A Dialogue with Roger B Rueda, the author of APPLE Grammar

By Jeanne Mae Losala


APPLE Grammar, all the grammar you need to do well in life, is a sensible reference and instructional guide to the structure of the English language, intended to unswervingly help people of all ages and educational levels read, speak, and write better. Parts of speech and the most common grammatical mistakes are pointed up in this easy-to-understand, unyielding guide. A fabulous book for anyone trying to improve their formal business English in order to better achieve something at an organisation career, or simply perk up one's aptitude to be understood, APPLE Grammar is strongly recommended for individual, school, and neighbourhood library reference collections.

This week I have Roger B Rueda, the author of APPLE Grammar which has been published by CentralBooks in Quezon City. Roger B Rueda is an engaging teacher, lecturer, poet, fictionist, and author who loves a good laugh but also dedicates himself to teaching people the correct usage of English. His book, APPLE Grammar, is an easy-to-use reference guide. He has a degree in mass communications. He is a UP Fellow for Poetry and an MSU-IIT Fellow for Fiction. His essays, poems, and short stories have been published in Philippine Panorama, Home Life, The Sunday Times, NCCA Mantala, Panay News's Files, and Hiligaynon. He works as ESL/writing teacher at a language institute and as reviewer/lecturer at a review centre. He is all of thirty and writes in English, Hiligaynon, and Filipino. Currently, he is writing a Hiligaynon grammar book and compiling Hiligaynon words for his Hiligaynon-English, English Hiligaynon dictionary. He is the managing and articles editor of itravel Philippines magazine based in Cebu City.

To start with let me say that I feel this is the most noteworthy book published in the field of grammar for a very long time in the Philippines. Nothing compares with it; it is leading edge and in a word extraordinary.

I was auspicious enough to be able to interview the author and include here, in full, his answers to my questions, as I believe his immediate version of the milieu, underlying principle, and approach to the book is better than any second hand version that I could endow with.

Q: What was the driving force to put pen to paper for the book?

I have spent many years of my professional life looking at what grammar is and how it is important in using the English language and trying to find ways of describing it effectively, principally with teachers and students of English in mind. I have always felt that it has never been accorded due consequence in the study of grammar.

Question: The book is all-round views of grammar – was this with a view to combine much of what has been written as you think fit on these various aspects into a whole?

Yes, I was cognisant that a lot of grammars are structured on the basis of words and sentences only, with the sentence often the higher limit for explanation. There is thus a danger that you only look at language bottom-up, starting with the smallest units but never reaching through into discourse or context in any consequential way. I have tried to write APPLE Grammar so that top-down and bottom-up descriptions sit at the side of each other. I feel this gives a richer picture of the language.

Question: What sources did you use in your collection of language examples and data?

I drew on my own collection of examples from my own teaching over the years: examples of ads, literary examples, favourite newspaper stories, bits of data gathered here and there in the kind of way that all English teachers amass over the years.

Question: If you had to start off writing the book again would you do anything another way?

I would in all probability pay even more attention to the magnitude of theories, but this requires a lot of researches to typify key characteristics so that the understanding of grammar and its components is facilitated well. I am still, conversely, not utterly clear about the theory of what I am planning to do nor about how it functions, how I most effectively express it and how I use a source to attest it. But I feel this is a very big topic and would hope to make it more fundamental to my next book.

Question: Where can we buy a copy of your book?

Interested parties can hit local bookstores for a copy. A copy can be had at Eddie Mar in SM City and Robinsons. I give discount for bulk orders, so teachers who are interested in using my book in June for their students may contact me on 09068541933.

As a closing word let me say that this must be the first time that I have read a grammar book cover to cover (and this one is 324 pages long) and I found myself fascinated right through.

I would like to be grateful to the author for his chock-a-block and edifying answers to my questions.

APPLE Grammar book re-released

by Rosie G Garcia

APPLE Grammar has been re-released by CentralBooks based in Quezon City.

APPLE Grammar is one of the books that any person needs to go back to and refresh his/her faulty memory if he/she doesn't remember much (if any) of the grammar taught in school all those years ago.

In the book, the author Roger B. Rueda* gives explanations in plain, easy-to-understand English. He gives examples galore.

APPLE Grammar is just the refresher course people are looking for. If they are searching for an alternative to memorising Strunk & White, this book is highly recommended by English grammarians.

Although it is designed for self-study, it is also recurrently used as a classroom primer. As a self-study book it is particularly user-friendly.

As a classroom book, the teacher may find themselves feeling rather redundant as the book does all the teaching for them.

Student teachers, English majors, and those newly qualified will find it a useful reference book for themselves.

