First of all, I had better make sure that there are NO mistakes in this blog post! Note to self.
I grew up in a family who loved reading. Any apartment we ever lived in was full of books we either owned or had checked out from the local library. As I have mentioned in a previous blog, every summer my parents would sign my brother and me up for the Summer Reading program at the library. Anytime I would get birthday or Christmas money, I would immediately want to go to the bookstore and stock up on Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High books.
Thanks to my love of reading, I developed a relatively advanced vocabulary at a young age. I remember people in school asking me why I used such huge words, and mine was a high achieving high school! It also encouraged me to want to be a writer myself, and so I have written poems, songs, blogs and short stories over the years—not to mention countless essays for school. So….many….essays.
As a result, I (shockingly) became an English Education major when I went to college. I learned even more about reading deeply (as in, reading to derive a deeper meaning than the basic plot), grammar, and writing coherently. I then went on to teach high school English, which is what I have been doing for the past (almost) 8 years. Since becoming a teacher, I have heard the following numerous times:
“Reading is boring!”
“Why are you using such big words?”
“Why do we have to know how to write?”
“Grammar is boring!”
“We don’t need to know this.”
That last one always gets me. Everyone DOES need to know how to read and really get at the essential meaning of the story or information. That is just a necessary life skill. People do need to how to communicate their thoughts using proper grammar, sentence structure, spelling, etc. Why? Well, you are never going to get that job you want if your resume has multiple grammar errors. Ergo, you will not be earning that salary you need in order to pay your bills and put food on the table. That person you’re trying to impress will never take you seriously if your speech is consistently peppered with slang and inappropriate language. The concept you’re trying to describe is going to lose something in the translation if you do not have an expansive vocabulary at your disposal.
In other words, you are going to look like an idiot.
And that, dear readers, is why reading, grammar, and writing do matter.
Remember, In life, not everything is 140 words like it is on Twitter.
Hello Happy Things 