English for Dummies

It has been observed that most of the people in history who accomplished great things had, at some point in their life, been guided by a brilliant, inspirational teacher. What is often overlooked however, is that the rest of us numbskulls had those teachers too.

Teaching must be a very difficult job. In fact they should change the expression: 'It isn't brain surgery' to 'Well, it isn't as hard as teaching seven- year-olds not to wipe their noses on their sleeves'.

I had a great English teacher in high school in Craig, Colorado. Her name was Mrs. Grimes. One of the many valuable and practical things she taught us was how to diagram sentences. It is a fascinating process that I will demonstrate for you now. Sure, I haven't done it since May of 1984 but I did get a c+ back then so I'm sure you can learn a thing or two from me.

Take this sentence for example:

England is not/ the only /place / /they/ talk/ English.

1__________2______3__4_ 5___6____ 7

1. Subject

2. Prepositional Phrase

3. Person, place or thing

4. Where the word 'where' should have been

5. Pronoun

6. Anti-noun

7. The thing spoken

Can you guess what is wrong with the above sentence? That's right, the pronoun and the anti-noun are dangerously close to each other. If they touch this whole page could explode.

Mrs. Grimes also taught us the eight parts of speech. These are nouns, verbatims, conjectures, adverbs, nuances, preposterouses, injections, metaphorms, subordinate claws, and words that start with the letter 'p' for no good reason. Sure I know now that that was ten and not eight parts of speech, but Mrs. Grimes never claimed to be good at math.

After all of these years reading writing and arithmetic remain kind-of important things in our lives. So, the next time you see one of your school teachers around town why not take a moment and thank them for the instruction they patiently gave to you in your youth? Just make sure they don't see your sleeves.