Roger developed this book to meet an urgent need that students encountered as they try to write. Students produce writing that has too many errors because they have picked up English mostly through their ears and not through their eyes. Many of them are quite fluent in English. But they write sentences without a subject, they use prepositional phrases as the subject of a sentence, and their use of verb tenses is sloppy. So, he decided to help the students develop an awareness of grammatical structure and terminology by using the students' ability to "pick things up" and develop their own inner criteria for correctness.

Grammar is not a fun subject to study. There are lots of confusing rules and an endless amount of terminology to memorise. If one struggles with grammar, APPLE Grammar is exactly what he/she needs.

APPLE Grammar offers another approach to learning how grammar works. This comprehensive guide teaches the details of English. By the time a reader finishes the book, he/she will know how a correct sentence should be devised and what English grammar really is.

Some of the positive attributes of APPLE Grammar include a breakdown of different parts of speech and inclusive examples.

APPLE Grammar is highly recommended to anyone who needs an English refresher or to anyone who is preparing to take a standardised test like TOEFL, TOEIC, and IELTS.

The book is available at Centralbooks nationwide, Eddie Mar in SM City and Robinson’s, and West Visayas State University’s Centre for Foreign Languages, and U.P. bookstore (Look for Prof Julie Ramirez), The Castel Hotel, and Cafe Rino.

More information is available by calling 09068541933.

*Roger B. Rueda is an entertaining teacher, lecturer, poet, fictionist, and author who loves a good laugh but also dedicates himself to teaching people the correct usage of English. His book, A Plain and Practically Lucid English Grammar, is an easy-to-use reference guide. He has a degree in mass communications. He was named a Fellow for Poetry to the UP National Writers' Workshop in 2002 and a Fellow for Fiction to the Iligan National Writers' Workshop of MSU-IIT in 2005. His essays, poems, and short stories have been published in Philippine Panorama, Home Life, The Sunday Times, NCCA Mantala, Panay News's Files, and Hiligaynon. Currently, he works as ESL/writing teacher at a language institute and as reviewer/lecturer at a review centre. He is all of thirty and writes in English, Hiligaynon, and Filipino. Currently, he is writing a Hiligaynon grammar book and compiling Hiligaynon words for his Hiligaynon-English, English Hiligaynon dictionary. He is the managing and articles editor of itravel Philippines magazine based in Cebu City.

Along Towards the 10th of May

by Roger B Rueda
As elections are drawing close to, it is hard for us thinking voters to come to a decision on who to vote for as most of our runners in the national level (and even in the local level) have not been given a favourable circumstance to lay themselves open to the public as to who really they are: it needs a lot of dough to be an officeholder, and, wherefore, the same cast of politicians is given the chance to make a pitch for on TV and radio as they are the ones who have the ace in hole to be loved by stone broke Filipinos whose impoverishment is so relentless that they put out of their mind any belief or whatever imposing stratum of philosophising they are supposed to have because their major foreboding is their continuance. The election time is the only instant when they can be paid heed by politicians and that their bottomless pit is given allayment even for a very short period. They don’t mind whether these politicians who help them are just to be regarded with suspicion because in any case their oblivion has been drawn out and their demise is not in the early hours as it is supposed to ensue when for days or weeks their lack of food has been little by little killing them or laying their bodies slowly to rest.

Most voters don’t know our politicians really well because they have no means to do so. Considering that most voters in the Philippines have assumed education and they have no competence to know what a true leader is or what it takes to be a true leader, most politicians that we have are so commonplace and that their election reflects our being a low-grade breed of citizens who need to become conscious soon that these circumstances that we have are so despondent. And for more years that we still are not fully formed to act and this instant is supposedly the time to do so, this country is in jeopardy of becoming a built-up country. If not salvaged soon as our realisation is too late, it will become a country of desperation and wretchedness. No wonder then if most intellectuals who have the bent and the whole lot set out to other countries and completely close their eyes to their being a Filipino because the supremacy of patchiness and stupidity is so strong that no amount of writing or rationalisation can help revolutionise whatever dilemma we have. For one, I believe that if this difficulty will not be taken in hand soon, it will become malevolent and any alleviation is very uncalled for or wasted.

We should act now and not follow what deceivers and mudslingers say. We have to go out and find out who is telling the truth. We have to read our history books. We need to bring to mind what the past governments did to us and what act of treachery they did--and what they have done to make us ill with economically and politically. We should not be amnesic: we need to be insightful because we do not care for what these people and their families have done for this country. We are always not learning and, thus, we are always going back to where we started. It is like a foolish act that we all are aware but we tend not to see it or we tend not to know that we are all conscientious for whatever things which come about to this country. We should not allow the culture of jejemons and people who have nasal haemorrhage at superbness to exist generally. They exist to give their senselessness currency. They exist because we are asleep at switch.

