The horror, the horror...

Okay, "horror" is probably too strong a word for it. But the inability of so many people to use language to effectively express themselves is really starting to get to me.

Maybe it's because I'm getting old.

Maybe it's because I'm marking first year composition papers.

Maybe it's because while taking a break from marking first year composition papers I tried reading the letters to the editor section of the newspaper.

Maybe it's because I started reading favorite blogs during another break from marking first year composition papers and came across my buddy Jim's comment that BostonNow is limiting its reader-generated section because

Thankfully, the paper seems to have realized that most people who would blog for free in this situation are either terrible, desperate, or a little crazy, so they've cut down on the amount of space given to re-printing them.

Together, these events have conspired to convince me that the number of people capable of using language to accurately convey a coherent, well thought out argument (about anything!) is drastically falling. And it's not just people who have an excuse. About a third of my class are ESL students, which means they often say things I can't understand, but I do understand why they're having difficulty expressing themselves. Another 10% of my students write like I would expect high school graduates to write.

But it's the other half of the class whose inability to manipulate the language with any dexterity that (collectively) convince me we're in serious trouble. They grew up here, speaking the language since they learned to talk, writing it all through their formal education so far, and yet they could not write an argument to save their lives because they can't grasp simple concepts like "every sentence needs a subject and a verb". They prattle on in their writing like they do when they speak. And although I've yet to see someone type out "you know what I'm sayin'?"*, they're coming real damn close.

It gets really frustrating, because there's just so much that they have not learnt to this point, that even covering the basics would take far more time than I'm allotted to teach them. I'm supposed to be teaching them the higher writing functions, but I feel like I only teach those functions to that 10%. The rest I'm just trying to get caught up. It's exhausting and depressing at the same time.

*the answer to this query is usually "no" since the phrase is used to avoid actually saying what it is that the speaker is convinced he/she is saying.