A knowledge of the World so seldom falls to the share of a tutor that when, in consequence of his or her employment, he follows his pupil into the World, it is oftener the pupil that carries the tutor, than the tutor the pupil. For years scholars and professors have been fearful of the death of the English language.  When I was in high school, my English professor, Mrs. Geiser was so passionate about English.  She saw how poor our grammar was and tore her lesson plan up and rewrote it to teach us more about the English language.  She was such a sweet woman and I will always remember her.  As you can tell, my grammar and English is not perfect, but it is pretty good.

I must admit, that I do not always proof read my writing, and I am horrible with apostrophes, and I may not be the best at spelling, but I try.  I have grammar books and a dictionary at my side. Sure, I really should reference my grammar book so I can better understand how to use apostrophes, but shortly after, I always forget. There are just some things people are not good at. Nevertheless, I always try to avoid contractions, as they are not viewed as college level writing.  One of my professors used to get on my case saying, “People don’t speak like this, no one is that proper.” However, the way I write and the way I speak are sometime different. 

As far as writing goes, I had to teach myself how to write.  Sometimes I would have people help me and produce a great product, but I was criticized for not having a real voice, lacking passion and having to heart behind my words.  Nevertheless, when I would write my essays without help, I would get so many ideas and did not know how to organize my thoughts.  My English professors were so hard on me that I would get anxiety before even sitting down to write because I feared that they would fail me no matter what.

I did complete all of my college level writing classes and actually scored high on standardizes test, but I never had a template to compare my writing to.  In some cases, the professors simply did not like my ideas, and wanted me to write from their perspective, but I refused and stayed true to myself. Sometimes other students with tons of grammatical errors would get better grade than me.  In other cases, students had no idea what they were writing about, but they had perfect grammar. I may not be a perfect writer, and I am still getting over my anxiety about writing, but I held my ground.

While I may not be a perfect writer, many of the youth of today are far worse than I ever was. Some people blame technology for destroying the English language.  Teens these days, do not like to spell words out, they do not write complete sentences, and they use letters to make statements. For example, “SHM” means shaking my head. To communicate with the youth, on social media, I had to find the urban dictionary so I could understand what these strange codes I was seeing meant.  Many people say that text messages, instant messages and twitter are helping to erode all structure of the English language, and 60 percent of teenagers used these forums. Sometimes it is hard to tell if they are misspelling things to be cool or if they are simply illiterate. I must admit that even I got lazy on social media and did not always capitalize words that were supposed to be, and I would misspell things because I simply did not care, but a reporter, Rebecca Jarvis from CBS, did a report and she said, “no matter what forum you are using, it is important to use proper grammar,” so I began to correct my mistakes and spell things the way they are meant to be spelled, in most cases.

Rebecca Jarvis also went on to explain that social media is a reflection of you. People are constantly looking at the things you type online and sometime they print this information out and keep them in flies. While social networking may not be where your career is, it is important to be as professional as possible because employers also look at these accounts.  Education and learning to write is very important. Corporations like individuals who can clearly express ideas, topics and thoughts. No one wants to hire someone, have that person send out a memo and then no one in the office is able to decode it because the employee does not properly convey their ideas.  Therefore, youth literacy is very important. However, 25 percent of students do not graduate from high school, and 42 million Americans cannot read. While social media networks like twitter limit the number of characters one can write, some people have to limit their words and make abbreviations and may be updating from their phones, so they do not always capitalize, when they should. Nonetheless, some people are truly literate.

While I may not be perfect at writing, I can read and write. Subtle courses are more effective than violence I might make a few mistakes, but generally you can understand what I am saying. I value the old culture and try to do my best. I still read Shakespeare– he makes one reflect on what he is saying, as much of his words are metaphorical.  Edith Wharton is also one of my favorite authors; I like the way people spoke in the late 1800s and early 1900s. By reading these books, it gives me a connection to our past. They were so eloquent and did not always flat out say what they meant.

To further illustrate my point, “I am in receipt of your communication, and I regret to be compelled to inform you in reply that, after mature consideration of the proposals therein contained, I find myself unable to pronounce a favourable judgment upon the same.” Basically the speaker just said “After careful consideration, I cannot comply.” That is much better than the responses one gets from most people these days.  It is important to read and very important to write, I set high goals for myself and just a few years ago, I read several books and over 10,000 pages just to keep my mind active. So keep learning, even if one has to teach oneself.  “You can crush a man with journalism.”

-William Randolph Hearst