Bryan's Grammar Blog
Thoughts on grammar and answers
to questions from our users.

Imagine yourself as a new student in one of America's freshly-minted suburbs. The year is 1955, but you're too young to be aware of time or place. Your mother takes care of that and sure as day gets you to school on time. Besides, you are a daydreamer, at least until lunchtime on mornings as crisp as this. The only thing on your mind at the moment is the influx of warm, Spring morning sunshine pouring through the vaunted, classroom windows. These windows have wooden, bevelled frames painted thickly and coarsely by the rough hands of workers hired by the government during the Depression, but you're too young to know that. You only know the paint is imbued with a protective aura of magic that keeps its thick gloss from tampering. The glass through which you gaze subtly ripples the picture of the sand-and-steel playground outside. Quickly, you become aware of the teacher calling your name to which an absent response is well understood to bring about swift and humiliating punishment. You automatically raise your miniature chalkboard on which you have written an answer to the grammar problem posed to the class. She reads it out loud as you're still coming to and by jove, the hand-scrawled chalk answer of yours you dreamt away is correct! The chill of the morning had lagged the entire class and admittedly, the teacher, too, and sent you into a daydream upon the sublime effect of sunshine's warmth on a person, but the thrill of that moment between utter, contemptible failure and supreme, indubitable success upon which the class' hopes for a productive morning were hinged gives you the jolt to keep you on the ball this morning, at least until lunch when a warm afternoon and heated game of tag might bring droopy eyelids and another series of optimistic daydreams to your young, sleepy head.

This is the type of student for whom the author of English Grammar 101, the late Marvin Van Horne, created this instructional series. This type of student, indeed, is in us all. Marvin had a streak of daydreamer in himself, too. You can tell by the enthusiasm behind every single test question. They are part Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and Walt Disney's Tomorrowland. From a time before the benumbing era of 140 character text messages and after the equally benumbing shocks of the Dust Bowl and World War 2 when the world's trust between earned merit and passed down privilege wavered, English Grammar 101's freshness inspires students to trust thorough education to get not just oneself through school but to help one's community face challenges in the world. His generation proved that it is not any established social hierarchy that dictates success, but constant perseverance in one's training and practice. Marvin's latent knowledge from experience is like a subtle energy that permeates English Grammar 101's lessons, so feel the magic of English Grammar 101 and let it inspire you as it has inspired so many of his classroom students.

Bryan