A Comprehensive Guide to Wheelock's Latin: Newly Revised for Wheelock's 6th Edition
by Dale A. Grote

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Book Reviews of A Comprehensive Guide to Wheelock's Latin: Newly Revised for Wheelock's 6th Edition

Book Review: A godsend
Summary: 5 Stars

When I picked up my copy of Wheelock years later to refresh my knowledge of Latin, I discovered just how valuable the instructors' input had been been, as I kept coming across questions of grammar, tense, declension, etc. that were not fully explained, or clearly explained, in Wheelock. For a good eighty to ninety percent, the Wheelock explanations were sufficient, but for those who need a mastery of the language, eighty to ninety percent is not enough.

Particularly when talking about the various voices and verb conjugation issues, and the spelling/vowel changes that occur in conjugation or declension, Grote's notes are very valuable. Also, Grote seems to have more a sense for the modern student, adding little flourishes in the text, both in the description as well as the examples, to make things more fun and interesting. Sometimes I wondered in Wheelock if the only thing Latin was good for was writing funeral dirges or speeches about duty (I wonder how Gilbert & Sullivan would sound in Latin, since they are all about duty? But I digress...)

As Grote says in his introduction, students are having increasing difficulties with mastering Latin grammar because they have less training (it seems) in English grammar. Studying Latin becomes a formal training not only in the foreign language, but also in general language structures. I must say I am envious of his students, having two semesters to get through the forty chapters of Wheelock; when I took the course, we did the whole thing in one semester, and it was an abbreviated summer term at that!

Professor Dale Grote, trained in Classics from Cornell College, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is on faculty at UNC Charlotte, where he teaches. As such, he experienced first-hand the struggles of teaching Latin using the classic Wheelock textbook. While it is a superb text, it just doesn't always go far enough. Grote's organisation follows closely the pattern of Wheelock's presentation, so that the two books can be used side-by-side with ease. Certainly for the self-study learner, this book is a real godsend.

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