1. downloaded from podcastsinenglish.com
transcript level 2
Try not to look at this until you’ve done all the exercises that go with the listening.
The adventures of Grammarman
Richard: For this week’s podcastsinenglish.com I’m talking to Brian Boyd, the
creator of Grammarman. So Brian, who is Grammarman?
Brian: Hello Richard, Grammarman is a er… the world’s first and only
grammar superhero. So while Batman fights organised crime, bank
robbers, Grammarman fights careless mistakes.
Richard: OK, so like batman is he a comic strip is he?
Brian: That’s right, yes.
Richard: OK. But he’s not the only character in the strip is he?
Brian: No, grammar man needs help in protecting his hometown Verbo city.
He has a genius android friend called Alphabot and he has an alien
visitor friend Syntax. The three main characters fighting crime in
Verbo city represent different things. Grammarman represents the
ideal student of English. He always uses his dictionary to check
difficult words. He always corrects his mistakes. He’s never late for
class. Then you have Alphabot. He kind of represents a grammar
reference book. His brain is amazing. He holds more information
than the Internet. He’s always a ready resource to help Grammarman
when he needs extra help and Syntax represents a beginner student.
In the story Syntax has come to earth to visit and he’s decided to
stay because he wants to learn English. Syntax makes mistakes all of
the time but Grammarman and Alphabot help him to correct his
mistakes and to learn the language. So the idea there is that lower
level students are learning along with Syntax. They see his mistakes.
They see how to correct them.
Richard: OK great. So grammar man is actually on a website isn’t he?
Brian: Yes, yes, he appears at www.grammarmancomic.com
Richard: OK grammarcomic.com. Great! So is he actually in print then
because most comic strips are actually read in print?
Brian: That’s right the website is an online advertisement for the printed
comic. At the moment the comic appears in a newspaper in Malaysia
and a newspaper in Argentina. This month it will begin to print in a
magazine in Thailand and in January it will begin in a magazine in
China.
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Richard: So Brian where did you get the idea for Grammarman?
Brian: Well this idea came from just a silly conversation in the pub after
work one evening I was sitting with another teacher and we were
talking about how our students spend so much time reading Japanese
Manga comic books. Every time I turned my back in the class it
seems like a student is reading a Japanese cartoon book. And we
were talking about how wonderful it would be if they were English
comics not Thai. So then we started talking about if we could
harness that love they have of comics, make an English comic and
then take that a step further and make it an English comic that
actually teaches grammar or helps to practice grammar. Then we
started to joke about we could have a super hero called
Grammarman and he would fight Punctuation Man and things like
that and it snowballed from there. We talked about it for more than
an hour then my friend started to say, “you should do this. You
should make it. This could work.” and I was saying, “No, no it’s a
silly idea,” and he kept encouraging me to like make sample stories
and it went from there.
Richard: OK, so you mention Punctuation Man, he’s a baddie is he? Are there
any other baddies in the story?
Brian: There are lots now. Punctuation Man actually developed into Sammy
Colon (Richard laughs) and all his crimes are punctuation related.
There’s Uncle Uncountable, Anna Gram, Adam Bomb, the mad
scientist, there’s so many of them now, King Wrong.
Richard: OK. And how long has Grammarman been going?
Brian: Since August 2005, so just over a year now.
Richard: And do you know how many episodes you’ve made?
Brian: I’m working on episode 22 right now.
Richard: Ah… right. And so when did you get … first involved in writing comic
strips?
Brian: Well I’ve been drawing comics and cartoons since I was about 10
years old when I would make comics for other children who lived in
my street. But this is the, this is the first time I’ve actually tried to
publish and put something on line.
Richard: I know you’re a full time teacher. Do your other teacher colleagues
rib you a little bit about drawing comic strips?
Brian: Some do but I get a lot of positive comments from colleagues but yes
it is a subject of jokes quite often.
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Richard: Ha ha ha. And do you use Grammarman in your own lessons?
Brian: Yes I do occasionally. I don’t, I don’t like to push it to my teens
because I’d like them to find it themselves, but sometimes my
teenage students will make cartoons, comics, stories, er… various
things for the website.
Richard: OK. And what are your future plans for Grammarman?
Brian: Lots of ideas but I don’t have a lot of free time to develop them. In
the short term I want to improve the website. I would like to make a
book that collects all of the Grammarman episodes together. Many,
many things; a computer game, a board game, a card game, an
animated cartoon.
Richard: Ha ha ha. A film?
Brian: Who knows?
Richard: Ok great, all right, well thanks very much Brian. And remember
that’s grammarmancomic.com.
Brian: That’s right.
Richard: Thank you very much.
Brian: Thanks, Richard.
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