These coming elections, we need to be on our guard. We need to vote for someone who has not marred us, who has not spent our money for something shameful, who has not left our streets or bridges or city halls roughhewn, who has passed at least a single law in his/her term in congress and senate, who has done something to earn the position he/she is running for, who has put the public interest before his/her own, who has moral ascendancy, or who has not shaken fist at any member of our family. We have to vote for someone who is a cut above, for someone who is responsible and on the level. Chew over our politicians' anwers in our dailies. Don't choose a leader whose answer is very ideal or elusive: most likely he/she is not earnest.

We need to vote for politicians who run not for a career but for a commission to serve the Filipino people. We should all be hedging our bets and on guard not to fall to the manoeuver of riding the undercurrent and unsinkable propensity when we are to decide on for our next leaders.

We should not vote for someone whose fight is based on hating PGMA and so people need to vote for him/her--but he/she can't even fix out explicit pay dirt to the problems giving us a bad time aside from stirring up enmity for the government. Would this country be more fortunate with someone who just throws stones against wrongdoers because he/she has nothing worthier to do? I think the only thing more amiss than a corrupt leader is a bush-league leader.

Try to see or don't refuse to see the negative side of our leaders. We should be perceptive voters. We should not be pulsated by fervour or grief and media tricks. We have to knock socks off our inconstancy, so we won't continue to wait out from bad hegemony as a bottom line of our individual deed. Let's scrutinise what the other candidates have to place at disposal.






"Along Towards the 10th of May" appears in News Express next week.

On the Knolls in an Antiqué Countryside

by Roger B Rueda

The earliest scene that I had of the knolls standing right opposite my accommodation had made me wish for to go there—it was the season of cloudburst, and the knolls were enclosed with quite a few cascades flowing down their sharp slopes. Alluring though the scene was, it was only total quirk that brought me to set of scales to the top of these imposing knolls.


With sprees following one another, I was edgy to go out and loosen up myself outdoors in the sun. For what better means to use up a holiday than to be out seeing the sights about, taking in new things to see, and letting the world immerse into you!

My programme was to go bicycling towards the countryside, but there were no two-wheelers to be had on rent. I therefore decided to go on foot. I took a motor vehicle into service to get to a hilly place. Then, I set on my trip under my own steam.

A few steps ahead brought me to a divergence from where I took the left route passing about the knolls towards a farm and a village. Spotting an undersized fishpond right down from the knolls, I decided to go and have a look. This brought me nose to nose with the central knoll that stood right over the main path I had been on. There were two more knolls closest to it, and together they made up an imposing make-up, at once challenging the human strength of character to come and get the better of it.

Travelling closer to the base of the knoll, I spotted a man ushering water buffaloes beside the centre of the knoll and moving towards my direction. I met him on the course, and he informed me, after enquiring as to what footgear I had on, to go up the knoll head-over-heels, taking the crisscross direction. Some other men were schlepping earthen wares such as the kuron, a round-bottomed, wide-mouthed clay cooking vessel; kalan, a clay stove; paso, a plant pot; and banga, a container used solely for storing drinking water. I asked them what they were going to do with those products, and they at once put me in the picture that they sold those in local market.

The trails cut across the entire slope of the knoll from right to left in a difficult pattern, and with water buffalo muck strewn across them, it looked as if these courses had been formed by animals browsing on the knoll slopes athwart. The routes were narrow enough to let a man scramble with watchfulness, so I was in awe at how a four-legged brute could have followed such routes.

The climb was not tricky, and I soon reached a place more than halfway toward the pinnacle to take some break. The inspection of the surroundings was a welcome sight—the area I have travelled through was a gigantic meadow surrounded on its sides by imposing mountain peaks. The countryside consisted of small, messily cleared fields with no distinctive pattern, and trees spread across the landscape. Cutting across the pitch was the highway, all along its route spotted by a sprawling series of cottages, some still in one’s hand.

I continued to climb the slope, and had to often stop and fix on which way to turn, sometimes receding on reaching a cul-de-sac. I had now about a cut up of the knoll more to climb and was on its left side when I spotted some men in colourful clothes climbing the hill on the left. They were following a clear trail that led as the crow flies to the top of that knoll. This had my fingers crossed for me to take the steep slope that lay right over me, and with a swift lick I reached the summit at long last.

The clean breeze and a mild sun shining from above revitalised my spirits, and my instant choice was to fritter the whole day walking around the hilly surroundings. What at first sight appeared to be a couple of hills were essentially complex hills, with their tops interrelated? I travelled from one knoll top to another, taking a look at the village that lay on the other side and where the path I had initially engaged led.

While standing on the knoll, I was amazed to see a man approaching me from the knoll that lay further on. I tried to hold him in a dialogue, but he was standoffish, and told me the name of the village which I failed to remember and was on my missing jotter, and that there was a hamlet on top of the hill he had come down from.

