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I've been using Liberation Philology's Old English iPhone app for a while now and have come to really appreciate it. Although I have been using it to learn new vocabulary, I haven't really used the verb and noun flashcards to identify the verb tenses and noun declensions until now.
I tried memorizing the some of the paradigms in Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English by using my Flashcard app, but memorizing the endings was tedious and challenging. I much prefer reviewing them using the Old English app. The quizzes are in the multiple choice format using a specific set of words for each level. The endings are not studied in isolation (which is what I was doing), but are appended to words which are to be parsed. The only negative is that it is not possible to cumulatively test vocabulary, verb and noun forms learned from previous levels because each level is independent of the others. Overall though, at $2.99, the app is a great tool when used with a good textbook.
Mitchell and Robinson's book, is considered an excellent textbook by many. However, I am troubled by the book's format. The first part of the book is densely packed with information and paradigms regarding the declensions of nouns, verb forms and tenses and grammar, while the second part contains actual Old English text, appendices and a glossary. Ambitious autodidacts are given a list of objectives to master and must skip around from section to section in a disjointed pattern, while keeping in mind that this should be done in conjunction with the readings. After reassuring the student that it might actually be possible to understand OE after a page or two of easy reading (which look a lot like modern English), the book plunges into the murky depths of actual medieval texts. This is probably akin to having a first semester Latin student read The Twelve Caesars by the ancient Roman historian Suetonius!
Since OE is not a modern language and does not have the popularity of ancient Latin, there seems to be very few books which teach it in the same manner whereby the budding foreign language student is introduced to a few useful everyday words, simple grammar and graded reading exercises with each section building upon the last. Many Latin books, such as the classic Wheelock's Latin are designed this way and it would be nice to see a similar book for OE.
