Losing our language

Essentially, building a strong foundation in spelling and grammar is seen as essential in learning a language.

And yet, so many students today get away with poor spelling and grammar in English because teachers want to make sure they get larger concepts and aren’t discouraged from writing. This is short-sighted because if you don’t know how to use a hammer and nail or screwdriver and screw, you certainly wouldn’t be allowed to build a house just to show your creativity.

How many times have you heard we don’t need to emphasize spelling and grammar because of spell check and grammar check programs? How many schools have spelling bees? How many educators emphasize spelling and grammar over content?

It is of primary importance when learning a foreign language, as it should be, but not emphasized at all for the primary language we use here in the United States. Dictionaries are a rarity in the classroom these days and we hope that somehow students will learn the basics of language through osmosis. It doesn’t happen. I have seen evidence of educated and smart young people who don’t understand basic phrasing or spelling, or who constantly get caught up with homonyms and homophones — did the car break or did it brake?

So let’s talk about why else it’s important. Letters make up the English language. It’s a tricky language that doesn’t make much sense if you think about it enough. And that word enough is a good example. The gh is an f sound, so you could phonetically spell fish ghoti. The o is the short i as in women, and the ti is the s, as in cautious. So understanding how the letters interact in different ways within a word itself is crucial to a firm understanding of the language. So that’s one building block, then there is the idea of how the words interact with one another. We have nouns and verbs and articles and prepositions and so on. How they work with one another and form a complete sentence is the second layer of understanding the language. If you don’t understand this part, how exactly will you understand a dependent clause, because they are important for flair or extra thoughts, and how they might differ from an independent clause, which never begins with which? Independent clauses are fun before other parts of a sentence. The clause can be its own sentence within a larger sentence and, if you like, can even be used to have two conjunctions in a row!

Now how about that! Fronted adverbials can also add flair to clauses, but not as much flair as an exclamation mark, which are typically overused. There is some debate whether fronted adverbials should have a comma, as in … however, or but. However, that debate will likely never be over just like the debate over whether ellipses should just be used for a section of a sentence that has words taken out or used for emphasis, a creative break or flair … .

Anyway, we are just talking about sentences. The world really opens up when we start talking about how sentences relate and how exactly do we break up our ideas into paragraphs. This is taught in schools, however, along with expressing arguments and conveying ideas. One can get to five paragraphs with ease with the idea that you will tell them what you will tell them, tell them, then tell them what you just told them.

For me, this part is easy, but you can’t truly get there until you understand the roots of the words and how they interact. English is tricky, but its influences are like the United States — diverse. The plural of octopus is octopuses because it’s of Greek origin, not Latin. It has an es at the end rather than an i that is usually reserved for Latin words. And knowing Latin and Greek roots, along with suffixes and prefixes, helps students not only understand new words but how they work with each other. It builds literacy in new ways.

Teachers of foreign languages understand that. And our English teachers should get back to those roots. Otherwise, this generation will lose the love and command of this language and, potentially, the fun of it. And that means the primary way we communicate is further diminished as well.

P.S.: If you are an English teacher who agrees or disagrees, tell me!