Each year, when I read my first batch of 7th grade essays, I become enlightened. Usually the enlightenment does not come from the content, which has a topic of interesting things which happened to the kids in the past year, quite often regarding a vacation. Rather, my eyes are opened by new themes of what we will need to focus on grammatically for the year.
This year, the pervading theme was the use of the following phrase to begin a sentence: “Me and my family/friend/sister/grandpa…” Sigh.
If your initial response is, “So what?” I’m sad. Your English teacher must not have made a large impact. The phrase should be switched around to read “My family/friend/sister/grandpa and I…”
“What’s the big deal?” you might query. “It’s all the same. You know what I mean.” True, but I also know the pitcher in a baseball game meant to throw the ball in the strike zone, but I won’t call it a strike if it doesn’t follow the rules.
Ah, the rules of English. They are about as complex as reading the baseball rules book. (Try it sometime, either one. See how long before your eyes cross!) The other difficult part of English is that it’s a living, breathing language, still changing and evolving. Rules you and I learned as youngsters might be different now. Sorry, nobody bothered to tell you it’s generally accepted, in all but the most austere academic papers, to end a sentence in a preposition now.
Lionel Shriver wrote a piece in Harper’s Magazine this past year regarding the devolving English language. There was much lamentation in the article and longing for the way things used to be. But were they ever really as good as Shriver made out in his writing?
We’ve always had educated people say things like “Me and my wife,” haven’t we? Yet, Shriver pointed the finger at educators who have given up teaching the finer points of grammar. You can’t see it, but my hand is raised. Mr. Shriver, there’s a reason for that.
I’ve told this to many people over time. Prior to a student’s arrival in my English classroom in 7th grade, he or she has both a reading and a language arts class. However, those are merged into one English class in 7th grade. Now I have all the same standards to follow in half the time. What’s the first thing to go?
The answer is those hated grammar books that we used to use. You remember those, don’t you? Exercise after exercise that hammer home the finer points of the English language. However, I found, early in my teaching career, that it didn’t matter how well the kids did on those problems, it never quite seemed to transfer to their writing assignments. That didn’t seem like a good thing; I was spending a lot of time in those books.
So I (and many other teachers) changed course. We focus more on proofreading skills and learning grammar as they write. Is it working? Well, things are no worse on some of those basic ideas that I used to spend weeks on. We have all-new problems, largely due to social media and texting, but the old problems have leveled off. Now I have more time for reading and writing instruction.
At the same time, it feels like the proper way of speaking and writing English is slipping. Shriver admits this is a first-world problem; if we’re so worried about speaking and writing properly, other areas of our lives must be just fine. He also says we must be careful about being too snooty with our style, syntax, and clarity in writing. Sure, you might use my word of the week to show off some new knowledge, but most people aren’t stringing together full sentences of multisyllabic words, even crazy English teachers.
It’s hard to halt bad grammar. Some people just don’t care. I like to tell kids that, in a job interview, with all qualifications being equal, the person who speaks well will always get the job over the one who says, “Me and my friends...” It can be difficult if one hears poor grammar at home and from friends, but it’s not impossible to overcome. My dad has never been great with his grammar, but I’m living proof that a person can hear it growing up and still learn the rules.
I don’t always follow the rules myself. I slip into slang and other word usage that would have made my English professors in college cringe. The key, as I tell my students, is understanding the situation. If I’m writing a paper or a column or even an email, I likely need to stick to my guns and write correctly. If I’m just hanging out with friends, I can slide. Students need to learn this as well. When you submit a paper in class, don’t sound like you’re having a conversation with your buddies.
What do we do about this problem? As my wife says, I’m saving the world one apostrophe at a time. But the world-saving is getting more difficult. Me and my students will have to get to work. (Wow, that was hard to type.)
Word of the Week: This week’s word is grobian, which means a course, buffoonish person, as in, “Though he seemed grobian while hanging out with his friends, the man’s writing showed a well-educated nature.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!