacher as well as to those who do, a partial answer key is provided; it is hoped that this compromise will make the book useful to the independent learner without spoiling its e ectiveness in class settings. Generally speaking the answer key covers the first half of each practice exercise, the first ten sentences in each chapter, and the first analysis exercise. In certain chapters, however, the nature of the exercises has necessitated a dfferent distribution of answers in order to assure that a student relying exclusively on the exercises to which answers are provided will be able to learn successfully.”
i hope to be visiting this board for help with, and also perhaps to share other viable solutions to those exercises without a key. i genuinely look forward to that. very glad you enjoyed “toodles,” paul derouda! quite a fun word to say. it may be british in origin(?). will have to check on that, although seneca2008 may already have that answer. and yes, i’m a native english speaker (those united states; philadelphia). let us all now praise the end of the week!
It’ll be interesting to see how it compares with Sidgwick. Dickey is an eminently sensible, plain-speaking teacher and I think she will have pitched things just right for the present market, which is somewhat different from Sidgwick’s.
Her remarks about wasting years on the non-memorization method are interesting. They show that even the ablest students can be bamboozled into following regressively progressive learning approaches for a while if the prevailing pedagogical wisdom asserts itself strongly enough.
ἀπόλλυται
When I read this thread last night I was convinced that Dickey’s advice was unworkable. Every time I have tried to learn anything by rote I can get it into medium term memory but then after a few days it drops out completely. On top that, I could not see how one could systematically learn by rote something as disorganized as Greek grammar.
Having slept on it, I think I completely misunderstood what she is advocating. I think I am not alone in this and that some of Dickey’s supporters here also seem to misunderstand her.
She is saying that if you go straight into the exercises referring back to the explanation of the grammar rules as you work the rules will only go into short term memory and will be quickly forgotten.
She is saying before looking at the exercises learn the specific rules that the exercise is focusing on and then do the entire exercise without again referring to the rules.
Hence the idea is first get the rules into medium memory and then do the exercise to fix the rules into long term memory.
How well she implements this technique I don’t know but the basic idea IMO makes sense.
her telling phrases are that she “bitterly regrets” the lost efficiency by simply “sitting down and learning things by heart.”
Every time I have tried to learn anything by rote I can get it into medium term memory but then after a few days it drops out completely.
It is for this very reason that she advocates constant revision and testing.
I agree that this thread has turned into a hook on which all the old arguments about how to learn Greek which have been well rehearsed elsewhere are ventilated. It has little to do with Dickey. My copy has arrived and I will start work on it this week. The first section of the book consists of exercises about accentuation. I can imagine this will deter many readers. I had the misfortune as an undergraduate to be taught Greek by someone who did not have a good grasp of the rules of accentuation and therefore was not taught it in a systematic way from the outset. It has taken me a long time to recover from this initial handicap.
i was horrified to learn that some teachers of recent times have their ag students ignore accentuation altogether. a phd student in classics at a local university from whom i took a bit of tutoring told me that several students in his programs had this issue and still struggled mightily with picking it up (on top of everything else expected of one in the graduate study of classics, which is a whole lot). really, learning a couple of not-particulary-diificult rules at the outset - and getting them down by heart(!) - is all one needs to get going with ag accents.
indeed, i think addressing this deficiency was in part the genesis of philomen probert’s recent treatise on ag accentuation. per her university bio profile, eleanor dickey is married to probert, so maybe that is a good way to tie up this thread, so to speak!
That’s incredible.
I don’t think you’ve completely misunderstood it; you’ve just interpreted it in a way that makes it palatable to you.