Introduction

The notes in this book are designed to help teachers to use RG in such a way that their students may be able to read fluently and competently some of the finest works of one of the greatest literatures the world has produced.

Throughout this Course we encourage the student to learn through reading in preparation for learning through drills and memorizing. Intelligent, inquisitive reading encourages students to deduce the forms or rules for themselves and to learn to apply them by analogy, while the teacher acts as guide or mid-wife. This is an ideal, admittedly, but one that is of enormous value to any student. If they can work out the rule themselves, they are much more likely to absorb it.

Some preliminary recommendations: (1) Underline the first occurrences of examples illustrating new grammatical points in your own text and encourage students to look for the rules behind them. (2) In the early stages (a) stress that endings, not word order, determine sense; (b) watch for a tendency to look at the first few letters and guess the rest. (3) Practise reading aloud and writing, especially in the first month.

All these imperatives are a shorthand way of saying ‘this is what I do or have done’. In a sense, these notes are counterproductive: the aim throughout is to allow the thoughts to arise from the text, not to stipulate what you should do. Many other and better thoughts may occur to you as you use the Course.

James Neville