About J.D. Vivian

Education: bachelor of arts in journalism; master of arts in literature from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Employment: English instructor, Florida Atlantic University (full-time);
contributing editor, The Palm Beach Post (part-time)

How I learned good English:

In June 1968, my parents took my two sisters and me to live under Francisco Franco, a Fascist dictator, in Rota, Spain. Dad was serving in the U.S. Navy; Rota was a submarine base west of Gibraltar (a British colony in North Africa). We had one TV station — which was controlled by the government and in Spanish only. So we had to … are you ready for this? READ! Yes, we had to become well-acquainted with printed words. (We had no Internet, or cell phones, or even answering machines back then, either.) We lived in Spain for more than three years. During that time, I read a lot and thus learned a lot about mechanics, grammar and good writing.