From the course: Advanced Grammar (2017)
What you should know
- [Narrator] Have you ever thought that no one knows or cares what's grammatically correct? As long as people understand you, that's all that counts. Those are comfortable thoughts, wrong, but comfortable. So, before you begin the lessons in this course, let's set the stage. The purpose of this advanced grammar course is to help you become more aware of the how and the why it all works, and provide practice and application. The more you practice the how's and why's to reinforce your understanding, the closer you will be to your ultimate goal, using it correctly without thinking about the how's and why's. It just works automatically. Anything else to know before taking the advanced grammar plunge? Certainly, first knowing rules, grammar terminology or jargon is not the same as using correct grammar. I can memorize the entire glossary of car or computer terminology and still wouldn't have a clue how to locate what was wrong with the car or the computer. Merely knowing grammar rules and terms is a lot like that. So, you've memorized all the categories of conjunctions, coordinating, subordinating, correlative and adverbial, and you can list examples of each, but are you sure you're using them correctly? Can you make corrections as you edit and proofread your own writing? Something else to know is that for some of the advanced rules, the apostrophe and prepositions for example, the experts don't always agree, which adds to the confusion about grammar. In these, the experts disagree areas, you may want to further examine the different schools of thought until you decide which rule makes more sense to you so you can decide which you will use. Third, understand that some people believe grammar rules are archaic, that the wrong has become so common that's it's now correct. For example, shall and will technically mean different things, but shall has disappeared from our writing, at least for most of us, including mine. Periods didn't even exist until the fourth century. I'm glad that change became permanent, but grammar purists and progressives don't always agree. The next thing to think about before you begin is that even our location, whether we live in New York, California, or Britain may impact what we think is correct. Do you wait on line or in line? You'll learn more about that in the preposition lesson. The focus of this course is on standard common english. Ready to look at advanced grammar? Let's begin.
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