Before I left this knoll to explore the neighbouring one where I had seen the men, one last task remained to be completed, and this was to leave some mark of my having been there. I had no sharp object to create scratch marks. Spotting a lustrous and willowy piece of stone that looked much like a high point, half buried inside the ground, I lifted some weighty stones lying to hand and put them in a circle about this landmark. Over the landmark, I fixed another piece of stone, and under the heaviest piece in the circle, slipped bare packing of pommes frites and cheese biscuit, I had carried with me.

It was time now to go ahead to the next hill following the well formed track. Looking at these foot-stamped routes, it was palpable that the knolls were recurrently visited by people who went along these routes with goats and buffaloes, some of which I could see grazing upon the knolls.

The way to this footpath carried another revelation. A small portion of land had been marked out with large bamboo strips with saplings budding within. In close proximity, an ooze of water coming down from the knoll had been stopped with a small barrier, creating a small pond surrounded with outsized stones. Some clothes, logs, and gears lay on the ground. This was a primal shelter, a resting place of someone trying to build a smallholding on this terra firma.

I crossed over the haven to take the bridleway that went straight up to the top of the knoll. This stretched me to the farthest, and with my legs refusing to go any further, I had to sit down to rest for a while. At length I came forward over the knoll, and was surprised by the immensity of the neighbourhood, for what appeared to be a pointed top was large enough to contain several big fields. Walking across this earth, the sight of a village met me—this was probably the rustic commune the man I met earlier had told me of. The villagers as I came up to were weaving brown mats with grit, serenity, and hard work in folding over different strips of leaves to yield a fantastic design of interweave folds and entails a sequential order of steps to produce inimitable geometric patterns and rhythm in producing a mat. The brown mats are sought for because of its inimitable and intricate design.

Approaching the shacks, all closely hugging each other, I emptied my water bottle so that I had a convincing cause to give good reason for interfering with such an out-of-the-way place. I stopped at the vestibule, and saw several men, women, and children standing in the way and wearing tube-like hand-woven wraps called patadyong which is plaited with diverse colours of threads to capture the colours of life and reveal personal status—and for stylish looks. A little guy carefully approached me, grinned and enquired if I had come from the town, to which I came back with yes. He then asked me if I needed water to drink. I took out my bottle and had it filled up. Seeing this crowd standing right ahead of me, I felt a bit timid, beamed, and kept mum, which some of them found funny. I decided to leave the place, asking what it was called and which way I could climb down. I was shown across the village to a footpath which I followed. It led to another small bunch of huts where I saw some children and young men playing. I spend a good half an hour or more watching them play, with some little girls and women watching the game from the sidelines.

I was dazed by the splendour of some women, with small little ones in their arms. I never thought that these women could live to tell the tale of the country. Some young teenager girls sat under the leafy tree, but lacked fascinating characteristics. They braided the leaves and dry them under the sun, dyed and woven by hand to create conventional and inventive products such as hats, mats, bags, coin purses, pen holders, window blinds, jewellery boxes, table frills. Feeling that the group was now all-in of my being there, for they made no endeavour to intermingle, and made unkind notes on the sidelines making me feel quite unsought, I decided to go for the day. I asked one householder to give me an idea about the way down, which he did. Then, I told him the reason of my trip, enquired about him, and expressed thanks in Kinarayä.

The way down was steep, and right at the start lay a small water fissure used by the villagers to go and get water. A young woman happened to be there, and I stopped and kept looking at her, which startled her to leave her stuff and go up up the way, pretending to be searching for something. She in a little while came back, followed by a woman carrying a tot and two girls who then accompanied me right to the foot of the knoll.

The visit to the knolls was reasonably spontaneous, and made for a stimulating change to the everyday routine of the past few months. Though the day out was meant for me to lighten up in the setting and get some work out, scaling the hills and seeing a village surroundings over them was a lovely bolt from the blue, and I am still left wondering how old this occupancy is, and what kind of life its residents live, devoid of generated power, potable water, or easy access to modern facilities. I plan to return the knolls, and my primordial abode located right over the uppermost crest.

Before I made tracks from Antique, I splashed out on its Muscovado sugar, one of the most famous commodities and pricey sweetener in the bazaar for it is widely recognised as pure and highly healthful because of its low calorie content. I found out that it is residue and substance free with typical flavour, whiff, colour, and moisture. At home, Muscovado sugar goes well with my java or milk.

I laid all my knick-knacks in a fine twined bariw bag and vamoosed home.







"On the Knolls in an Antiqué Countryside" is Roger's article for his column "Vignette" in itravel Philippines magazine this month, May 2010. Enjoy reading it here as the magazine copies will be available at local bookshops next week.